By Diana Kim

As I drive around, I notice more and more bumper stickers and car ornaments that have me cringe: flags that say “F*$& Biden” or have a blue stripe on an American flag representing “Blue Lives Matter,” ”Trump 2024” bumper stickers, and window decorations that spell out in caricatures “My Right to Bear Arms.” For a split second I think, “What if I tore up that flag?” or “What if I ripped off or scratched out that sticker?” But then I remember that it is our American right to post and say whatever we think or believe – freedom of speech constituted by the First Amendment. 

While we have freedom – freedom to decorate our cars however we want, to say whatever we want – this freedom has been warped. We justify targeting, hurting, and attacking those who have a different opinion as an act of free speech. We justify being vulgar and crude, hostile and aggressive towards others with our ability to exercise freedom of speech. Misogynists justify saying degrading things about women as free speech. Xenophobes justify hateful remarks against immigrants as free speech. Racists justify claims for segregation as free speech. Hate speech / violent speech is accepted because of this freedom. Laws are in place so that civility can exist, and yet the laws are manipulated to justify incivility. What we do in the name of freedom has become uncivil.

How can we justify hurting, degrading, dismissing, and oppressing others as an exercise of freedom? When freedom is exercised to limit another person’s freedom, is that true freedom? Violence – in word and deed – has become so normalized that we don’t even flinch when people are harassed or attacked. The internet has countless forums where anonymous individuals spew hate-talk: men declare themselves to be the superior gender and demand that feminists kill themselves, white supremacists freely articulate that non-whites are beneath them and should go back to where they came from, gun enthusiasts claim that victims of gun violence deserve to die because they are weak. They hide behind a screen and utilize their anonymity to express all this hate as a means of exercising freedom of speech. 

Is this an act of civility?

We live in a world where incivility is normalized, nay justified, by the exercising of basic human rights. 

Diana Kim is a pastor of a local Korean church in Torrance, CA. Her primary goals in serving are to teach and equip the next generation to be passionate for Jesus and to live out His passion and care for the world. Diana is currently a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary and is majoring in Christian Ethics. Her current research area of interest is Asian American feminist ethics.