Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

The Preposition Is “Of”

Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from (disliked) speech. One contradicts the other.

Not that legal strictures against “offensive” speech would be consistently enforced even if the First Amendment were formally rescinded. In practice, whoever had the most political pull would be issuing the shut-up edicts. Although victims might well be offended by the uttering of those edicts, censors would be undeterred by the contradiction.

These thoughts are occasioned by Greg Lukianoff’s new book Freedom from Speech, and the review of same by Allen Mendenhall at Liberty. Lukianoff heads the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which fights the good fight for civil rights on campus. His book, says Mendenhall, is “a vigorous and cogent refutation of the increasingly popular notion that people have a right not to be offended.”

Lukianoff agrees that hypersensitivity to controversial speech in private institutions, too often punished by private sanctions that are arbitrary and unjust, does not per se violate anyone’s First Amendment rights. It nonetheless undermines the cultural tolerance needed for open discussion. “Only through the rigorous filtering mechanisms of longstanding deliberation and civil confrontation can good ideas be sorted from the bad. Only by maintaining disagreement at a rhetorical and discursive level can we facilitate tolerance and understanding and prevent the imposition of ideas by brute force.”

That is to say, cultural values and political values are not two isolated realms. One influences the other.

Who can disagree? I wouldn’t dare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Will Brits Outlaw Speech?

Actually, the proposal is not to outlaw speech. Just some speech.

Which? “Extreme.”

That is, speech that conveys ideas too fundamentally orthogonal to authorized ideas, or that too brusquely nettles sanctioned sensibilities.

Who’s the censor? Some minor shire functionary? No, it is Theresa May, Home Secretary, who is proposing the “extremism disruption orders.”

Ms. May complains that at present, British officials “will only go after you if you are an extremist that directly supports violence.” (It’s not a bug, it’s a feature, Madam Home Secretary.) Under her plan, if you’re an “extremist” served with an EDO (Extremist Disruption Order), you must obtain an official go-ahead, in advance, for anything you wish to publish in any public forum.

Would pen names also be banned? Then what?

Even the most strenuous society-wide efforts to regulate speech don’t stop people from speaking. They still shop, give directions, exhort children, argue about soccer. The most severely repressive regimes permit plenty of public communication along approved channels on approved topics. People learn what not to say or think to skip a trip to the gulag for re-education. But the freedom to say anything you want if only the censors let you means that you have no government-respected right to say anything.

The British proposal may go nowhere. Like comparable assaults on either side of the Atlantic, if enacted it may be only partially or briefly effective. But all such efforts are baleful in their immediate consequences.

And they pave the way to worse.

As illustrated by May’s gall in advancing her “anti-extremist” program.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Photo courtesy of Stephen Mcleod, under Creative Commons License; altered.

Categories
First Amendment rights

The Groundhog Day Ban

Sometimes the only way to make your point is to keep repeating yourself. So it is when explaining why the law requires educational institutions that receive federal funding, like Ward Melville High School, to allow clubs such as the one formed by17-year-old student John Raney in 2013.

Students United in Faith meets to discuss faith and to plan charitable endeavors. Last year, Ward Melville officials sought to ban the club because of its religious character, but retreated after getting a letter from the Liberty Institute (dedicated to “restoring religious liberty in America”).

Near the beginning of this academic year, the school again moved to ban the club. Again, Liberty Institute intervened, threatening a lawsuit. Again, the school backed off.

If it were a private school, say, Atheist High, the school would well be within its rights to say “don’t come here unless you are willing to forgo any religious club.” Those hypothetical school officials wouldn’t be violating anyone’s rights.

But a public school funded by taxpayer dollars? Well, if it provides for extracurricular activities like clubs, it is acting as a part of the government to violate the right of freedom of association when it arbitrarily bans a club.

So what’s next? Either the administrators at Ward Melville High will keep trying the ban until they can get away with it; or, having finally learned their lesson, they’ll leave the group alone.

Thank goodness students and parents have the Liberty Institute in their corner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Houston, You’re a Problem

Will this installment of “Common Sense” be subpoenaed by the City of Houston?

The city first subpoenaed the sermons of pastors who oppose a controversial equal-rights ordinance and who have “ties” to conservative activists suing the city. When that raised howls of protest, the city, in its infinite wisdom, issued new subpoenas for “speeches” by these pastors.

