In 1993, Nat Hentoff wrote a book titled “Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee: How the American Right and Left Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” After amply documenting this thesis, Hentoff concluded that the human animal’s urge to censor was at least as strong, and perhaps stronger, than its sex drive.
Whatever the comparative strengths of sexual desire and the impulse to control what our neighbors are reading, watching or downloading, news sources offer daily reminders of the essential accuracy of his observations.
Overseas, the Muslim riots over publication of the Danish cartoons had barely subsided when an Austrian court sentenced historian David Irving to three years in prison. His crime? Denying that the holocaust had occurred. Here in America, Homeland Security officers visited the Little Falls library, in Bethesda, Maryland, announced that viewing “Internet pornography” was forbidden, challenged a patron’s choice of viewing material, and asked him to “step outside.” (The
Partisans Left and Right actually agree on censorship—they are for it. They only argue about what should be censored. As libertarians are fond of noting, the political spectrum is not a straight line from Left to Right; it’s a circle, and where the ends touch, authoritarians meet. The real battle is between the wing-nuts of all persuasions and those of us who agree with
In the system fashioned by those Founders, people can’t be thrown in jail for their opinions—however odious or wrong. At least, not yet. What worries those who care about civil liberties is the number of folks who don’t seem to understand what freedom of speech protects, what it doesn’t, and why.
Freedom of speech does protect the individual expression of ideas—including, as Holmes famously said, “the idea we hate”—against government action. As I used to warn my children, however, it doesn’t protect you from your mother, or from your private-sector boss. It also doesn’t prevent government from punishing illegal behaviors. You can picket a
Freedom of speech allows you to speak your mind when testifying at the legislature, thanks to the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It doesn’t allow people who’ve been selected by government officials to deliver official government prayer to pray in a sectarian, non-inclusive manner. That’s government speech, and the Establishment Clause forbids government from preferring some religions over others.
We just need to figure out how to convince all the autocrats that these limits on government are as good as sex.
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