When the writers of the US Constitution made the First Amendment all about free speech, they were responding directly to the limitations imposed by the reign of England’s King George III, who aggressively punished those who spoke out against him and/or the Church of England. They wanted to make it very clear that such an impediment would not be tolerated in this “new” country. It was a novel idea, but it didn’t last. Relatively quickly in 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, criminalizing any criticism of the young government. Abolitionists were subjected to the Gag Rule in 1836, making it impossible to resolve any issues around slavery. In 1862, General Grant attempted to expel US Jews from “all land under my command.” President Lincoln quickly countermanded the order, but the action set the stage for a conflict still in action today.
Everyone likes the idea of free speech until someone says something they don’t like. Slander and libel laws exist specifically to keep people from publishing lies against other people, but they didn’t take into consideration a time when literally everyone in the country would have a publishing platform at their fingertips. The concept of free speech is undermined by the fact that each person is convinced of their opinion without having any understanding of the truth. For the majority of life’s events, we can’t “run back the tape” to confirm what did or didn’t happen, what someone did or didn’t say, or even the context in which a statement was made.
One of the greatest challenges to the Constitution, and to democracy as a whole, is the presumption of personal responsibility. When the Constitution was written, the right to vote and participate in government was limited to male landowners. This wasn’t unusual for the time and with it came an inherent assumption that landowners knew how to make responsible decisions. The founders too quickly discovered that they were wrong but no one knew how to put that horse back in the stable. We still don’t. We are all inherently selfish, greedy, and desperate to act in our own self-interest. We’re more interested in doing what’s best for me than doing what’s best for the entire population. We don’t want anyone telling us what to do when to eat, how to vote, how much money we can have, or anything that might cause us stress.
The Constitution wasn’t designed to handle the paradox that a statement can be both truth and fiction at the same time. For example, let’s pretend that I went to a new restaurant a meal with which I have a lot of experience: fried chicken. I understand how difficult it is to get fried chicken just right, where the meat is juicy but the coating isn’t too dark. Not everyone knows what they’re doing. I’ve had some really good fried chicken and some that needed to have been thrown away. Armed with this knowledge, I bite into this new fried chicken and am repulsed by the taste to the point that I am concerned that it may be contaminated with salmonella. Wanting to spare others the horror and potential illness, I hop on Yelp and write a blistering review about how dangerous the restaurant’s fried chicken is.
At the same time, someone a few tables over orders the fried chicken as well. Their fried chicken tasted delicious, to them, with the best coating and optimal juiciness of any chicken they’ve ever had. They want all their friends to know how wonderful the food is and patronize the restaurant so that it will stay around for a while. They, too, go to Yelp and write a glowing review about how wonderful the restaurant’s fried chicken is.
Who’s right? Who’s telling the truth? The interesting reality is that both can be right and wrong at the same time. Our pallets are different. Our food preferences are different. Our idea of what is “good” is subjective. Each person who goes to the restaurant can have a different experience, liking or hating different aspects of the experience. Each person has the right to tell everyone about that experience. But when the restaurant fails six months later because of bad reviews, can the owner of the restaurant, who thinks their food was wonderful, claim that the people who wrote those negative reviews were slanderous?
Implied throughout the Constitution is the idea that people are inherently responsible. We now understand, more clearly than ever, that they are not. If anything, the opposite is true. Responsibility is something that must be taught and, through means of social pressure, enforced. Where there is no responsibility, there can be no freedom. We must understand when it is appropriate to speak and when to keep our mouths shut. We must understand when it is appropriate to carry a weapon and when it should be secured in a vault. We must be responsible in everything we do or we turn freedom into a shackle.
Ultimately, the matter comes down to the fact that we can legislate neither morality nor responsibility without infringing on someone’s implied rights. If we cannot behave in a civil, responsible manner, then we’ve already lost the rights we claim.
Sigh. I had more, but my brain is gone. Feel free to ask questions in the comments below.
