The Golden Rule

There's an old joke about The Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. Way back in the pre-Internet days, that usually meant the owner of the printing press determined what got to determine what was or was not published. Same with the owners of the transmitters that sent out radio and television signals to the public The expansion of technology has helped smaller parts of the world a broader voice, it has been a double-edged sword.

There is, in the Construction of the United States, the First Amendment which guarantees all to freedom of speech. Freedom, however, has a high price: all speech not intended to incite action is equal. Not equally intelligent, or equally valid, but equally relevant. It is not the responsibility of the speaker - or of the broadcaster.ornampligier of the speaker - to justify the validation of their beliefs through emotional appeal or logic. Free speech means that it is up to the audience to assess the validity of the position expressed and the speaker espousing the position.

Thoughts and ideas cannot be suppressed, only the proponents of the thoughts and ideas. You can agree that some government spending is wasteful without endorsing all the beliefs of the person or people who make that statement. We are all individually responsible for our beliefs and the actions that express those beliefs but not for the actions of others who share our belief systems.

You can yell fire in a crowded theater if there is an actual fire. Yelling fire, however, doesn't make you responsible for the fire or the action of people responding to the fire in a crowded theater. Anyone can repeat a belief, but the responsibility of verifying the veracity of the belief is on the receiver of the message and not on the transmitter of the message as long as there are transmitters of other -; sometimes contradictory - messages available to analyze and examine.

Gold doesn't make the rules, it just buys the advertising that supports its rules.