Imagine me being accused of slandering Evan Cohen! Alas, a reader of my previous blog-entry about Cohen, “Evan Cohen: The Foolery of Defending his Daughter,” has suggested that perhaps I did just that. In fact, the reader wrote three separate entries. Well, let us see. Did I slander Mr. Cohen?
I did not accuse Cohen of having a morally bankrupt character. There is not even the suggestion on my part that he has a despicable moral character. In fact, I did not even accuse him of having caused others great harm. What I did claim, however , is that he taught his daughter the wrong lesson by defending her 1st Amendment right to be utterly mean-spirited in her treatment of an 8th grade classmate rather focusing upon the fact that the daughter was so very mean-spirited.
To slander a person is to make false charges against someone with malicious intent. I think that Cohen taught his daughter the wrong lesson. All sorts of people might disagree with me. However, I have most certainly not made a false charge with malicious intent. Whether Cohen should have defended his daughter’s right to be mean-spirited because free speech—even nasty free speech—is guaranteed by the 1st Amendment is surely a matter that can be debated. If it can be open to debate whether an act of killing was self-defense or murder, then surely we can debate whether Cohen made the right choice on behalf of his daughter.
I am the sort of individual who strongly embraces the idea of free speech put forth by John Stuart Mill. Thus, I think that even a KKK member should be allowed to speak on university campuses, provided that she or he is willing to entertain questions.
I actually agree with Cohen that his daughter’s saying nasty things about her classmate in a YouTube video is protected speech. The point, alas, is that one should not always insist upon doing what one has a right to do. For instance, to show mercy is not to insist upon doing what one has a right to do. And if anything is true, it is true that there are cases where a person should be shown mercy.
My critic did not like my example of the student who has just lost his parents and who, under pressure, to finish the semester plagiarizes the essay which he submits. Needless to say, I do not think that losing both parents excuses everything. It does not excuse killing another, for instance. Still, it is difficult to imagine any young person who has lost both parents not being more than a little distraught and lacking in perspective about many matters. If it were only under such circumstances that a stellar student cheated, I think that I could see my way to showing that student some mercy, which is not to be confused with not holding the student accountable at all. Showing mercy is not the same thing as entirely not holding a person accountable.
At any rate, my critic’s reaction to my silly example above rather nicely speaks to the point about Evan Cohen that I set out to make. If my critic thinks that one should treat the student who has just lost his parents and plagiarizes exactly like any other student who plagiarizes, then the question that rather nicely presents itself is how should a parent react to a daughter who has posted a most vicious video on YouTube about a classmate?
Now, as my critic rightly notes, I was not there. In particular, I was not privy to any of the conversations regarding the matter. So for all I know, Mr. Cohen gave his daughter a rather chastening set of remarks regarding the inexcusable moral indecency of posting that nasty video about her classmate and then he went on to make the 1st Amendment argument on her behalf that he successfully made in court.
If this is what Mr. Evan Cohen did, then kudos to Mr. Cohen. After all, I never had any qualms regarding his stance regarding free speech. My only concern has been the lesson that he would have been teaching his daughter if all that he did was defend her 1st Amendment right to say and do what she did. If that is all that he did, then he most certainly did not teach his daughter the right moral lesson. Why? Because part of what makes the 1st Amendment right of free speech so sacred, if you will, is that the vast majority of individuals know when and when not to exercise that right. If we all said whatever mean-spirited thing we felt like saying, free speech thus exercised by so many would make life untenable in such a society. In other words, free speech without a sense of responsibility on the part of most of the citizens of society renders society none other than a version of living-hell itself.
And given the choice between defending a child’s right to be mean-spirited and cultivating a deep sense of responsibility in a child, I take it to be obvious that the latter option wins hands-down.
Of course, the young girl’s father—Mr. Cohen—will insist the he was not defending his daughter’s right to be mean-spirited. Rather, he was protecting her 1st Amendment rights and thus undergirding her citizenship. For a 14-year old, however, it seems so very unlikely that the child will hear affirmation of citizenship over the affirmation of the right to be mean-spirited. And this was the substantive point of my previous blog-entry concerning Mr. Cohen teaching his daughter the wrong moral lesson.
Have I slandered Mr. Evan Cohen? I think not.
This is a very spirited rebuttal; however, I could not locate the author’s initial critique in your posting below.