When the writers of the US Constitution made the First Amendment all about free speech, they were responding directly to the limitations imposed by the reign of England’s King George III, who aggressively punished those who spoke out against him and/or the Church of England. They wanted to make it very clear that such an impediment would not be tolerated in this “new” country. It was a novel idea, but it didn’t last. Relatively quickly in 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, criminalizing any criticism of the young government. Abolitionists were subjected to the Gag Rule in 1836, making it impossible to resolve any issues around slavery. In 1862, General Grant attempted to expel US Jews from “all land under my command.” President Lincoln quickly countermanded the order, but the action set the stage for a conflict still in action today.
Everyone likes the idea of free speech until someone says something they don’t like. Slander and libel laws exist specifically to keep people from publishing lies against other people, but they didn’t take into consideration a time when literally everyone in the country would have a publishing platform at their fingertips. The concept of free speech is undermined by the fact that each person is convinced of their opinion without having any understanding of the truth. For the majority of life’s events, we can’t “run back the tape” to confirm what did or didn’t happen, what someone did or didn’t say, or even the context in which a statement was made.
One of the greatest challenges to the Constitution, and to democracy as a whole, is the presumption of personal responsibility. When the Constitution was written, the right to vote and participate in government was limited to male landowners. This wasn’t unusual for the time and with it came an inherent assumption that landowners knew how to make responsible decisions. The founders too quickly discovered that they were wrong but no one knew how to put that horse back in the stable. We still don’t. We are all inherently selfish, greedy, and desperate to act in our own self-interest. We’re more interested in doing what’s best for me than doing what’s best for the entire population. We don’t want anyone telling us what to do when to eat, how to vote, how much money we can have, or anything that might cause us stress.
The Constitution wasn’t designed to handle the paradox that a statement can be both truth and fiction at the same time. For example, let’s pretend that I went to a new restaurant a meal with which I have a lot of experience: fried chicken. I understand how difficult it is to get fried chicken just right, where the meat is juicy but the coating isn’t too dark. Not everyone knows what they’re doing. I’ve had some really good fried chicken and some that needed to have been thrown away. Armed with this knowledge, I bite into this new fried chicken and am repulsed by the taste to the point that I am concerned that it may be contaminated with salmonella. Wanting to spare others the horror and potential illness, I hop on Yelp and write a blistering review about how dangerous the restaurant’s fried chicken is.
At the same time, someone a few tables over orders the fried chicken as well. Their fried chicken tasted delicious, to them, with the best coating and optimal juiciness of any chicken they’ve ever had. They want all their friends to know how wonderful the food is and patronize the restaurant so that it will stay around for a while. They, too, go to Yelp and write a glowing review about how wonderful the restaurant’s fried chicken is.
Who’s right? Who’s telling the truth? The interesting reality is that both can be right and wrong at the same time. Our pallets are different. Our food preferences are different. Our idea of what is “good” is subjective. Each person who goes to the restaurant can have a different experience, liking or hating different aspects of the experience. Each person has the right to tell everyone about that experience. But when the restaurant fails six months later because of bad reviews, can the owner of the restaurant, who thinks their food was wonderful, claim that the people who wrote those negative reviews were slanderous?
Implied throughout the Constitution is the idea that people are inherently responsible. We now understand, more clearly than ever, that they are not. If anything, the opposite is true. Responsibility is something that must be taught and, through means of social pressure, enforced. Where there is no responsibility, there can be no freedom. We must understand when it is appropriate to speak and when to keep our mouths shut. We must understand when it is appropriate to carry a weapon and when it should be secured in a vault. We must be responsible in everything we do or we turn freedom into a shackle.
Ultimately, the matter comes down to the fact that we can legislate neither morality nor responsibility without infringing on someone’s implied rights. If we cannot behave in a civil, responsible manner, then we’ve already lost the rights we claim.
Sigh. I had more, but my brain is gone. Feel free to ask questions in the comments below.
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