 Ever since I started this series, I've gotten requests for an episode about The Legend of Korra. Now that it's available on Netflix, those demands have only gotten more frequent. As much as I loved the show, I kept running into the same problem I had with its predecessor, Avatar The Last Airbender. There are so many important themes crammed into the series that it's almost impossible to pick one and write a tight, focused episode. But just like what happened with Avatar, tragic circumstances have led me to finally give The Legend of Korra the attention it deserves. What do we do as a society when certain points of view become illegal? Thanks to the First Amendment, we're fortunate that criminalized speech is mostly theoretical in the United States. While our courts have established a few highly specific exceptions to this rule, nowhere else on Earth are the protections for freedom of expression and freedom of belief, or lack thereof, as robust as they are in the US. To my mind, this is unquestionably a good thing, but not everybody agrees. For years now, we've seen calls for various kinds of censorship, most frequently against hate speech, even though that term will never have a clear or consistent definition. But recently, we've seen the state of our public discourse become so divisive, so politicized, and so uncivil that now, apparently, wrong thinking is enough to be labeled as a domestic terrorist, and a growing number of people in the US are pushing state censorship as the solution. And that's exactly what happens in The Legend of Korra. This episode will contain spoilers for Korra's first season, so if you haven't seen it yet, go ahead and binge it all right now. Then come back here, hit that subscribe button, and get ready for some potentially uncomfortable conversation on this short edition of Out of Frame. The Legend of Korra is set about 70 years after Avatar, The Last Airbender. After a full and eventful life that included the founding of the bustling metropolis of Republic City, where elemental benders of all types, as well as non-benders from all nations are free to live together, Avatar Aang passed away peacefully and the Avatar cycle resumed. The new Avatar is a girl from the Southern Water Tribe. She grew up at the South Pole, trained and closely monitored by the members of the Order of the White Lotus, so when she finally has an opportunity to visit Republic City in order to learn airbending from Aang's son Tenzin, she jumps at the chance. She's dreamed of Republic City her whole life, imagining it as a place of commerce and culture, innovation, and excitement. And it is, but it's not exactly the gleaming utopia she thought it would be. It's a real city, filled with real people who have real problems. There's poverty and homelessness, crime and wealth disparities that she's never seen before. And there's simmering unrest and resentment between the benders and the non-benders. The anti-bender movement, which calls itself the Equalists, is stirring up trouble in the city. At first, it's just talk and rallies, but not long after Korra arrives, the Equalists and their mysterious leader, Aman, escalate to kidnapping and, somehow, taking away people's bending abilities. But instead of attempting diplomacy or even a counter-narrative campaign, the City Council creates a special task force to flush out the Equalists. Of course, the City Council is made up of benders, so the Equalists declare that this is just more bigotry against non-benders, and it's hard not to see their point. It's a dramatic opening to the series, but for a kid's show released almost a decade ago, it all feels extremely relevant to what's going on in the world right now. Here in the real world, we've been dealing with a number of the same types of problems as Republic City. America is prosperous, a hotspot for exciting innovations and advancements, and a place where people from all over the world come to create a better life for themselves and their families. But there are problems. All of the recent acts of violence we've seen demonstrate a complete lack of willingness on either side to engage in actual conversation with each other. And while I find much of the ideological basis for everyone's anger to be factually wrong and often morally repugnant, the answer is not, and has never been, an outright ban on bad thoughts or speech. Out of Frame is based around art, culture, and big ideas, and I've made it abundantly clear in multiple episodes how important I consider freedom of thought and expression to be. Even in light of the Capitol attack on January 6th, that opinion hasn't changed. This is why I find it incredibly alarming that there is a concerted effort to classify people in this country who merely said the wrong ideas as domestic terrorists. We've seen what expanding that label can do to civil liberties already, and to apply it to people who have not acted to physically threaten or harm anyone is unconscionable. Let me make something very clear here. Speech is not terrorism. It can be upsetting, enraging even. Tons of ideas are horrible, racism, sexism, religious bigotry, fascism and communism, complete garbage, but as long as these ideas are expressed peacefully, no government or individual has any business countering it with coercive or violent action, and doing so will only create bigger problems for everyone. In Republic City, the Council refuses to engage with the equalists in any way other than through coercive tactics, and they could have. Newspapers and radios exist in this world, and could easily have been used to acknowledge that the equalists had some valid points regarding their political representation, bender-led criminal gangs and social inequality, while still challenging their conclusions. The leaders of Republic City could have highlighted their respect for the entrepreneurial achievements of non-benders, or found ways to show that everyone is facing many of the same social issues and needs to address them together. Engaging legitimate complaints brought up by the equalists would not only have shown everyone that the council members aren't the bigots they're being made out to be by Amman, but also that they're actually trying to build a society that treats benders and non-benders with equality under the law. Instead, they choose to outlaw the equalist ideology and crack down on anyone who seems vaguely sympathetic to it. Unsurprisingly, these actions only succeed in igniting a fiery civil war. Politicians can market the criminalization of thinking certain thoughts and speaking certain words as protecting the vulnerable all they want, but this power will do what power always does, corrupt those who wield it. And that's not the only problem. Pushing bad ideas underground reduces the opportunity we all have to discuss or debate them, and it removes the possibility of persuasion. And with no peaceful outlet available for people on the wrong side of the law, their bad ideas may well become more and more malignant, and they may eventually turn to actual violence and terrorism because that's the only course of action they think they have left. But it doesn't have to be this way. It's up to us to lead by example and show that we're capable of fostering civil conversations in good faith that acknowledge and address the problems and concerns of our ideological opponents, even when we strongly disagree with their conclusions. It's a good thing to treat people you don't like as human beings to be persuaded instead of enemies to be attacked or imprisoned. In fact, it's the only way to heal our fractured society. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. This was a difficult one to write, and it's never a great feeling to be defending the rights of hateful bigoted zealots, but if you're a defender of free speech, sometimes that's just what you have to do. Still, let's all do our best to lead by example and be thoughtful and measured in the comments. And please, check out our behind-the-scenes podcast. The audio is available wherever you get your podcast, but if you prefer a video version, we've set up a new YouTube channel just for that. It comes out every Friday, but supporters on Patreon and Subscribe Star get early access and special bonus content. So if that interests you, please consider becoming one of our supporters. We've also opened up our Discord to the public, and we'd love to see you there too. Lastly, I wanted to let you know that we're planning on hosting a huge conference in June called FECON. It's going to feature tons of amazing speakers and sessions on entrepreneurship, creativity, personal development, economic and political theory, and more. Find the links for that and everything else I mentioned in the description below. And as always, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and look for our out-of-frame accounts on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time.