Googling the Language of Hypocrisy

It is impossible for any organization or corporation or even an individual to make it to the top without some bit of tarnish being applied to his, her, or it's reputation. Google is no exception. In many ways they have been a paragon of virtue in an otherwise less than virtuous area, namely business. Google has done a great many things of which to be proud. They have been incredibly innovative what with the more efficient search engine, Google Maps, the open source Android mobile phone operating system, and the backing of cloud technology*. The motto of the company is: Don't be evil.

However, YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, has allowed Islamist videos to be posted on their web site. This has earned them the ire of Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He says it is "offensive." For it's part YouTube took down several of the worst videos, but kept others up stating that it "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."

What is freedom anyway? Webster's dictionary puts it this way: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action and Oxford says freedom is: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Both are completely right, but who would want to live in a world like that? Absolute freedom is, as Hobbes would no doubt say, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is a very nasty world to say the least.

Yet, we don't talk about about freedom that way. Instead we use some sort of vague and undefined feeling to describe freedom. In this way freedom can be whatever we want it to be. Although human beings love order, we want to control that order and thus in rides the ill-defined freedom.

However, as George W. Forell points out in his commentary on the Augsburg Confession, "Many people believe that order is the mortal enemy of freedom, and that those who advocate freedom must of necessity oppose order of any kind." He goes on to state that we all live in order and find disorder (i.e. absolute freedom) appalling or dangerous. Using the example of a family he puts it this way. "Only if a family operates according to some generally observed rules are the individual members free to eat and sleep, to work and play. A totally chaotic family would mean that the children starve, the father loses his job, and the mother her mind. You have observed such families in operation, but they hardly strike you as examples of freedom."

The aspect of freedom that YouTube and Google are talking about is free speech. Free Speech is an amazing privilege and responsibility. It is not a right though. The U.S. Constitution doesn't list freedom of speech as a right per se. We have it as a right in so far as we use it responsibly. The examples of taking free speech too far in the areas of yelling fire in a crowded theater or libeling someone in a news article are freedoms of speech, but in an irresponsible manner.

Furthermore, we find that even this criteria is wanting. Words are powerful. In fact words are so powerful that the Bible describes Jesus, part of the triune God, as The Word. Philosophers talk about words all the time. Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." This fundamental knowledge is manifestly about words for he cannot even declare anything without them. Ludwig Wittgenstein puts it this way, "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."

Language and words are terribly important. In post modern society, however, there is a rebellion against what is known as the Numinous. (That is something that cannot be described but exists none the less.) There are reasons why we have abandoned the Numinous and there are excuses as well. (It would take far too long to enumerate them here and now.) However, it is a safe assumption that it was a very poor mistake. For the truly dangerous and powerful people in the world are those who don't understand the thoughts behind the words, but can manipulate the rules. The truly great men and women are those who approach language with fear and trembling.

The vast majority of us though don't have respect for what we have here. Language comforted America in a cemetery in Gettysburg. Language drove a country to soar to the moon. Language inspired a country at war with itself that it could believe in a dream that would allow us all to sing "in the words of the old Negro Spiritual: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!" Words lead to freedom, freedom does not lead to words.

I have also heard language misused and misshaped. It can cause pain between loved ones and rend nations apart. Language carries ideas, and ideas always have consequences. No word is unimportant. As Wittgenstein put it, "a new word is like a seed."

But, back to Google and YouTube. It is doubtful that the Islamists will get any recruits from showing pictures of downed U.S. planes and speeches in Arabic by it's so-called "leaders." It is also dubious whether or not it is transferring any information this way.

The thing that is certain is this, it serves no good purpose. What could possibly be the positive outcome of showing these images or allowing these images to be shown. The Islamists are seen as freedom fighters who are fighting against American Imperialism. We also fear the loss of loved ones fighting over there, but not because of rational and logical reasons, but simply because of fear itself. We allow vile and ludicrous ideas to enter into America and around the world. Freedom requires responsibility to lead people to make choices that are correct.

YouTube may advocate that a large town hall breeds a symphony, but we know what history has taught us. Disparate voices of hatred and bigotry lead to a cacophony that swallows up what is good and right and happy. Some ideas can be discussed, but we can all agree that the wanton killing of people who are trying to rebuilt a broken country (and yes a country that was broken by those people) is wrong. We can ask ourselves which is a better country, a country built of freedom tempered by order or a country built on order tempered by fear. We know we prefer a country where people are judged not by their race or family or tribe or religion but by the contents of their message is far superior to a country ruled by cliques and power grabs.

However, even ignoring these common pleas for decency, I charge Google with hypocrisy of the highest degree. As I have said, freedom must come with order. However, order without freedom is just as dangerous. Google has a completely different way of speaking to China. China has put blockers on certain Google searches. The average Chinese person cannot access the great documents of the founding fathers or indeed any other documents that pertain to Western Free Order. The powers and culture that allowed Google to exist are ignored and scrapped when it comes to Chinese dogma.

So Google is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It gives lip service to "Freedom" while ignoring it in China. It talks of not being evil and yet allows those who do it day in and day out to broadcast what they have done. It is driven by the benefits of a free and yet orderly culture, but doesn't have the faintest clue of the history of the culture which gave birth to it. All things end up with a little dirt after the fall, but we are fools to think that wallowing in the mud will make us clean.


* These are web based applications that have their storage on a site outside of the computer. For instance, Google docs is a word processing application that runs off of a website and saves the information to that web site.