“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
—Benjamin Franklin
What a mess.
As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more militant and less inclined to listen to, or even allow for the existence of, other viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can’t get along.
Here’s the thing: If Americans don’t learn how to get along, at the very least, agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s right to subscribe to beliefs and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then we’re soon going to find that we have no rights whatsoever, to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals.
In such an environment, when we can’t agree to disagree, the bullies, on each side, wins and freedom suffers.
Intolerance, once the domain of the politically correct and self-righteous, has been institutionalized, normalized, and politicized.
Even those who dare to defend speech that may be unpopular or hateful as a constitutional right are now accused of weaponizing the First Amendment.
On college campuses across the country, speakers whose views are deemed offensive to some of the student body are having their invitations recalled, being shouted down by hecklers, or forced to hire costly security details.
It’s not just college students who have lost their taste for diverse viewpoints and free speech.
In Charlottesville, Va., in the wake of a violent clash between the alt-right and alt-left in 2017 over whether Confederate statues should remain standing in a community park, City Council meetings routinely were punctuated with screaming matches, confrontations, calls to order, and even arrests, to make it all but impossible for attendees and councilors alike to speak their minds.
On Twitter, president Donald Trump repeatedly has called for the National Football League to penalize players who take a knee in protest of police brutality during the national anthem, which clearly flies in the face of the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to free speech and protest, especially in light of the president’s decision to insert himself, an agent of the government, into a private work-place dispute.
On Facebook, Alex Jones, the majordomo of conspiracy theorists who spawned an empire built on alternative news, has been banned for posting content that violates the social media site’s “community standards,” which prohibit posts that can be construed as bullying or hateful.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), once a group known for taking on the most controversial cases, is contemplating stepping back from its full-throated defense of free, at times, hateful speech.
The most controversial issues of our day, gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech, but only when it favors the views and positions they support.
“Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.
This haphazard approach to the First Amendment has so muddied the waters that even First Amendment scholars are finding it difficult to navigate at times.
It’s really not that difficult.
The First Amendment affirms the right of the people to speak freely, worship freely, peaceably assemble, petition the government for a redress of grievances, and have a free press.
Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone’s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, insulating judges from undue influence, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.
On paper, at least according to the U.S. Constitution, we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official, or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google, or YouTube, may allow.
Free speech is no longer free.
What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s a whole other ballgame.
Remember, the First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows individuals to speak their minds, air their grievances, and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world.
When there is no steam valve, when there is no one to hear what the people have to say, frustration builds, anger grows, and individuals and groups become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.
Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree, whether it’s by shouting them down, censoring them, muzzling them, or criminalizing them, only empowers the controllers of the Deep State.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned, discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred, inevitably, the end result is the same: Intolerance, indoctrination, and infantilism.
So where does that leave us?
We’ve got to do the hard work of figuring out how to get along again.
Frankly, I agree with journalist Bret Stephens when he wrote that we’re failing at the art of disagreement.
According to Stephens, “to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.”
Instead of intelligent discourse, we’ve been saddled with identity politics, a safe space from thought, rather than a safe space for thought.
Safe spaces.
That’s what we’ve been reduced to on college campuses, in government-run forums, and now on public property and on the internet.
The problem, which I make clear in my book, “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,” is that the creation of so-called safe spaces, where offensive ideas and speech are prohibited, is just censorship by another name, and censorship breeds resentment, and resentment breeds conflict, and unresolved, festering conflict, gives rise to violence.
Charlottesville is a prime example.
Anticipating the one-year anniversary of the riots in Charlottesville August 12, the city government, which bungled its response the first time around, attempted to create a safe space by shutting the city down for the days surrounding the anniversary, all the while ramping up the presence of militarized police, in the hopes that no one else, meaning activists or protesters, would show up and nothing, meaning riots and brawls among activists, would happen.
What a mess.
—The Rutherford Institute