People make mistakes. They say things that are poorly worded and wrong and stupid. But whether it’s a slip of the tongue or a genuinely repugnant belief, the rest of us have to ask, “Do we believe in free speech or not?”
Somehow we got the idea that we have the right to never be offended. Our intolerance exceeds our moral outrage.
Musicians were lining up to take their music off Spotify if Joe Rogan, accused of spreading COVID-19 misinformation, was allowed to remain on the air. New York Times editor James Bennet was forced to resign in 2020 for daring to publish a conservative op-ed by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Conservative speakers on college campuses have been physically attacked and driven from lecture halls for daring to present ideas that differ from the approved orthodoxy.
This is not OK. This is not American behavior. Ironically, the mantra of the free speech movement on college campuses in the 1960s was, “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Not anymore. Tragically, university campuses are among the most hostile places for free expression.
It hasn’t dawned on them that “hate speech” is the only speech that needs to be protected in the first place. As one commentator put it, “Is anyone against ‘love speech’?”
There’s a story from Thomas Jefferson’s presidency about a visit he received from the German scientist Baron Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt spotted a newspaper in Jefferson’s office that was filled with vitriolic criticism of Jefferson and asked, “Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor, at least, fined and imprisoned?” Jefferson smiled and said, “Put that in your pocket, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of the press questioned, show them this paper and tell them where you found it.”
The free expression of opinion was such an unknown thing in history that Humboldt couldn’t believe it was real. He couldn’t believe that criticism of government leaders would be tolerated, much less protected by law. It is indeed unusual. It’s a value, and values have to be taught.
Some of us are old enough to remember a group of Nazis who held a rally in 1978 in Skokie, Illinois, a largely Jewish village where hundreds of Holocaust survivors lived. And these were real Nazis, not just people who disagree with Democrats. They had uniforms with swastika armbands and flags and everything. It would be hard to come up with a more outrageous scenario. As fate would have it, the ACLU lawyer assigned to represent the protesters, David Goldberger, was Jewish. The event led to the U.S. Supreme Court issuing a landmark ruling on the First Amendment, which allowed the march to take place.
“Their statements were like lights in the darkness of anger,” he wrote. “Chipping away at [the commitment to free speech] will open the door to the erosion of the First Amendment as a bulwark against rule by tyrants.”
The answer to offensive speech is more speech, not censorship. Of those with unpopular views, Jefferson said, “Let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
