Opinion: Everyone Has a Constitutional Right to Be Annoying

I have been watching the recent controversy surrounding Gay’s Seafood in Easton and its display of political lawn signs with a mixture of amusement, concern, and something approaching admiration.

Not admiration for the behavior.

Admiration for the ability of otherwise perfectly reasonable people to turn a political disagreement into a full-scale Eastern Shore constitutional crisis.

Give us another few days and someone will probably demand a congressional investigation into the proper placement of a Trump sign.

The underlying dispute is actually quite simple.

A local business owner displayed political signs. A local activist objected and called for a boycott. He later reconsidered, visited the business, spoke with the owner, bought crab soup and acknowledged that the boycott was a mistake. Sheriff Joe Gamble publicly defended the business owner. Jimmy Jaramillo then criticized the original boycott in a letter to the Spy.

And then, as so often happens in American politics, the discussion became less about what happened and more about proving that the other side is uniquely awful.

I would like to suggest something radical:

Maybe neither side is uniquely awful.

Maybe we’re just people.

People who get angry.

People who react too quickly.

People who sometimes say something we wish we hadn’t said.

People who occasionally discover, after the fact, that the hill upon which we were prepared to die was actually a small mound of dirt.

I know something about that.

I have been observing and/or serving in Talbot County for awhile now, and I care deeply about what people think—even when I think they’re completely wrong.

Especially then.

Because everyone has blind spots.

I certainly do. Plenty.

I also have the unfortunate habit of disagreeing with people.

Frequently.

Fortunately, my political influence is roughly equivalent to that of a garden gnome. One word from me and everyone does exactly what they damn well please.

So I am not offering this as a prescription from some great arbiter of civic virtue.

I am offering it as a fellow citizen who thinks we might be capable of doing better.

Let’s start with the First Amendment.

Rennie Gay has the right to express his political views on his property, subject of course to whatever otherwise applicable local rules govern political signs.

Customers have the right to disagree with him.

They have the right to criticize his views.

They have the right to spend their money elsewhere.

And people have the right to encourage others to do the same. The Supreme Court has recognized that peaceful political boycotts can involve constitutionally protected speech and association.

That’s the beauty—and occasionally the maddening inconvenience—of the First Amendment.

It doesn’t protect only the people who agree with us.

It protects the people who irritate us.

But exercising a constitutional right does not necessarily make the exercise wise.

That distinction seems to have disappeared from our political vocabulary.

We have somehow arrived at the point where if something is legal, it must be good; if it is protected speech, it must be admirable; and if the other political party does it, it must be sinister.

None of those propositions is true.

A person can have every legal right to say something and still be foolish to say it.

A customer can have every legal right to boycott a business and still be unnecessarily cruel.

A public official can have a right to express an opinion and still be wise to think carefully about the weight that comes with the office.

And a political party can have every right to criticize its opponents while simultaneously being guilty of exactly the same behavior it condemns.

That last one may be our greatest local bipartisan tradition.

Republicans boycott.

Democrats boycott.

Republicans accuse Democrats of cancel culture.

Democrats accuse Republicans of cancel culture.

Republicans insist their boycotts are principled.

Democrats insist theirs are principled.

And somewhere in the middle is the poor local business owner wondering whether he can simply sell some seafood without becoming the subject of a constitutional symposium.

Then came the Hatch Act discussion surrounding the sheriff.

This is another area where a little caution would serve us well.

The Hatch Act does restrict certain political activity by state and local employees whose work is connected to federally funded programs, particularly misuse of official authority and coercion. But it does not mean that every political statement by a local elected official is automatically a Hatch Act violation.

There are serious Hatch Act cases involving sheriffs, but they involve allegations such as using government personnel, official events or public resources to advance partisan political campaigns.

That is a very different matter from a sheriff expressing an opinion about a local dispute.

If we are going to invoke federal law, perhaps we should first read the federal law.

I realize this is an unreasonable suggestion in the age of social media.

Still, perhaps worth trying.

What troubles me more than any individual action in this episode is the growing assumption that disagreement itself is an act of aggression.

It isn’t.

Democracy is disagreement.

A healthy community doesn’t require unanimity.

It requires a willingness to remain in the room when somebody says something we don’t like.

That is what I mean when I say everyone deserves a seat at the table.

I don’t mean everyone deserves to win.

I don’t mean everyone’s argument is equally persuasive.

I don’t mean we shouldn’t challenge offensive ideas.

I mean that we should resist the temptation to make disagreement itself a reason to exclude somebody from the conversation.

We should be able to say:

“I think you’re wrong.”

Without saying:

“You are a terrible person.”

We should be able to say:

“I don’t want to spend my money there.”

Without saying:

“I want to destroy your livelihood.”

We should be able to say:

“I strongly disagree with the sheriff.”

Without suggesting that he has committed a federal offense.

And we should be able to say:

“That political boycott was a mistake.”

Without turning the person who made the mistake into a permanent enemy.

I don’t know whether Talbot County can solve Washington’s political dysfunction.

Frankly, I doubt Washington could solve Talbot County’s.

But perhaps we can demonstrate something that seems increasingly rare elsewhere:

That people can disagree without being disagreeable.

I am certainly not volunteering to lead the effort.

As noted earlier, my own record of disagreeability is hardly beyond reproach.

But perhaps we can all take a deep breath, step back and remember something that used to be easier to remember:

The person on the other side of the argument is still our neighbor.

He may vote differently.

She may put up a sign we hate.

He may patronize a business we refuse to enter.

She may write a letter that makes our blood boil.

He may even be wrong.

And we may be wrong.

That’s democracy.

The better angels among us don’t ask that we stop fighting for what we believe.

They ask that we remember why we are fighting for it.

So let’s put down the pitchforks.

Let’s stop trying to prove that our side is morally superior.

Let’s save a little room at the table with a seat for everyone.

And, while we’re at it, let’s order the crab cakes.

They are probably the only thing in Talbot County on which we still have a chance of achieving bipartisan agreement.

Keith Alan Watts is from Tilghman Island. He currently serves on Talbot County’s Short Term Rental Review Board and is a former Chair of the Board.