Most people do not like to be criticized. It hurts our feelings when it is accurate and it infuriates us when it is unfair. Most authority figures do not like to be challenged. If the challenger is someone powerful, it is threatening; if the challenger is someone who is powerless, it is irritating. This is human nature, not likely to change any time soon. Only someone who has a very secure sense of self worth, with good and realistic self-esteem, can hear criticism and reflect on the content of the criticism rather than reacting to the emotional upset it evokes.
When we bring these tendencies into the political arena, where people often feel passionately about their positions, the tendency to hear disagreement as criticism and the tendency to react to criticism, real and imagined, with anger and resentment, is exponentially increased. Throughout history the first move of most tyrants, as soon as they consolidated their power, was to institute censorship of the press. While such a direct assault on our free speech rights is unlikely here, the greater danger exists of an incremental erosion of free speech rights under the guise of liberal good intentions.
The most obvious area of concern remains the McCain-Feingold abomination which attempted to lessen the influence of big money on our political discourse. In a post from March of last year, Intellectualization, Free Speech, & Unintended Consequences: Part III, I wrote about McCain-Feingold's unintended consequences:
Last year saw, for the first time, the full effects of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, a seemingly noble effort to reduce the influence of "Big Money" on our politics. In the interests of full disclosure, let me add that I was a strong supporter of McCain-Feingold when it was up for discussion. However, I have sadly concluded that we have not repealed the laws of human nature: it did not reduce the influence of money during the campaign; it did not elevate our discourse; it did not enlarge our freedom of speech. In short, McCain-Feingold is a disaster. If anything it has seriously eroded our level of discourse since now a candidate can claim either plausible deniability for anything said in a campaign ("I didn't call my esteemed opponent a pederast, that was that darn 527") or has, in fact, no control over the spending of large amounts of money on his behalf (which tends to make it much harder for a candidate to "tack" back to the middle.) In recognition of this, the forces in favor of campaign finance reform are now trying to pass further restrictions on free speech...
McCain Feingold is a classic example of The Paradox of Liberalism. The tremendous danger of such legislation by "good intentions" is illustrated by the subsequent steps in the McCain-Feingold saga, as reported by Brian C. Anderson, originally in the Wall Street Journal. Initially the FEC decided that blogs should be exempt from McCain-Feingold:
But when the chief House architects of campaign-finance reform, joined by Sens. McCain and Russ Feingold, sued--claiming that the Internet was one big "loophole" that allowed big money to keep on corrupting--a federal judge agreed, ordering the FEC to clamp down on Web politics. Then-commissioner Bradley Smith and the two other Republicans on the FEC couldn't persuade their Democratic colleagues to vote to appeal.
Read the entire article; the issue is not yet settled and the attacks on political free speech have now been extended to include calls to bring back the so-called "fairness doctrine", which in its own way subverts free speech while using Orwellian double talk in the process. When sources as disparate as the Daily Kos and Instapundit agree on an issue, people should pay attention.
Europe has been leading the way in limiting freedom of speech. Their libels laws are famous for facilitating court cases which burden the defendants with high costs and a high bar for defending themselves against charges of libel. They also are in the vanguard on "hate speech" legislation, which in this country has thus far been seen primarily in campus speech codes on "enlightened, progressive" campuses. Pub Philosopher, a British blogger, updates the progress of a hate speech bill in Britain which is likely to institutional criminal penalties for criticizing, among other things, Islam by quoting from the Koran.
The Religious Hatred Bill has its third reading in the House of Lords today. Even though the bill has been amended, it is still a threat to free speech. If their Lordships decide to pass it, you could be looking at seven years in prison for saying nasty things about Islam.
He includes many links in the post, and his post today updates the "cartoon" war between Saudi Arabia and Denmark, which apparently has not made its way into the UK papers.
And while this particularly egregious example of liberal secularism run amok is not presented as a "free speech" issue, in many ways, the intersection between religious intolerance and free speech is one of the primary engines of censorship in the world. This is from the BBC:
Priest told to prove Jesus lived
An Italian court is to decide whether a priest should be called to face questioning over whether or not Jesus Christ actually existed.
A court in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, is considering a case brought by Luigi Cascioli, a devoted atheist.
Mr Cascioli sued Father Righi in 2002 after the priest attacked him in print for casting doubt over the legitimacy of the Christian gospels.
Why the Europeans would not consider this kind of attack "hate speech" while quoting from the Koran in a criticism of Islam would be so characterized is beyond the scope of this post. (And I know I am mixing Italy and the UK, but keep in mind that the EU want to have their vision of European Jurisprudence become uniform, which means one country's hate laws can be used in another country.)
The fact remains that the desire to restrict speech that we don't like is nearly universal. Perhaps once Samuel Alito has been confirmed tot he Supreme Court, and McCain-Feingold returns, the full court will remember that restrictions on speech, even with the bets of intentions, are not only unworkable but are dangerous.
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