The good and the bad

Public decision-making means hearing it all

American ambition toward a more perfect union reflected the humble acceptance of the nation’s Founders that they didn’t get everything right.

In creating the United States of America, they got a lot right. Freedoms now taken for granted were no where close to guaranteed until a war with England and a document known as the Constitution established them within the new nation’s borders. Today, it seems some Americans believe the whole world enjoys the freedoms reserved to the people within these 50 states, and little could be further from the truth.

We the People are still working out critical details of this 244-year-old experiment in governance and freedom. It’s often not easy. Debate, even protest, isn’t for the faint of heart. Indeed, one could argue freedoms of speech, assembly, petition and the press do very little to ensure domestic tranquility. But they do more than not having such freedoms.

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate,” said the great U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

“Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters,” said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who may not have delivered this nation from evil, but who exposed and eradicated a lot of it in his far-too-short 39 years. He knew about being a dissenter, uttering ideas the majority resisted, rejected and didn’t want to even hear.

The other night at a lengthy Fayetteville City Council meeting — but we repeat ourselves — it was time to hear comments from the public on the issue before the eight-member public body. Members of the public can get up to five minutes each to make their arguments.

The subject was whether the city should adopt a resolution declaring racism as a public health emergency.

Spoiler alert: The City Council unanimously adopted the measure’s 16 policy recommendations seeking to examine and erode systemic racism and its harmful effects on the health of Black residents.

Today, we do not attempt to take on the role of defending what anyone said that night. Some of it was insightful. Some of it was instructional. Observers might have found some comments ridiculous. We know this: Some that night viewed the comments from one particular speaker — one who said he didn’t believe systemic racism exists, among other notions — as racist.

And they reacted. “Comments like that should be unacceptable for people to have to listen to,” one resident responded. Another urged City Council members to interrupt the next time someone uttered such offensive ideas that others found “extremely traumatic and painful.”

The situation led several City Council members to apologize, not that they had done anything wrong. It was like a host making apologies for a disruptive dinner guest who made other guests feel uncomfortable.

Council members addressed the words of the offending speaker. Sloan Scroggin said he agreed with not a single thing that speaker had said. Sarah Bunch regretted anyone had to use their limited time to respond. Sonia Gutierrez called the speaker’s time “the longest five minutes of my life.”

Those were certainly fair responses, wisely expressed. But Bunch and Gutierrez offered another response: Shut down such offensive ideas when they’re expressed during the public comment time.

“In my opinion, I would hope we can,” Gutierrez said.

In our opinion, we would hope not. And it has nothing to do with agreement with the offending remarks. Not in the least.

It has everything to do with the responsibility of those in elective office to hear all ideas and to resist quashing those with which they vehemently disagree.

The same night, council member Kyle Smith recalled a recent Ward 4 forum in which comments offended some participants. When city leaders create a limited public forum, Smith said, they owe people the time the City Council’s rules allow for them “to do with, sometimes, as they see fit no matter how abhorrent we find it.”

“You know,” Bunch said as she pondered her own suggestion to clamp down. “I think we try to hear everyone no matter how ridiculous they are.”

As many have no doubt heard before, the best response to a bad idea is the expression of better ones. The cure isn’t to use the mechanisms of government to ensure only “acceptable” thoughts are expressed.

Fayetteville’s city leaders like to push the envelope sometimes. They suggest they want to be on the leading edge of enlightened public policy. Fair enough. But when you choose the role of disruptor, you can expect to sometimes get aggressive or objectionable responses to what you’re trying to do, even if its goal is the right one.

And what happened in that meeting? Other voices responded, even among council members. “And now we kind of know what’s in his heart,” Scroggin said of the man who spoke. Council member Matthew Petty recognized the man who spoke is a candidate for City Council and suggested “if you don’t care for what he said, you should support someone who is running against him.”

Maybe someone found their advice offensive, too. But in the end, everyone said their piece, City Council members chose which arguments they found compelling and they rendered a decision. That is exactly the process as it should happen.

Terrible ideas need to be heard and faced, not driven underground.

Robust discussion of important matters before public decision-makers demands an openness to ideas and that certainly comes with a risk that someone may bring forward some bad, even offensive ideas. Setting limits on permissible expression of ideas is a horrible idea. We might even call it unAmerican. If that’s the approach any public body tries to take, the process of making important public policy decisions suffers greatly and the freedoms we all hold so dear are eroded.