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You Can't Shout "Fire!" in a Crowded Theater

by Willy Chaplin

Yes you CAN! This clichéd "exception" to the first amendment is hauled out whenever someone wishes to prohibit or restrict some form of speech. But, think about it. The question is not whether you CAN shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Of course you CAN...you are ABLE to do this. Every kid who has ever been lectured on the proper use of "can I?" versus "may I?" knows this. What this statement really means is that you SHOULDN'T do it...that it is rightfully against the law to do it...that there will be serious consequences if you DO do it anyway.

Similarly, we often tell children that they "can't cross the street against a red light" or "can't kill another person" and various other prohibited acts when we really mean they shouldn't do these things. No amount of legal prohibition can guarantee that acts that humans are capable of carrying out will not be carried out.

Now, you CAN'T fly by flapping your arms. You CAN'T turn into a butterfly. You CAN'T run seventy miles per hour. Nobody can do these things. But, you CAN cross the street against a red light, you CAN kill another human being and you CAN shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

My objection to this somewhat minor flaw in the way we express ourselves, is that confusing "can't" with "shouldn't" masks one of the most important aspects of human behavior; namely, taking responsibility for what you do and say. Even the apparent confusion itself is a way of escaping responsibility. When we say "can't" when we mean "shouldn't," especially to a child, we escape the need to explain just why "shouldn't" might be true. "Can't" has a finality that "shouldn't" lacks.

We use similar defense mechanisms to protect our consciences against admitting that we are...all of us...law breakers. What's that, you say? Not you? You mean you have never jaywalked or crossed against a red light? Oh, those things are trivial, you say? Well, then have you ever exceeded the speed limit or did you take a drink or two before you were twenty-one? Well, these ARE more serious, but hardly earth shaking crimes. Perhaps, you have used an illegal drug or even a "hard" drug...like somebody else's sleeping tablet...without a doctor's prescription? These are felonies in most states, liable to land you in prison if they were enforced. Maybe you have stolen something of value...or simply "borrowed" it and forgot to return it? Have you ever been in a fight where blows were exchanged? That would be assault. Many common sexual practices are felonies, like oral sex, even when done with one's mate or another consenting adult. Have you done none of these things?

"But," you say, "acts are hardly the same as cold blooded murder, which I would never condone!" Is that right? Then, you can say, without fear of contradiction, that when Clint Eastwood, as Dirty Harry, blew the Zodiac killer away with his 44 magnum cannon, or Danny Glover and Mel Gibson brutally executed the entire crew of South African bad guys at the end of Lethal Weapon II, you knew in your heart that what they were doing was wrong, illegal and immoral? Tell it to your muth-a, dude!

I suspect you are beginning to get my point. Although we usually have good excuses for committing these crimes...they aren't serious...I was just a kid when it happened...or, how about, I was in the privacy of your own home...they are still crimes. And, in our carnivore hearts, we yearn for occasional summary justice, if only in the movie pictures. Since we live in a system that practices statutory law rather than common law (where such things can actual be excused by judicial fiat), they are technically absolutely illegal. They can not be excused. Yet they are.

So, even though we think of ourselves as law abiding citizens, we probably aren't. The psychological defense mechanism used here is "denial," quite useful for our mental health and physical well being. But, like the failure to take responsibility for the contradiction between "can't" and "shouldn't," sometimes we have to bite the bullet and admit that we CAN and we DO. Sometimes, we have to admit our "sins."

Most thinking people are well aware of these contradictions. Without this awareness, there would never have been a civil rights movement, for example. If Martin Luther King and his followers had followed the law, had taken the prohibition against "race mixing" to heart, African-Americans would still be drinking out of separate drinking fountains in Alabama and Mississippi. However, King and all his cohorts were acutely aware that IF they marched for civil rights, IF they defied the then current laws, they were and would be subject to arrest and jailing. What they hoped for and succeeded in accomplishing by breaking those laws and risking incarceration was to convince others, the majority and their leaders who had the power to do so, to change those laws.

