On January 20, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.
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America Is Speech
In this frightening time marked by actual violence — five dead in the attack on the U.S. capitol and many more killed during last summer’s unrest* — last week’s very scariest news was this admission by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY):
Several members of Congress, in some of my discussions, have brought up media literacy because that is a part of what happened here [the capitol attack] and we’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.
Two things immediately came to mind.
First, AOC has herself “shown a tendency to exaggerate or misstate basic facts,” as a year-old Washington Post report noted.
“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct,” the progressive pol explained, “than about being morally right.”
Second, I recall taking President Trump to task in 2017 after he asked in a tweet: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?”
“The answer to his question is,” I wrote, “never.”
But when Twitter blocked Trump for life, many pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan replaced their profile pictures with a photo of their ally, Trump.
“People in China use VPN [a Virtual Private Network] because they crave uncensored information,” explained Taiwanese media commentator Sang Pu, “but now when they climb over the Great Firewall what they’ll find is more partisan, more censored, more narrow speech rather than an open arena for debate.”
Sad. Tragic. For America is free speech. It is our gift to the world.
Or was?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Be skeptical of these numbers. Of the five deaths at the capitol, one was due to stroke and another a heart attack, both occurring outside the capitol and away from the violence. Three deaths are, of course, three too many. Likewise, the deaths linked to the summer riots include violence by both police and civilians with the details and motivations not always known.
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Lysander Spooner
On January 19, 1808, Lysander Spooner was born.
Spooner’s achievements in American life, law, and political philosophy, are among the most colorful of the 19th century. Studying law privately, he sued to practice without joining the bar, and won the suit. He set up a postal service that directly competed with the United States Postal Service, delivering mail at a fraction of the cost. He wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, and convinced noted Garrisonian abolitionist Frederick Douglass of his argument. (The book became the centerpiece of intellectual ammunition for the Free Soil Party.) Later in life Spooner turned against constitutionalism itself, and penned some of the most radical political works of his day, including Vices Are Not Crimes and The Constitution of No Authority. Spooner also clearly articulated a “jury nullification” position in his classic treatise Trial by Jury.
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Beaumarchais
As long as I don’t write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life . . .
“A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80 and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. . . .
“We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”
— Brown Chapel, AME Church, Selma, Alabama, March 8, 1965
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Montesquieu
On January 18, 1689, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, French satirist and philosopher, was born.
His treatise The Spirit of the Laws was a major influence upon America’s founding generation. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He did more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon.
In 1811, former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson translated and published Destutt de Tracy’s Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s ‘Spirit of Laws,’ a very popular review of republican principles — which helps demonstrate how important these French writers were to the American form of government.
Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.
Paul Jacob fields comments on last week’s episodes of Common Sense:
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Arthur Latham Perry
By far the most important of all the conditions, under which the production of material commodities goes broadly forward, is liberty of action on the part of the individual; because, wherever such liberty is conceded, association and invention and all other needful conditions follow right along by laws of natural sequence.
Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy, 1891.
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George Stigler
On January 17, 1937, Chicago School economist George Stigler was born. Stigler won a Nobel Memorial Prize for his work. His autobiography is entitled Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist.
The folks who demand inclusion sure practice exclusion well!
This Week in Common Sense, the podcast, January 15, 2021.