There are two national headlines gnawing at my brain right now.

The first is about the murder of three police officers in Baton Rouge.

The second is about WV State Delegate Michael Folk tweeting that Hillary Clinton should be hung on the National Mall.

Both are senseless acts of violence.

Both.

An expression of hate is the ammunition that fuels physical assaults and attacks. It turns the words and actions of someone who looks, thinks, acts, or believes differently into a significant threat to individuals who have been programmed to protect their own closed-minded fortresses of right, wrong, and justice.

Making a statement that any person deserves to be hurt at the hands of another does absolutely nothing to improve anyone’s circumstances. Yet this type of brutality is quickly becoming the norm in the United States.

As a country, we are sinking fast in the rising waters of spiteful words, and no one throwing us a life jacket.

Only we can get ourselves out of this mess, which means we have to hold the haters accountable.

I’m not encouraging censorship. Freedom of speech is a core value, and our nation can only improve when we listen to ideas and thoughts that are different from our own. But freedom of speech must be treated with the same respect that we give to anything that is fragile and prone to break when it is mishandled.

And, as a country, we are being anything but gentle with each other.

Having a right to say what you want and not being held accountable for your words are two entirely different issues.

When I was a child, I lived with the taste of soap in my mouth because I was constantly saying things that provoked my parents. There was no law against the words I used or the tone with which they were said. But my words were disrespectful and inappropriate, and I paid the price by becoming a connoisseur of a wide variety of soap brands.

The soap in the mouth punishment isn’t feasible with politicians, community leaders or others who choose to continue to pollute political events and social media with their hateful and violent words.

But the rest of us can ensure that there are consequences.

We can choose not to vote for them.

We can unfollow them on social media.

We can call other leaders and lawmakers and express our concerns.

We can write letters to the editor.

We can even write blogs about them.

Collectively, when each one of us speaks up, our voices are bound to drown out the nasty ones.