Why is free speech so messed up in this country? And I’m not just talking about smear campaigns by politicians-every time someone exposes a dirty little secret or even the fact that the FCC has declared an all-out war on edginess on radio and television.
It seems to me that every day, whether on the news or on the street, people seem not to get the basics about the First Amendment (or Second Amendment, but that’s another rant altogether).
Why do we have freedom of speech? Why did we, the people, decide to declare on paper that the government can’t intrude on our speech?
The answer is simple: when people get power, they strive to keep power. One way to keep power is to use it to silence anyone who criticizes your power. The more power you have, the more effective you are in silencing your critics and this leads to a corrupt society.
We knew this all too well when we started this country, and we realized that the only way to keep ourselves honest is to say the government can’t tell us what we can and can’t say.
There is another reason worth mentioning. Contrary to what some people think, the founding fathers were not all Christians – I’m sure some were, but some were Deist, and some were likely Atheists or Agnostics.
Essentially, they were varied in both beliefs and values. So to keep one value set from intruding on another, they set down both freedom of speech and freedom of religion. As both history and current events show, when the government enforces one belief system and set of values, corruption soon follows.
Now all this seems obvious, which is why I’m personally frustrated by the prevailing attitude that “Free speech is all well and good, but I don’t mind if the government tries to censor someone who is offending me.”
This view, which seems float in just about everyone’s mind to an unvarying degree, completely defeats the purpose of free speech. Speech that doesn’t offend people doesn’t need protection. To put it another way, the First Amendment is needed to protect the people we don’t like.
The best recent example is the Colorado college professor who’s been on the news lately. He wrote an essay basically saying the people working in the World Trade Center had it coming when terrorists flew a plane into the buildings. He also goes on to say that the terrorists are not cowards, and pilots flying stealth bombers are.
These statements are the verbal equivalent of snapping a puppy’s neck on live television. As a result, the governor of Colorado is putting pressure on the professor’s university to fire him, stating that since tax dollars partially pay for the school, they have a right not to support teaching offensive material.
It sounds logical, expect that’s not how taxes work. I don’t support much of our foreign policy, military research, subsidies and countless other things our government does. My tax dollars do, however, pay for all of it. We pay for things we hate all the time, mainly because if we’d pay for it willingly it wouldn’t need to be taxed.
Colleges are like academic and philosophical laboratories – in order to come up with a new idea, the more you put forward, the more you have to experiment in dealing with some pretty volatile ideas.
The government gives money to all public schools and most scientific research labs – does that mean the government should get to declare what can and can’t be taught in colleges or researched in labs? Some people think yes, but only because the government sides with them on specific cases. Their tune will change as soon as Big Brother disagrees with them on policy.
What it boils down to is the government trying to silence a man for stating his opinion.
Now, any reasonable person can see that his opinion is offensive, and people will all certainly debate its validity. I say this: if his statement didn’t have reason or truth to it, it wouldn’t have struck a nerve.
I personally don’t agree with him, and I certainly don’t agree with the way he presented his ideas. My question to everyone calling for his resignation is this: if he’s so wrong, why do you care that he’s saying it? Are you afraid people will agree? Do you think reasonable, well-educated people will agree with an opinion that has no validity to it?
In order to make any progress, professors need to be given the freedom to be dead wrong about things every now and again. If we destroy the careers of professors every time they’re wrong, or just seem wrong, then we’ll not only stop making progress, but we will slip backwards.
Louie Corbo may be reached at corbolj@vcu.edu.