What About Free Speech?

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…”

That seems pretty simple. But what, exactly, does it mean?

Early in the last century, the great jurist Daniel Webster spearheaded the first real change to this amendment when he pushed for laws prohibiting speech that would lead to the DIRECT harm of another. Or, as he put it, “Freedom of speech does NOT include yelling “fire” in a packed theatre.” So that seems like a reasonable concession.

In the eighties, the question of free speech for the Ku Klux Klan came up. Very, very interesting debates sprung up around this. They no longer encourage violence in their public speeches, and limit themselves instead to the particular load of horseradish called “racial purity”. (For anyone reading this, when you hear someone in America talk about “racial purity” or “interracial relationships”, they’re talking almost exclusively about black/white. I can’t tell you how many times as racist has told me that MY mix of races (American Indian/Caucasian) is “okay”. Gee… thanks for your approval.) Final verdict, and a verdict that I agree with? The public speeches of the KKK are covered under the first amendment, provided that they do not provoke or incite violence. Same with the ACLU, the JADL, and any other alphabet-soup political organization that you know of.

But starting in the last half of the last century, we started to take the limiting of free speech to some very odd places. The massive bans on pornography that happened from the thirties to really the early seventies. The problem with banning obscene material, as one Supreme Court justice said during the brouhaha over “Deep Throat” “I can’t define obscenity, but I know it when I see it.” He saw obscenity when he watched “Deep Throat”. I did not. So whose perception gets to win out? Why does his perception get to take precedence over mine? And anyone who thinks that porn is a twentieth-century invention needs to look at their history. Erotic stories, poems and images have been available since cavemen drew on walls. You know the famous cave paintings in France? Some of these were downright NAUGHTY. I think that the problems really started with the invention of the printing press first and then the camera. Once you and I could afford erotica, and not just our elected officials, what fun was it for them?

Then when the child pornographer who posted on the internet under the name of R@ygold was arrested, he claimed that HIS garbage was covered by free speech. The problem, of course, is that his “speech” caused direct injury to another human being. You can’t sell videos of an actual murder, either. You can’t profit from the injury of another human being, period. See, here we are in the early years of the twenty-first century, and we’re right back to where we were a hundred years ago. This same reasonable concession seems bullet proof.

I’ve already discussed my feelings about “virtual” child porn here, so I won’t rehash it (if you’re interested, it’s under the post “Australia Has Lost It’s Mind!), but I will say that if we start limiting “virtual” crime, where does it stop? The award-winning novel “Bastard Out of Carolina” featured the very graphic rape of a twelve-year old girl by her stepfather. “Lolita” is a wonderful, complex novel about a fifty year old man in an obsessive sexual relationship with a thirteen year old girl. And you know that wonderful scene in Romeo and Juliet where they spend the night together after they sneak off and get married? Juliet was 13. And that doesn’t even take into account all of the “virtual” murders, kidnapping, rapes and robberies that occupy so much of our popular entertainment today. Honest to God, brothers and sisters, where does it stop? I spoke to a Ukranian friend of mine who told me that TO THIS DAY “Lolita” cannot be read in any of the former Soviet Union. And yet most of the child porn (I mean REAL child porn involving REAL children) comes from the former Soviet Union. Is this where we’re headed? Cracking down on stories and drawings while allowing the real thing to run rampant?

So what do we do? Well, as usual, vote. If your legislator supported legislation that you didn’t like, vote for someone else next time out. Also, write to your representatives. Granted, my Rep (Adam Smith, D.) seems to have a head made of concrete that no logic or reason can penetrate, but they’re not all like that. I envy Minnesotans Al Franken, for instance. He seems to have a terrific, reasonable head on his shoulders. So write to them anyway. And tell them very clearly what you want, why you want it and that losing your vote will be the consequence if you don’t get it. Don’t worry about hurting their feelings… YOU’RE THE BOSS. So don’t be mean, but be clear that if they don’t ship up, you’ll get together with their OTHER bosses and fire their ass.

And fight stupid laws. If your public library has a banned book week, participate. Donate if you can. Find a book that’s been banned somewhere and donate it to them. For instance, when I was a kid there was a character in Huck Finn called “Nigger Jim”. Most of the newer versions of this book have him simply as “Jim”, or, as I think of him, “PC Jim”. Tom Sawyer featured a character named “Injun Joe” who is usually now just called “Joe”, or, worse sometimes, “Indian Joe”. Look, I don’t like the word “nigger” or the word “injun”. Heck, I’d love to see the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians and ESPECIALLY the Washington “Redskins” change their names, but I’m certainly not going to make an issue about it in court. But with the Twain books, as offensive as thinking persons find the words “nigger” and “injun” (and Twain knew that), they are also correct terminology for the era in which they were written. If you read BEYOND the name “Nigger Jim” in Huck Finn, for instance, what you see is a call for racial equality. Not to ruin the end of the book for anyone who hasn’t read it, but Huck comes to the realization that Jim is just like all the other folks that he knows, despite what the white slave-holders of his generation tell him to justify their lifestyles.

Fight for free speech, folks. Once we lose it, we can’t get it back.

Peace.

Randal