Scott Kamps
Sept. 17 is Constitution Day. It’s a great time to reread our Constitution and remember the freedoms we enjoy and the responsibilities of our political leaders.
The first amendment of the Constitution includes, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”
If Congress can’t make such laws, then no one can – since Congress is supposed to be the only branch of our Republic given the power to make laws.
Our founding fathers revered many in the Roman Republic and looked up to them.
One of them was Cato the Younger.
After years of fighting despotism, he was about to go before Rome’s new leader, Julius Caesar. Caesar said he would pardon Cato, but shortly before Cato was to go before the tyrant, he said, “I, who have been brought up in freedom, with the right of free speech, cannot in my old age change and learn slavery instead.”
He then committed suicide to avoid living under tyranny.
That seems a little overboard; is free speech really that important?
Free speech is considered by many – along with freedom of the press – to be the bulwark of liberty. All the way back in Athens, Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.) argued free speech is essential to furthering truth; that free speech and political debate lead to truth.
Now this places responsibility on citizens to
listen to all sides of arguments, but this was why Demosthenes regarded Athens as greater than Sparta.
Later, the Puritan minister Roger Williams (1603-83) argued that because we don’t have absolute knowledge – and since each person has inherent value – we should have broad tolerance of ideas in the public square.
But what about “hate speech?” Should we allow Westboro Baptist Church with their repulsive messages? In 1977, Neo-Nazis were defended to express their hate in Jewish neighborhoods.
There are at least two reasons that it is good for even bad/hateful ideas to be defended:
ν Who defines hate speech? White southerners in the 1960s argued MLK was inciting violent social change. In fact, the KKK argued that their speech was protected precisely because the hate speech of Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X was as well – and there ought not be two tiers of justice in regard to the rule of law.
ν If you suppress bad/hateful ideas, they will still exist and be around. However, if you allow them, they can be exposed and publicaly refuted. Only after an idea has survived scrutiny in prolonged exposure under the court of public opinion is it even worthy of respect.
In the pursuit of knowledge and truth, the freedom of speech is crucial. Suppression of freedom of speech doesn’t lead to truth; it leads to merely the opinions of the politically powerful.
Our culture of political correctness and “repressive tolerance” inevitably attacks freedom of speech, leading to viewpoint discrimination, intolerance and – frankly – a Woke Inquisition.
As Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
The least we should do is know our rights, in order to defend them.
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.