The Cussing Canoeist Can’t Make a Wrong a Right

I remember my first parent-teacher conference as a parent. Lacy was doing well with her first-grade reading, I was told. She knew her numbers. She was getting along with other children. But there was a problem: She had no grasp of money.

I don’t understand, I said. The teacher explained: I had not taught my daughter to distinguish the value of nickels, dimes and quarters.

I recall the moment, all these years later, because it is no small chore to protect the innocence of our children these days. I figured Lacy would have a lifetime to be concerned with money. Why rush it? I wanted to shield her, if only for a while.

I guess I’m still out of step.

When you take your kids on an outing, I don’t think you or they should have to listen to people standing in the river yelling profanities.

But Michigan’s “cussing canoeist” has proved me wrong. Another nickel-dime nuisance case has cheapened our Bill of Rights.

First, let me say this: Profanities? I’m for ‘em. I was a Marine, after all. I learned to swear with the best. The ability to deliver a well-timed vulgarity is a skill I admire, and I take a stab at it myself from time to time. I also admire those who have the good taste and restraint to know when not to.

Because newspapers are conservative in these matters, we cannot discuss the words employed by the now-notorious Rifle River canoeist. He was charged with uttering vulgarities in front of women and children. He tangled with the river, took a tumble and began swearing. His friends laughed. He swore more and louder. “It was just clean fun,” he explained.

If I were honest about the antics of my youth, I’d confess that I’ve done just as bad, although I understood full well it was dirty, not clean.

Anyway, we know the rest of the story. Rather than lowering his voice and apologizing, as most of us would have done, Timothy Boomer set out to transform a wrong into a “right.”

Mr. Boomer went to court for the principle. The jury found against him and he was fined $75. But lawyers knew better. A state appeals court said the decision was unjust. The quaint old anti-swearing law was thrown out. Comedians had a laugh about the bluenoses in Michigan who presumed to protect their womenfolk and kids from hard language. So now, in Michigan and surely elsewhere, you can go down to the park and scream profanities around the ladies and their children. It is your right under the Constitution.

Naturally, it’s hard for me to quibble with the 1st Amendment. Without it, my ilk would be further up the creek than Boomer was that day. I’ve been the bore at more than one cocktail party with my lecture on the subject because I’ve lived in countries where speaking your mind can make you disappear. But I’m also a big fan of the 9th Amendment. That’s the one that says: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Like the right to take your kids out in public and not have to explain why you cannot explain what the man in the river is yelling.

Lost in this discussion of Boomer’s “right” was the right of a nearby couple with children. The officer on the scene said the mother was trying to cover the ears of her 2-year-old.

Purists contend that we have to put up with the likes of Boomer because of the slippery slope that’s just one step away. If we limit his free speech, ours will be stripped from us when we need it. We’ll wake up some day under the thumb of tyrants. We won’t even be able to call three judges on the Michigan appeals courts nincompoops.

But the court has affirmed our free-speech right unanimously. So I’ll exercise mine and say the judges were nincompoops. And so are the slippery-slope ninnies who cannot count to Amendment No. 9.

Just ask yourself this: If Boomer and his buddies went down to the courthouse and started laughing and yelling obscenities for the “clean fun” of it, do you think the judges would forfeit the court’s right to maintain calm for the sake of their right to swear loudly wherever they please?

Bailiffs, please cover the children’s ears while Mr. Boomer defends the Constitution.

Of course not. And on a nice day down at the river, parents deserve no less protection than the court would grant itself.

We shouldn’t be too harsh on Boomer for having a bad canoe ride and losing his temper. But we can fault him for insisting on the right for everybody to do it. That’s a slippery slope where freedom is but chump change.