Speech

The most distinguishing characteristic of truly free societies, that is to say, those whose governments understand that their right to power devolves from the people and not from any innate right or aggregation of military or police power, is the acceptance and indeed celebration of diversity of thought. This freedom of conscience and the right to freely express the products of that conscience can be moderated, but only under rigorous scrutiny: One may not cry “fire” in a crowded theater just for the sport that’s in it and expect to be sheltered by the state from the consequences of that expression.

It is merely a step from that to criminalizing speech that “incites to riot,” wherein a person organizes, encourages or participates in an act that presents a clear and present danger of injury to other persons or property.

From that to criminalizing speech that may cause offense among those who collectively choose to be offended is just another step, although – in any free society – it is a step entirely too far. When we allow groups to coalesce around their grievances or threaten violence to those that dare to say things they disagree with, we have conceded the power that was freely given to the government by the people as a whole to self-organizing groups of people, thereby empowering passionate minorities to positions of authority over the rest of us.

Indeed,  since rights in any truly free society are individual rather than collective, we would encourage groups with every interest in stoking their grievances to do so, empowering them to use the levers of state power to bully and threaten individuals for daring to be heterodox. By doing so we punish that which ought to be protected, and protect that which ought to be punished. It would be a tyranny of the mob and a hole with no bottom.

Which is just where we in the West are headed, according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley:

History has shown that once governments begin to police speech, they find ever more of it to combat. Countries such as Canada, England and France have prosecuted speakers and journalists for criticizing homosexuals and other groups. It’s the ultimate irony: free speech curtailed for the sake of a pluralistic society…

Not only does this trend threaten free speech, freedom of association and a free press, it even undermines free exercise of religion. Challenging the beliefs of other faiths can be part of that exercise. Countries such as Saudi Arabia don’t prosecute blasphemers to protect the exercise of all religions but to protect one religion.

Religious orthodoxy has always lived in tension with free speech. Yet Western ideals are based on the premise that free speech contains its own protection: Good speech ultimately prevails over bad. There’s no blasphemy among free nations, only orthodoxy and those who seek to challenge it.

Many of those who established this country came here to escape the religious oppression inherent in state-imposed orthodoxy of thought and conscience. Our founders enabled, tolerated and indeed encouraged the free and open expression of ideas in a marketplace that sorted them out according to value. This is the fundamental underpinning our society, and it serves to legitimize the power of government of and by the people, not over them.

Ours is a glorious, vibrant, and occasionally raucous experiment in personal liberty by self-government, a notion that runs contrary to many ten thousand of years of miserable human experience. That experiment is not yet demonstrably and finally a success, but, for my own part, I will live no other way.

Update: The alternative.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The first line of his first blog from Tehran in September 2006 asks: “What is freedom?”

Omidreza Mirsayafi answered his own question. “I don’t know,” he wrote, “but I know someday I will see its shadow falling on my land.”

Two and half years later, from behind the gray walls of Tehran’s Evin Prison, he phoned his mother. They talked about his battle with depression behind bars. She asked if he was taking his heart medicine.

A few hours later, on a chilly mid-March evening, the 29-year-old Mirsayafi was dead. He was Iran’s first known casualty in the skirmishes between bloggers challenging the Islamic regime and authorities striking back with the tools they know best—imprisonment and intimidation.