People tend to be quick to assert their rights. Owning up to the responsibilities associated with rights comes much more slowly, if at all.
The latest poster child representing this growing phenomenon is Juli Briskman. Her name may be unfamiliar to you, but a photo of her made the viral news cycle last fall, when she flipped off the passing presidential motorcade while out riding her bike.
Briskman, wearing a helmet and photographed from behind, was not recognizable in the photo, and was not identified in the original postings of the picture.
It wasn't initially much of a mainstream story, but once it hit the Yahoo News feed, it took off and, like the politics of the day, interpretations of the image were polarized.
Liberal Trump haters loved it, and their retweets of the photo were rich with fawning compliments: the "gutsy" cyclist was called a "hero."
Conservative Trump voters saw just another sore loser who, unable to prevail at the polls through persuasive discourse, reverted to petulant juvenile gesturing.
It wasn't long before pride set in, the kind that cometh before a fall.
Succumbing to the sort of indulgent self-aggrandizement that mauls modesty and murders prudence, Briskman made the photo the background image on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. She took full advantage and ownership of her right to free speech and expression, emphatically enshrined in the First Amendment in our Constitution.
In keeping with the childish nature of her short-lived fame (any brat with five fingers is capable of expressing identical intellectuality), Briskman's short-sighted view of her "right" didn't extend to its accompanying responsibility.
Actions have consequences, parents have been telling their kids for eons. The irony is, Briskman was the parent figure here, not the foolish and impulsive child.
She was a 50-year-old mother of two, working as a marketing professional for a company that gets a lot of work from government contracts.
It turns out employers have rights, too. In Virginia, as in Arkansas and all other states except one (Montana), voters have enacted "at-will employment" laws. That means companies can fire employees for any reason, including "they don't like what you post on your social media."
As part of her employment, Briskman was also bound by the company handbook, which included a social media policy prohibiting obscene content. "Obscene" is one of those words like "beauty"--it's often defined in the eye of the beholder, and in this instance that would be the employer who writes the paychecks.
So Briskman and her middle finger both got canned.
It might have been a good learning experience. Some sympathizers organized a GoFundMe page for Briskman, which raised over $100,000 to blunt the blow of her loss of employment.
She could have become a powerful voice for freedom's responsibilities in a society that increasingly seems to think only of its "rights."
But no. She didn't learn a thing.
On the contrary, she's progressed to the next level down from giving the finger to those you can't beat at the ballot box: blaming everyone else for the consequences of her own actions.
None of the negative outcomes are her fault (though she still happily takes credit for any positive publicity), and she's not above making the claim heard 'round the guilty childhood world: What about other people? They've done stuff, too, and didn't get fired.
In fact, Briskman believes she's the victim here. So like all good victims, she's suing.
Her wrongful-termination lawsuit starts off with vainglorious associations with Virginia's heritage of standing up to tyrants and native son James Madison's authorship of the First Amendment. As if flipping off General Washington would have been considered anything other than rude, crude and utterly impertinent by Madison, and every class of society in that day and age.
Briskman acknowledges that the Constitution only prevents government from retaliating against free speech, but in the next breath she likens her fate to people living in Egypt, Turkey and Russia.
People who so flippantly take their true freedom here in America for granted need to reside in those other places for a time. If they cannot imagine losing the blessings of liberty, the experience of it would benefit them.
What makes self-government work is we the people. As the founders all knew, government is inherently oppressive. The more people turn first to the government for solutions instead of to themselves and their fellow citizens, the more they weaken our republic.
Indeed, it'd probably be productive to change our national vocabulary and substitute "responsibility" for "right" to help shape our thinking properly--the responsibility of free speech, the responsibility to bear arms, the civil responsibilities movement, etc.
It boils down to this: Briskman exercised a right irresponsibly. The results were unpleasant, but not unpredictable.
Given what passes for judicial review today, it's anybody's guess whether her lawsuit might get a little traction on the free-speech infringement charge (she's also claiming some back severance pay owed).
But for everyone, including Briskman herself, it'll be better if it gets dismissed with a judge's lecture on better citizenship and behavior as an employee.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 04/13/2018