Rap music lyrics on the internet? A joke?  A childish prank never meant to hurt anyone?  If this was a Jeopardy question, the answer would be things that landed you in jail in 2013.  From the Christian Science Monitor,

“The bottom line is that the public wants to know, after the fact, why [an attack] was not stopped.… Most Americans are prepared to maintain a sophisticated watch on this without [government] overreach, but most Americans also feel if these things can be stopped before they begin, they want to see that happen,” says Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security.

Few things are more quintessentially American than simple solutions to complex problems, without the slightest thought of unintended consequences.  And few people think such thoughts better than the people charged with protecting us from threats, particularly since they really hate being blamed when a bad thing happens.

“The greatest mystery in life is the human mind. We don’t know what other people do until it becomes known. Our job is to figure it out, but we need indicators to know something’s not right,” says Sgt. Ed Mullins of the New York Police Department, who is also president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the city’s second-largest police union.

Mullins sounds rather existential at this point, like our very own New York City police sergeant philosopher, pondering the wonders of the human mind.  Deep thoughts, indeed, until he brings it home:

Using a zero tolerance approach to track domestic terrorists online is the only reasonable way to analyze online threats these days, especially after the Boston Marathon bombing and news that the suspects had subsequently planned to target Times Square in Manhattan, Mullins says. The way law enforcement agencies approach online activity that appears sinister is this: “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a threat, prove it,” he says.

And there they are, the two little words that the cognoscenti have latched onto in the past, wreaking havoc with out world and producing some of the most stunningly absurd outcomes imaginable.  But it’s simple and nondiscriminatory, requiring no brain cells to apply:  Zero Tolerance.  It’s ba-aack.

Now for Sgt. Mullins’ money line:

“This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is,” Mullins adds.

There it is. Freedom isn’t free. The price to live in a free society is to end to freedom of speech.  Don’t think too hard about it, as it will only compel an epic double facepalm. Isn’t it amazing how something as irrational as this can be uttered without shame?

This has proven very appealing in the past, the sacrifice of a right that most will never exercise and hence don’t value highly in the name of safety?  Some will explain it as a small price to pay, as no one needs to speak of violence or anger or hatred, and therefore its use as an advance indicator of violence has the potential to protect us from a scary threat at a very reasonable price. 

The problem, of course, is the assessment of reasonableness, the small price, is made by people who fail to grasp that the point of free speech isn’t to protect the mainstream speech that most of us enjoy and few of us fear, but the ideas on the fringe, the speech that takes us outside what your mother might say.

The case of teenager Cameron Dambrosio might serve as an object lesson to young people everywhere about minding what you say online unless you are prepared to be arrested for terrorism.

The Methuen, Mass., high school student was arrested last week after posting online videos that show him rapping an original song that police say contained “disturbing verbiage” and reportedly mentioned the White House and the Boston Marathon bombing. He is charged with communicating terrorist threats, a state felony, and faces a potential 20 years in prison. Bail is set at $1 million.

As D’ambrosio’s “error” timing, or the extent of his “disturbing verbiage”?  Or was there no error at all, but rather a test of fortitude in the aftermath of an unrelated tragedy?  Not having seen or heard his rapping, I offer no opinion on its quality or merit. But then, even if it sucked and was vividly violent in its images, so what? It’s a song. As  Tim Cushing pegs it, “being-a-lousy-rapper-still-not-a-crime.”

The threat (at least the one that appeared on Facebook), as reported by the Boston Herald, reads as follows. (For best results, fill in the blanks Mad Libs-style and spell “bombing” correctly.)

“I’m not in reality, So when u see me (expletive) go insane and make the news, the paper, and the (expletive) federal house of horror known as the white house, Don’t (expletive) cry or be worried because all YOU people (expletive) caused this (expletive).

(Expletive) a boston bominb wait till u see the (expletive) I do, I’ma be famous rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me!”

This was posted to D’Ambrosio’s Facebook page, which looks altogether similar to thousands of teens’ Facebook pages.

Yeah.  Cool rap, bro. This points to two facets of life in the digital age that need recognition, that law enforcement is scouring the deepest regions of the interwebz for keywords that set off alarms and send out SWAT teams to stop the next bomber, and perhaps the 10,000 others who will have to take one for the team to appease Sgt. Mullins’ zero tolerance policy. 

The second is the fear that music, or preaching, or simplistic platitudes, playing on the theme of youthful alienation and dissatisfaction, will radicalize the next person who will then shoot up a school, bomb a marathon, steer a plane into a tall building.  Unfortunately, there is some merit in these concerns, even if the appearance of increasing frequency of abhorrent tragedies doesn’t begin to approach the lives lost to wrongful police conduct, or even car crashes.

But Menckenian solutions have failed before, and have invariably come at a price too steep. The shame is we never seem to realize the value of what we give away in liberty for the pretense of safety until the loss has done its damage and become ingrained in our new societal norms.  And here we go, doing it all over again.

H/T Tim Cushing