Free Speech Friday - Calls for Enforced Silence?

“[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .”—Johann Lorenz Schmidt, 1741

Those in power, and even those without it, sometimes seek to limit the rights to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of assembly and right to petition the government for redress of grievances.  It is not surprising then, that law is often used as the tool whereby silence is enforced on an unpopular opinion or debate silenced on a rejected belief.  Those who seek enforced silence may find a ready weapon in a call for criminal investigation and punishment of those for whom the only crime is the idea behind the speech.  

History is full of examples of attempts to enforce silence and stop debate.  Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act (1798) making it a crime for anyone to publish "any false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the government.  Similar laws have been enacted or used to suppress religious minorities, voting rights advocates, peaceful protestors, and anti-slavery abolitionists.  Before the Civil War, it was illegal in Virginia for anyone who "by speaking or writing maintains that owners have no right of property in slaves."  On May 15, 1923, author Upton Sinclair was arrested for reading barely three lines of the 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, at a union rally.

There have been a surprising number of people in the last year calling for the investigation and prosecution of those who hold points of view that are unpopular, odd, or even scientifically flawed; nevertheless, these are only an opinion - a point of view - an idea.  Those who we believe are mistaken have the right to speak and write their belief; those who disagree have the right to do likewise and prove them wrong.  The past teaches us that not all facts are as certain as we might think they are and not everyone who disagrees with us is our enemy.       

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927).