Freedom of Speech Means You Won’t Always Like What Others Say
Our government tries to make laws against what they have no right to control
One of the great things about being an American is the right to open our mouths and say whatever we want, without worrying that the government will silence us. Someone may punch us in the teeth for saying it, of course, but the government has no right to stop us from saying it.
And, oh boy, does the government hate that.
In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Unalienable (also sometimes rendered as inalienable) means “not transferable or for sale, incapable of being taken away.” Eleven years later, Jefferson and other authors of the Constitution spelled out some of those unalienable rights. In the First Amendment they wrote, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.”
Ever since then, our government has been diligently trying to pass laws abridging that freedom. The House of Representatives just last week passed by large majority a bill to do so.
A History of Government Meddling
Of course, the bill doesn’t exactly say it’s prohibiting free speech – it’s an antisemitism bill designed to allow institutions to punish its members for saying things against Jews. In the wake of the weeks-long campus demonstrations against Israel, many people, including staunch conservatives, are nodding and going along with this bill.
That seems natural, since good people don’t like hearing other good people slandered and maligned. But that doesn’t make it right.
While the government has always been meddling in ways to control the rights we’re endowed with by our Creator, they gained a strong foothold in this in the past five years. It started with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, with certain government groups pressuring social media like Facebook and Twitter to censor anything that was pro Trump. Then during the pandemic it became pressure to censor anyone, including doctors, who didn’t toe the line of approved covid “information,” even if their words were true.
When Elon Musk gained control of Twitter and changed the name to X, he also removed most of the chains the government had placed on free speech there. Now he is a hated and hunted man by established Washington bureaucrats.
That doesn’t mean companies or organizations can’t institute controls on speech. Your boss can still fire you for calling him a penny-pinching mealy-mouthed weasel. A church can still give you the heave-ho for uttering blasphemous words. But the government can’t stop you from criticizing them or giving alternate information about subjects like medicine or even how to run a country. Nor are they allowed to coerce private institutions to do so. By the same token, they also can’t force you to say certain things.
Naturally, we expect people to also use common sense in what they say. Freedom of speech, like all freedoms, comes with the expectation of using the freedom responsibly. But even common sense isn’t required.
Prohibiting the Bad Could Also Prohibit the Good
I recently read a comment on an article regarding free speech, questioning whether not allowing the government to control speech is a good idea. After all, the comment read, when people have complete freedom like that, they could say bad things, horrible things, insulting things.
Yes, that’s right, they could. But if certain rights are not unalienable – that is, inherent with our birth – they will always be subject to the whims of whoever is in charge of the government. That’s going to seem great when the people you agree with are in power, not so great when people with opposing views gain control.
People often forget that if these rights can be controlled and taken away by the government, then there is the very real possibility that you won’t be able to use those rights for good, either. You could be imprisoned or killed for stating the truth – something prevalent in the history of communism and fascism, even monarchies, in many countries.
That’s something that’s still going on in many countries around the world, and seems increasingly likely to happen here at home as the Biden Administration continues to push for more control over our rights.
The price tag for our freedom of speech is that we have to allow others to enjoy the same freedom. It doesn’t take much courage to be in favor of speech you agree with; it takes real fortitude to defend free speech when it’s something you disagree with.
But you can’t prohibit the bad through legal means without also taking the chance that someone will prohibit the good. Which means our government should never pass a bill against antisemitic speech, just like it should never make a law compelling our speech to be pro Muslim.