I have been reading these boards at least twice a day for almost two years. I have said little. I do hope I am not shooting myself in the foot-
Censorship (prior restraint) has never been constitutional- although post factum punishment for the distribution of morally and ethically objectionable material always has been.
There have always been limits to freedom of speech. Censorship and self-censorship have always been a part of the process of free speech. Censorship is never absolute; the limits of censorship expand and contract in response to current definitions of morality. The government places restrictions on freedoms necessary to protect the rights of others, and to protect the national security, public order, and public health.
The greatest poets and philosophers throughout history have advocated limitations to freedom of speech. In ancient Athens, the very seat of democracy, verbal and written opinions were subject to censorship. The Athenian democracy sentenced the philosopher Socrates to death for subversive speech. Plato, a student of Socrates who witnessed the philosopher’s death, supported limitations to the freedom of speech. “The poet shall compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, or just, or beautiful, or good, which are allowed in the state,” Plato wrote in Book II of The Republic. “Neither shall he be permitted to show his compositions to any private individual, until he shall have shown them to the appointed censors and guardians of the law, and they are satisfied with them.” It is the loss of political freedom that leads to a loss of artistic and literary freedom.
In 1644, two thousand years after the death of Plato, the English poet John Milton wrote the Areopagitica, an ardent plea for freedom of speech. In the Areopagitica, delivered to the English Parliament in 1644, Milton wrote: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” Freedom of speech was a part of John Milton’s philosophy. Paradoxically, Milton’s philosophy of freedom of speech, when made specific, embraced only those people who shared the same values and ideas. John Milton, considered the greatest English poet since Shakespeare, became Oliver Cromwell’s official censor in 1649. As the official censor of the Lord Protector of England, John Milton was able to impose a narrowly defined, personal interpretation of morality on the English people.
The influence of Milton’s Areopagitica through the centuries, notably in early American and French political systems, has been considerable. Although censorship has never been constitutional, censorship has long coexisted with human rights in the United States and France. The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in America, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France guarantees the quality of life, and reflects Milton’s doctrine of no prior restraint. The two declarations became the models for most declarations of political and civil rights adopted by European states in the 19th century.
One might argue that human rights, such as the right of free speech, are basic freedoms, and fall beyond the scope of regulation by the state, regardless of the enactment of law. History suggests otherwise. In World War I the United States passed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 into law, designed to censor pro-German publications. In 1959, the government of Charles de Gaulle in France adopted a new article to the French Constitution that made censorship legal.
Advocates of complete freedom of speech often suggest that restrictions to freedom of speech have a tendency to spread beyond the limits that defined the original restrictions. Clarence Page, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, states in the essay Censoring Obscene Music Is Not Justified: “Once we begin to exempt from First Amendment protections words and ideas that offend some of us, the list of exceptions that affects all of us only grows longer. It does not shrink.” I suggest that this statement is not true. Due to the inevitability of change, the moral values of society change from one generation to the next. In 1989, the United States Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Texas law against flag desecration, removing one item from Mr. Page’s list of exceptions. The Supreme Court ruled that flag desecration is a form of non-verbal, symbolic speech. The list of exceptions expands and contracts in response to current definitions of morality.
Society delegates the power of government to “elected” officials. The government places restrictions on freedom necessary to protect the rights of others, and to protect the national security, public order, and public health. The “elected” officials in a fully democratic society directly reflect the known and ascertained values of the proletariat, values that are often subaltern to personal judgment. In a republic, elected officials rely on personal judgment to determine the needs and interests of the republic. One might say that most governments are a synthesis of the democratic and republican forms. In the United States, the proletariat selects congressional representatives by democratic method. Congressional representatives compose, submit, and pass legislature into law by republican method. Author Rod Davis asserts this premise in his essay Speech Should Be Limited,
“If free speech means anything, it can only refer to the expression of a hazy range of interpretations within the ideological parameters of an enforcing power. The “free speech” of the dominant class will never be the free speech of the oppressed and exploited, and saying so in the face of historical experience is dissembling… Constitutional “free speech” in the daily, concrete world, consists of what the government decides it to be.”
Freedom of speech is a universal right, a fundamental right indivisible from other human rights necessary for the enjoyment and protection of other rights. Universal, fundamental, and indivisible, freedom of speech is not, however, an absolute right. The freedom of speech is now and has always been subject to restrictions in certain narrowly defined circumstances (just try shouting FIRE!!! in a crowded movie theater). Freedom of opinion is absolute (best embodied by Voltaire’s famous statement “I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”); freedom of speech carries special duties and responsibilities. Advocates of complete freedom of speech abrogate responsibility for the content and impact of speech as well, a claim of privilege without social responsibility. A utopian society, composed of individuals who enjoy complete freedom of speech without attendant social responsibility, is not a society al all. It is anarchy.
Of course this is simply my opinion. I had more but my fingers are getting tired.
