Defending Our Freedom

I've seen a fair amount of nonsense on the issue of freedom of speech lately. A few things are worth setting straight.

Nowhere in the first amendment is there anything about good speech. There's nothing about good taste, for instance. Or good judgment. Or respect, or values, or ideology. Or anything else, actually. The limits on free speech are elsewhere: You can lie as much as you want, but if it causes material damage to another person or obstructs justice, you are liable for the consequences. If you make a verbal threat of violence, that's assault, just as much as if the threat had been non-verbal. That's about it.

The first amendment doesn't obligate you to speak or publish. You're free to make a choice. All this hornswoggle about newspapers being too cowardly to publish inflammatory cartoons is just so much free speech. In this Internet age, if one publication withholds something that is generally available, it's not a loss of information, it's just a judgment call. Anyone who hasn't seen those cartoons yet probably doesn't want to see them.

That brings up a couple of other things about free speech. Nothing obligates you to listen, or to read. Free speech doesn't guarantee an audience. Nor does it guarantee comprehension or agreement. It doesn't protect you from someone who doesn't like what you say. You say what you want; I say what I want. That's the deal.

It used to be that publication was a scarce resource. "Freedom of speech belongs to those who own the press." Then the price got lowered to the price of a megaphone. Then the Internet came along. Anybody can say anything; anybody can get published. Anybody can get offended at anything. Isn't technology wonderful?

It's not all free, though; there's still no such thing as a free lunch. Our freedom of speech is only as protected as the law that guarantees it. Constitutions can be changed; remember, the first amendment is an amendment. Governments can be overthrown. Congress can pass bad laws, and while they may be unconstitutional, it may take years of court battles to get them overruled. Your rights do require defending.

There are also issues of intimidation. Some people and some groups — both domestic and foreign — would like to be able to limit what you say. Such threats can take many forms, from social pressure, to laws, to burning embassies. If you truly value your right to say anything, then it's up to you (and to us, collectively) to defend that right, with whatever means are appropriate.

The question of "appropriate" defense is not a small one. It usually pays not to over-react, but under-reacting (or not reacting) can lead to repeated and increasingly aggressive threats. It's also usually better to respond earlier rather than later, and to make sure that our response and intent are clear. Somewhere along the line, we have to decide what our rights are worth to us, up to and possibly including our lives.

It is also crucial to understand the scope of a real or potential threat. Some people seem remarkably incapable of doing that.

Once or twice in my lifetime, the world has changed. It's not so much a matter of when I was born; it's a question of when I last updated my worldview. I try to keep my worldview up-to-date, although I haven't yet figured out why I might want an iPod. Some people are stuck with the same worldview they had when they grew up; if their glory years were the 1960's, that's kind of a crippling worldview to carry around these days. Some people's worldviews are stuck in an age when the Islamic Caliphate ruled the known world.

The thing is that the world has not become a more benign and nurturing place. It's not only that there are more people and more threats to our safety and freedom. Perhaps the biggest change is that the boundaries and safety barriers have broken down. George Washington once warned us of the dangers of foreign entanglements. That was fine for his lifetime; America was a small, weak, and isolated nation that needed to focus on getting its own act together. He'd seen the worst of late 18th century Europe, and no doubt that was a scary perspective for an American of that age.

America is no longer small, weak, or isolated. Every aspect of our economy is enmeshed with the rest of the world. Every country measures its power and policies in relation to America. We're entangled. It's a done deal.

It used to take weeks for a letter to cross the Atlantic, and months to get a response. Electrons travel considerably faster. Oceans used to provide a barrier against invasion, but al Qaeda found the resources to destroy the World Trade Center without crossing any oceans at all.

It isn't simply the physical barriers, which are also shrinking as we speak. Politics has always been a realm of ideas and information, but now the rest of our economy is, too. World crises come and go in a matter of minutes, as well as decades. Power slips across oceans with no visible means of transport. Information overload stopped being a bad joke decades ago. Now that six billion people can speak freely (well, many of them can) and inexpensively (all who can speak freely, plus a good many more), the whole process of collecting, filtering, organizing, and evaluating the daily flood of truth, statistics, threats, and lies can be overwhelming.

All this is to say that the threats to our freedom are real and immediate, and that those threats are no longer limited to physical attacks on our land or our citizens. If the mullahs in Iran want to limit our freedom (and I believe they do), they can and they are finding ways to do it. Limiting our freedom of expression is one of several ways they are attacking us. Non-Islamic people all over the world, whose worldviews haven't changed enough to enable them to understand the nature of that threat, are helping them.

That seemingly innocuous "help" takes many forms: Telling us that "we're at fault" for Islamic anger, and that while we are responsible for the consequences of our acts, those who burn embassies and issue death threats against us are not responsible for their acts. Telling us that we should voluntarily give up our freedom to avoid further confrontation. Telling us that we should respect the values of people who want to destroy our values. Telling us that we should exercise our right to free speech within the limits of good taste and good judgment (their good taste and good judgment, not ours).

They're free to say that; that's how freedom works. But they're dead wrong, and I'm free to say that, too.

More than that. While I'm willing to defend their right to say something stupid, I'm not so willing to pay the price for their stupidity and short-sightedness.

The thing is, even though free speech and instantaneous communications have gotten us into a lot of this, free speech and freedom of expression are also critical to surviving all these same issues. We cannot let anyone tell us what to say or what to publish.

Robert Heinlein said it so well: Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite. If Mrs. Grundy wears a burka these days, the basic issue hasn't changed.