There are many other instances in history of rules, customs and laws being changed by significant numbers of people defying them and defying them in the face of sometimes very harsh consequences...even torture and death. An important aspect of such defiance was its openness. That is, the laws had to be violated openly and honestly, with no pretention of innocence...no denial...no obfuscation.

This explains, for example, why so many people can violate our drug laws...far more than ever defied civil rights legislation...and yet the stupid prohibitory laws stay in place. Sociologists can collect dry statistics that say, for example, that 40% of all adults in the United States have tried marijuana. But, that does not have the same impact as eighty MILLION people out in public, at the same time, lighting up joints! Instead, those of us who choose to "defy" this law, do so in private or in the company of trusted friends, for the simple reason that we are afraid of being caught. Why are we so fearful? Certainly we can't be that frightened of the 80,000,000 who have done the same thing we are doing, can we? They are unlikely to want to do bad things to us. We can also assume that a large proportion of those who don't smoke pot really don't give a shit if we DO...as long as we don't "scare the horses." I know many people who do not indulge but who also do not begrudge me for doing so.

Dan Lundgren, Harry Anslinger, or people like them, are why we are so afraid. Creepy sociopaths who, for the sake of keeping their jobs or running for higher office (Anslinger is the original purveyor of false information about pot, Lundgren is now the state attorney general and is currently trying to become governor of the great state of California) will lie, cheat and steal...whatever it takes to get what THEY want...all the while claiming that it is us, the defiers of the Great Marijuana Prohibition, who are the real dangers to society. This sewer slug, Lundgren, with no discernible principles or morality can, with a straight face, advocate the locking up of people who advocate the use of marijuana for medical purposes. And, locking them up for a LONG, LONG time. That is why we are scared. He is a REALLY scary dude!

Shit, we get high just to relax from a hard day's work or to enhance our sex lives or just to have a little fun. These are not exactly noble causes, like the abolition of segregation. No preacher is going to mount a pulpit to defend our right to happiness, especially such "easy" happiness as the simple lighting up and smoking of some pot. Who wants to risk five years in the pokey...more than you might get for manslaughter...by openly defying the law on this subject? Not me, not you...hardly any sane person.

So Danny the Slug can lie about it. He can say that marijuana "leads to" worse things, unimaginable dangers to society, the crash of civilization. He can say that it causes insanity, inevitably leads to "hard drug" addiction, to growing hair on the palms of your hands. In short, he can say any goddamn thing he pleases...because, armed with state power, he can make you VERY, VERY sorry about it if you try to show him up for the sleaze-bag he really is...at least, if you show him up by openly smoking pot and NOT going insane, NOT becoming addicted to hard drugs and NOT growing hair on the palms of your hands!

Why, then, am I openly defying Lundgren and his Happiness Gestapo in print? I confess that the only reason is that I no longer smoke pot. I quit because I could no longer afford to purchase it and am unwilling to steal in order to do so. I quit long enough ago to pass a drug test and there isn't even a smidgeon of it around to incriminate me. If I could afford it, would I smoke it again? You betcha!

But, then I would be afraid to write stuff like this again and would have to rejoin the rest of you fellow cowards...oops!, I mean, prudent people...and do it only behind locked doors in the safety of my own home with friends I can trust.

So, if I stop writing strident columns about the insanity of drug prohibition, does it mean that I have taken up the evil habit once again? Probably. But, what judge is going to give Lundgren a warrant to search my premises because I'm NOT ranting and raving about defying marijuana laws, because I'm NOT calling Lundgren a psychotic maniac? I hope to someday be among a million people sitting on the capitol mall in Washington D.C. firing up joints, bongs and little pipes. Until then...

See you tomorrow...

Willy Chaplin is a man who calls himself a libertarian and thinks he has something to say to us all. This rant was previously published on How Can You Laugh at a Time Like This?