Bonus 9: Who Has the Right? - Brandon Ince

         I've never felt more like a super villain than when articulating my thoughts for one of these bonus questions, this one in particular has me feeling especially rancorous. It is my belief that anyone has the right to write about any subject for any reason and that the burden of responsibility to dignify any particular work falls on the audience. The idea that a work would be determined to be not valuable due to a predetermined set of circumstances or elements that do not have anything to do with the document itself is fallacious at best. What matters is the prose, not the author's personal relation to the subject matter, any assertions to the contrary would be an avocation for a form of discourse censorship which will only hold us back in the end. In order to become a stronger society we will have to allow all voices to have the right to write/speak on all topics, and at the same time we must as an audience acknowledge the responsibility - nay, the necessity of developing a critical eye to discern the soundness of the message.
        I feel an obligation to expound on something I said in the previous paragraph, my assertion that censorship will hold us back. I am not saying that censorship in all instances and in every situation is bad, there are certainly times in which withholding certain information is appropriate. Most of the time this is when the specific audience is not 'ready' to be exposed to such information, namely children with something like the horrors of war, or other 'R-rated' material. What I am saying is that within the context of well-to-do adults, the defensive embargo on certain perspectives within a forum of discourse is both immature and destructive.
         The first amendment is a wonderful thing, it allows all a freedom to speak and it provides all who listened an idea to criticize. The very point of putting an idea out there in the first place is to have it dignified, sometimes through praise - often through criticism. There exists an ebb and flow between idea and criticism and discourse it provides, and with each cycle a society grows more defined and stronger. If one wishes to preemptively condemn a certain perspective outright, then they rob the rest of society from the potential cycle of discourse and thus prevents a perfectly good learning experience. If there is a speaker who hates, let him hate in the same way as if there is a speaker who loves, let him love. All voices have value if not within the content of their words then the experience of defining their message.
         I almost feel as if those with firsthand experience with the topic are all the least qualified to speak. Their authority is informed by mere happenstance not distinction. The only thing they would be suitable to author is a low level firsthand account or meaningless memoir. Whatever sort of opinion or editorial they would pen would most certainly be compromised by their experience, which is at the end of the day - a very small world picture.