The difference between sermons and speeches? None.

PDFThe Houston Equal Rights Ordinance expands what counts as illegal discrimination in the workplace to include any based on sexual orientation or “gender identity or pregnancy.” The ordinance seeks to eradicate the “diminution of dignity, respect and status” that it declares must result from any unequal treatment — regardless of the reason — related to any of 15 or so protected characteristics. The vagueness and catch-all character of this further workplace regimentation would doubtless spawn new lawsuits by dignity-diminished employees eager to interpret motives in the most lawsuit-conducive light.

My point, though, is not about governmental bullying of employers and violation of their rights, but governmental bullying of critics of government policy and violation of their right to speak freely. Speech that vexes you is not thereby properly subject to legal action. Indeed, political speech is precisely the kind of feather-ruffling communication that the First Amendment was designed to protect.

Nobody would bother trying to curb the flow of sermons (or speeches) about the weather.

Houston needs to be sued again — for issuing all of these subpoenas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights incumbents

Congress Got Your Tongue?

Yesterday’s somber thirteenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was marred by a brand new and savage act of violence against the very essence of America: the First Amendment.

Who orchestrated the attack? Responsibility was not claimed by ISIL or ISIS . . . or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un . . . or even Dennis Rodman.

The culprits? A majority of the United States Senate.

Fifty-four Democrats voted to scratch out the words “freedom of speech” from the First Amendment to be replaced by giving Congress new power to regulate the spending, and thereby the speech, in their own re-election campaigns.

Conflict of interest, s’il vous plaît?

The assault was only thwarted because a simple majority falls short of the two-thirds required to send the constitutional amendment to the House.

Dubbed the “Democracy for All Amendment,” supporters and their many cheerleaders in the media pretended Senate Joint Resolution 19 would overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and get big money out of politics. Certainly an amendment could do that, explicitly, but this one would have done no such thing.

Instead, SJR 19 would have empowered our despised Congress to regulate as it pleased, with such sweeping power that the amendment’s authors felt the need to reassure supporters (such as the New York Times) by stating expressly in the amendment that, “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”

Let’s hope that, for the 54 Senators who voted to repeal freedom of speech, this goes down as a suicide attack . . . politically.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Registering Dissent in Russia

Russian politics — does it consist in anything but the progressive unraveling of what modest liberalization of civic life the Russians benefited after the crackup of the Soviet Union?

The latest assault on liberty? The government targeting of Russian bloggers. The most popular ones — those with 3,000 or more daily readers — must now register with the government or risk being shut down. As Bloomberg’s Ilya Khrennikov puts it, “Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking names. Potentially thousands.”

The registrants must supply real names, real addresses.

Mother Russia says it’s doing this to combat inaccurate or defamatory information — i.e., opinions it dislikes; i.e., any too critical of the government. Putin already has authority to shut down “extremist” web pages sans judicial oversight. The new law tightens the noose.

It seems there’s little we can do about this in the West except express our sympathy for Russians fighting the commissars.

Well, one other thing, at least; and not so little. Western tech firms can refrain from abetting such repression the way Yahoo did when, several years ago, it turned over user info on Chinese dissidents Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao to the Chinese government and thus enabled their imprisonment. Facebook, Google+ and other hosts of Russian-language blogs can flatly reject demands to censor or delete these blogs — or to supply the Russian government with identifying info on the authors.

Obviously, predictions of the end of history have indeed proven premature. We’re not all liberal democrats now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights responsibility

Reset the Net?

I don’t know on which version the current Internet is said to be. Internet 4.0? Web 3.1? HTML something-or-other? (You may notice: I’m not a tech guy.)

But it’s changing. Streaming video and the fast development of cloud computing are revolutionizing the way we think about the “common space” beyond our computers.

Oh, and then there are all the “post-PC” devices — smart phones and tablets and the like — metamorphosing with Ovidian avidity.

Nevertheless, there’s one big element that outshines them all: government surveillance. 

Shhh. This is just between me and you, but … this is not just between you and me. The NSA and other branches of our government insist on listening in.

