Due to the lack of appliance sales or happy hour specials, many Americans may not be aware that the third full week in October is designated National Free Speech Week. The lack of celebration notwithstanding, free speech will endure only if each generation remains zealous in its defense.
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A recent Buckley Institute survey reveals we have much work to do as a nation to secure this blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. In fact, we might have to secure it from our posterity.
The survey found nearly half of American college students (45 percent) believe that physical violence can be justified to stop “hate speech.” Even more baffling, the survey revealed that 72 percent of those who agree that physical violence can be justified to stop hate speech also agree that the First Amendment protects hate speech. (Take your time with that last sentence. I had to read it more than once myself.)
The late poet laureate of the United States, Robert Frost, once said, “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” By this standard, some of our university students are earning degrees but lack education. Too many of our fellow Americans of all ages have, to paraphrase another poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, fallen into the vulgar mistake of dreaming they are persecuted whenever they are contradicted. And in the age of wokeness and cancel culture, where speech is violence and violence is speech, if I am persecuted, then my violent reaction is justified.
When it comes to so-called hate speech, the term is rarely, if ever, clearly defined. When it is defined, it is typically done with an ever vaguer terminology, compounding the ambiguity and reducing the concept to the eye of the beholder. The practical definition becomes “any speech that I hate.” So, following the logic of those surveyed, “the government cannot silence you for offending me, but I can.”
Are we truly free to speak from our hearts our deepest held convictions if doing so subjects us to violence from our peers? What solace is it to Erika Kirk that her husband was murdered for his speech not by his government, but by a fellow citizen?
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Thomas Paine admonished, “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” The First Amendment protects unpopular speech for this very reason. The winds of popular opinion shift rapidly. Who among us can predict what opinion of ours that aligns with cultural orthodoxy today could be deemed culturally heretical tomorrow?
Perhaps in the social media algorithm-driven culture in which our young people have come of age, they have become so ideologically siloed that they too rarely confront an opposing viewpoint. They lack the experience of responding with speech of their own instead of violence. They act without realizing they are establishing the violent precedent that will reach to themselves.
Long before the undergraduates surveyed by the Buckley Institute were born, in the 1987 classic film The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya respectfully cautioned his employer, Vizzini: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” When it comes to free speech or hate speech, I don’t think it means what these students think it means. The possibility that their speech would be deemed “hateful” by anyone is, to borrow from Vizzini, “inconceivable.”
The fundamental right to speak our minds is essential to the American way of life. Civil discourse is the bedrock foundation of democracy. The pursuit of truth necessitates debate. Whether it is censorship by government or the heckler’s veto, the right of the speaker is not dependent upon the sensibilities of the listener. Silencing speech robs them both of the opportunity to learn from each other, better understand one another, or even to change their minds.
Our national conversation can be raucous at times, and the rhetoric of 21st-century “influencers” may lack the genteel eloquence of our oratorical forefathers, but free speech is no less worthy of protection today than it was centuries ago when our Constitution was ratified.
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Image: Ilmicrofono Oggiono via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.