WORDS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/12/2011)

Words have consequences which some politicians and commentators now try to deny. Sometimes, the consequences are direct but more often indirect, but they always have consequences. And the same in true for laws, such as permitting concealed weapons. When I was nineteen, I had a fugitive saboteur in my crosshairs. I remember the experience. The words “crosshairs” and “targets” are “sicklied o’er with the pale cast” of death.

I’ve heard the same argument that words don’t count from sleazy movie and television producers who trash the public with needlessly violent movies and shows because they aren’t creative enough to field engaging dramas and use barbaric violence as a substitute.

If words have no consequences, then I wonder why speak at all? Are their words hot air without meaning? If people write, give speeches, make movies, they have to assume that their words have consequences. Why else the words?

Fundamentally, these people who say words don’t have consequences are reckless and disingenuous in their denials. If they have no consequences why pass a law post-haste that would keep hateful words three hundred feet from mourners at a funeral? Or why would they say that their words don’t matter? Their denial is an affirmation of their guilt. The reason that they deny that their words have consequences is that they know that their words did have consequences.