In the textbook,
Tedford and Herbeck discuss three main reasons for freedom of speech:
philosophical, political, and individual. Although all three have their own
unique importance in regard to the freedom of speech, I would like to focus on
the political reasons. To begin, freedom of speech is a fundamental principle
of our democratic self-government, in order to facilitate an open political
discussion. Additionally, providing the American people with the ability to
speak freely about the government promotes citizen participation. Currently,
citizen participation in our government in fairly low and by giving them the
ability to participate means citizens, “can receive uncensored information and
opinion to help them reach informed conclusions on public issues, and freely
express the conclusions they reach” (Tedford and Herbeck 429). This is crucial
in creating an environment of transparency and not allowing the government to
determine what its citizens are exposed to, which can be dangerous. Furthermore,
another reason why freedom of speech is essential in politics is to create a
free press to check the United States government, especially since many of us
do not have time to discover what our government and its officials are doing. Therefore,
our laws must guarantee the rights of all Americans to speak freely.
Earlier in the semester we discussed
speech on University campuses and the constant withdrawal of speakers due to
uproar by students. Often these figures are protested against for their beliefs
and the rhetoric they preach. However, this is not just a present issue.
Protests on University campuses in regards to controversial speakers have been
happening for decades. To illustrate, in the New York Times articles, “Free
Speech, Personified”, by Peter Salovey, he discusses an incident in 1963. In
this case, the president of Yale, Kingman Brewster Jr., withdrew an invitation to
the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, as a result of his
beliefs. Surprisingly, the student who defended Governor Wallace’s right to
speak on campus was an African-American law student named Pauli Murray, who was
also a civil rights activist. She argued that the Constitution, “applies to
segregationists and integrationists, civil rights activists and self proclaimed
racists”. Her argument is rooted in the idea that in order for those who need
freedom of speech the most, the marginalized, to benefit from it it needs to
apply to all Americans. Additionally, Murray stated that while protesting
Wallace’s racist rhetoric was lawful, protesting his right to speak was not. I
found this very interesting given our political climate today. We often don’t
want negative or hateful speech expressed for fear of it spreading, but if we
give institutions or the government the power to limit people’s speech, who
says they won’t abuse that power. In the end, those who use freedom of speech
for political activism and social justice could find themselves struggling to
have to voices heard.
Salovey, Peter. “Free
Speech, Personified.” The New York Times,
26 Nov. 2017,
Tedford, Thomas L.,
and Dale A. Herbeck. Freedom of Speech in
the United States. Strata
Publishing,
Inc., 2017.
Instinctually people do not want the first amendment to protect racist, sexist, homophobic speech or any kind of hate speech because it is wrong, dehumanizing and mean. I think that instinct is good, because it illustrates that people do not find that kind of expression good or acceptable. However, for precisely the reasons you point out, saying speech we don't like does not deserve protection puts expression on a slippery slope. This is where people start to talk about the marketplace of ideas. If we protect all expression (good and bad), the good ideas/speech will be rewarded and win. The marketplace of ideas tells us to fight bad speech with more speech. The marketplace of ideas will lead us to the truth.
ReplyDeleteIn an article on NPR, David Shih an English professor at UW-Eau Claire brings up an interesting point. He writes: "The belief that more speech is the remedy for "bad" speech can be a principled stance. But for the stance to be principled, it must account for why the target of racist hate speech is less deserving of exemption than, say, the millionaire with a reputation to protect from libel, or the community flooded with sexually-explicit material"
I think that is an interesting point, one that deserves some more thought and consideration when discussing the marketplace of ideas, and allowing racist speech and other forms of hate speech.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/05/03/483264173/hate-speech-and-the-misnomer-of-the-marketplace-of-ideas
With our current political climate it is obvious to see that agents of truth typically do not get heard. That does not negate the fact that FoS is used to push and challenge opposing, hateful, and bigot views.
ReplyDeleteThe very basis of Freedom of Speech is that people have the freedoms to express their opinions and putting limits to that, would we really be able to call it a freedom of speech. Outside of the lines of violating terms, and using ones speech to incite violence is questionable quite often because it is hard to prove.