In the past year, since Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks began hitting the news stream, we’ve learned more and more about how intrusive our government spies not only want to be, but can be; not only can be, but are.

So, to celebrate the first anniversary of the beginning of the Snowden Era, folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in co-operation with good netizens everywhere, have proclaimed today, June 5, “Reset the Net” Day.

A day of protest? More a day of preparation. What can you do to make your Internet presence a bit more secure?

Well, according to the EFF activists, and according to Snowden himself, there are many things you can do. Encryption is one of them.

My advice? Don’t ask me about it. Consult the experts. Let’s think more carefully about life under the eyes of our overlords.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights political challengers

Maximum Political Freedom

Freedom battles tyranny across the globe, with the right to speak out politically essential for freedom to prevail.

A decision handed down this week by U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa, in a case brought by Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth, inspires much hope to protect speech and prevent tyranny here in America.

O’Keefe, the group and “all or nearly all right-of-center groups and individuals in Wisconsin who engaged in issue advocacy from 2010 to the present” were targeted by the Milwaukee County District Attorney and others in a bizarre, secretive politically-motivated criminal investigation. Armed agents raided homes at dawn, seizing computers, mailing lists, files, etc.

O’Keefe and conservative state leaders were then slapped with subpoenas (demanding all their documents) and a gag order. This effectively silenced them from talking about the investigation. Under the circumstances, these groups found themselves unable to raise funds or engage in political activity since.

The thrust of the case against them was the mere assertion that spending on TV ads about collective bargaining or other issues was campaign spending for Governor Scott Walker. Judge Randa found no evidence of express advocacy for Walker and, therefore, no lawful basis for the outrageous persecution.

“The plaintiffs have been shut out of the political process merely by association with conservative politicians,” his decision read, adding a warning that, historically, “attempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.”

O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth spends what some call “dark money” — donors are not disclosed — but the judge explained that our constitutional system cherishes and protects the free discussion of political ideas by groups like O’Keefe’s as possibly “the best way . . . to address problems of political corruption.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Abridge Too Far

Sick and tired of “too much money” in politics? Worried the average citizen’s voice is being drowned out?

Thirty-six Democratic U.S. Senators have just the thing: a re-write of the First Amendment.

They’ve co-sponsored a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Senate Joint Resolution 19.

“We would give the power back to the Congress,” says chief sponsor Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM).

Wait. That’s amending reality. Congress never had any such power. The instructions in the Constitution are quite clear: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …”

These 36 solons reverse course with the wording

… Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to Federal elections, including through setting limits on —

  1. the amount of contributions to candidates for nomination for election to, or for election to, Federal office; and
  2. the amount of funds that may be spent by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates.

Our brand new constitution would not contain a single word of restraint. Instead, powerful congressional incumbents would wield complete and total control over all money to be raised or spent by their competitors.

And note: they already enjoy a tremendous name recognition advantage over their challengers. What happens when incumbents limit campaign spending too low for challengers to compete?

Its negation of rights is so sweeping that the amendment actually states, “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”

No worries for the New York Times, then. But just how much of the First Amendment do the rest of us get to keep?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Let Us Give, Too

“There are really no limits on the amount of money you can give to a campaign,” explained Chuck Todd on his MSNBC program, The Daily Rundown. “We could claim there are limits, but they don’t really exist because of the way the system works.”

Todd isn’t talking about you and me. We have limits. By law, each person in each election can give no more than $2,600 to any single candidate.

He’s focused on billionaires. You know, the Koch brothers we hear so much about, or gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson. And, on the Democratic side, the super-rich Tom Streyer, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and others.

But billionaires have limits, too. Their advantage is simply being able to afford the work-arounds. They can hire lawyers to advise them through the maze of speech and finance regulations. They can fund a SuperPAC or an independent expenditure or start a whole new organization if necessary to get their message out.

I’m not complaining. Billionaires have an inalienable right to flap their jaws and spend their money.

I’m only saying that we merely aspiring billionaires — the great American mostly washed middle class — should also be free to flap our jaws, to make our big political contribution and to have our say.

But we don’t. It’s a federal crime for you or me to donate one dollar more than $2,600 to the general election campaign of a congressional candidate we deeply believe in.

That it is a crime is the biggest campaign finance scandal of all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.