Why The First Amendment Is Rightly First
The argument against internet censorship
Much politically-minded discourse today argues in favor of censorship to combat “misinformation,” and ultimately, against the spirit of The First Amendment of The Constitution of the United States. Amongst mainstream outlets, there is a paltry defense mounted in favor of the First Amendment. So, as a starting point,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The idea of democracy is that The People rule. Today, this remains the First Amendment’s most compelling defense, even if our supposed self-rule may seem suspect at times. If the United States is a democracy, free discourse must be allowed to exchange and flourish. That we have actual lawmakers at the Federal level calling for internet censorship is an atrocity. If it turns out that the United States is, in fact, an oligarchic dystopia and not a democracy, how then are we to fix it? Should The People want review-panels at Facebook, bribed Congress-people, or both making calls on what is and is not accurate “information?”
How do you fix problems you can’t talk about? Therein lies the problem of any form of speech regulation or censorship. In Thomas Edsall’s recent NYT op-ed, political scientist Richard Hanania is quoted as saying,
Women are having more of a role to play in intellectual life, so we’re moving toward female norms regarding things like trade-offs between feelings and the search for truth.
Whether or not you agree with Hanania’s assessment of truth being a non-female norm, there can be a hard-heartedness to the truth. The truthful answers to a lot of questions in life are not always pleasing or pleasant, if someone honestly answers. Furthermore, teasing out the truth is not always a straightforward task.
If we are to care for one another as human beings, and indeed, to run our own government, free discourse is tantamount. If answers to questions are written off before they can be asked, potentially correct answers dismissed from the get-go. “Blaming the victim” suggests that everyone with a problem is always a victim of some external cause. If potential suggestions to fixing problems (personal or political) are deemed hateful Wrongthink (things which, “You just cannot say”), how do We The People run the government and regulate ourselves? If it is deemed “racist” to suggest that the Coronavirus could have originated in a lab in China, a strong contender for the virus’ origin is eliminated. If it is deemed “marginalizing” to suggest there is a strong correlation between methamphetamines and homelessness, potential solutions to fix homelessness will remain forever feckless.
The idea that words can cause harm is easily brushed aside by brash types like Joe Rogan. Yet, the pop-psychology books I read offer compelling evidence contrary to this dismissal. But the diagnosis and the prescription are two different things. The lifeblood of a liberal democracy is freedom of expression. Without it, the road to Orwell’s Oceania is but a blip in the history of humanity. In the words of Jonathan Rauch, “[T]he liberal intellectual system, whatever else it may be, is not ‘nice.’” Some might retort, “Well, it should be nice!” But therein lies the problem; some third party then gets to decide what is nice and what is not, and potential avenues for problem-solving are off the table. And in the blink of an eye, the oligarchy that already basically controls everything actually controls everything, and life becomes a permanent afternoon in line for Josef K. at the California DMV.
“Words aren’t violence, violence is violence” is thus a more nuanced statement than it might seem. In a liberal democracy, words must never be violence, by definition. If words are violence, any thought, idea, or dream can be contorted to be violence, as defined by some third party; potentially the same third party that does not want to relinquish political power. If words are violence, democracy cannot exist; there can be no self-rule.
Without the First Amendment, slavery would never have been eliminated, nor would have separate water fountains. The only way these terrible things ceased to be was through the free exchange of ideas that were once considered heretical by then-subsets of the population. One of the staunchest defenders of freedom of expression, Noam Chomsky — a man who could find a problem with the way the United States glanced at a cloud — has gone so far as to defend the rights of French anti-Semites to freely express their views. Chomsky, a Jew, knows that the antidote to bad ideas is more ideas, not a restriction of expression. Speech that is political in nature, however factually incorrect, is not libel, and is not crying fire in a crowded theatre. To regulate such speech, whether by a regime of tech oligarchs or through government intervention, is the undoing of democracy.
If you have a problem — say, that globalization gutted the American Heartland (a claim some might dispute), and it led to the rise of a “populist,” “racist,” “demagogue” like Donald Trump — trying to censor the symptom of the problem does not make the original problem go away. Furthermore, free speech is a release valve to indicate that things are going wrong. If you restrict the ability to speak, problems fester, and solutions cannot develop.
If we are to rule ourselves politically, we must be able to express ourselves freely. If you stand against oligarchic power, as does Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and you argue in favor of speech censorship, you are a walking contradiction.
