Long live freedom of (unethical) speech

While the Supreme Court of the United States was busy on the East Coast deciding that no law should "chill" the free expression of words as a favor to the citizens, the Federal Circuit Court in California was busy witnessing just how the free expression of some words can lead to disaster for certain citizens.

Indeed with the help of conservative lawyer David Boies, expert witnesses described how they managed to get Proposition 8 passed.

Through Boies' simple questions and answers we had the veil lifted on something far broader and more destructive than a simple group of citizens exercising their democratic right to persuade voters. Little by little, we were able to see how with the help of big money, powerful churches, deceptive Web sites, lying medical experts/scientists and simplistic, frightening TV ads, an organization was able to fuel fear and enmity among one group of Californians toward another.

Amazingly these same witnesses who devoutly fought against gay marriage also recognized under oath that most findings demonstrate 1) marriage would be a stabilizing element for both gays and the greater community and 2) hateful language of the type they dabbled in leads people to commit violent behavior on gays (and presumed gays).

But our supreme court believes it is important to allow all citizens to hear ALL the arguments and to decide for themselves - no matter how untrue, how damaging or how hate-filled those arguments are.

In the US there is a law against what the court calls "fighting words" i.e. it's illegal to stand in front of a crowd and scream "Kill the Jews" or "Attack the nigger" because this may cause "imminent danger" but this same Court legally protected a person who burned a cross on a black man's lawn in the name of free expression.

In most rich countries this would be a form of "hate speech" - words or actions which foment hatred against a group of people. Much of the early hate speech legislation was passed in Western Europe after the fall of the Nazi party: a party that was freely elected to power by a starving nation that wanted scapegoats to blame for the fall of their empire. Wikipedia classifies hate speech legislation under censorship.

After centuries of controlled speech it must have been incredibly difficult for these countries to come up with such legislation so dedicated are they to the free speech they struggled so hard to attain. But the war's wound was huge: millions of dead on all sides.

My experience of and contact with legislators from western European countries suggest they have no more contact with minorities or poor people than our legislators in their DC millionaire club. I imagine that like US senators these contacts are mostly limited to hired help. I don't have any reason to believe they are more imbued with empathy or Christian forbearance than are their American counterparts.

No, it seems to me their progressive laws that not only protect citizens from hate speech but also protect them from corporate abuse and offer them government-guaranteed cheap education, healthcare and childcare do not come from the fact that they are more representative of the poorer classes.

However one thing they do have that we seem to lack is a deep sense of and respect for history.... particularly the horrors of history.

This is a vitally important difference.

The Organization for Economic and Cultural Development, a 30 member non-profit that we belong to and pay to study our various social and economic trends released a study on higher education among the member countries. The US was the only country in which the percentage of 25-35 year olds who had been to college was the same as the percentage of 55-65 year olds. That is to say that in 30 years we have not been able to increase the percentage of Americans who graduate from college. What's more we know that fewer and fewer people who are in college are interested in such things as liberal arts and history preferring instead MBA's and technical degrees.

And history itself is such a malleable thing these days.

A few weeks ago on my local PBS station a documentary called the "History of Freedom" was aired. I sat and watched the formulaic talking-head professors with suits and ties go on about various historical moments and their interplay with churches - an interesting notion.

Little by little it became clear this very slick documentary was peppered with bias and downright errors -- the biggest of which was the notion that the French Revolution ended in a massacre whereas the American Revolution (which happened around the same time and was helped by the French) ended in prosperity because we Americans had God on our side. Not so for those bad anti-clerical French leaders who had turned their backs on the church. (By the way, no mention is made of the massive fortunes amassed by the clergy and their uncomfortable proximity with the ruling classes.) The message of this documentary was similar to those of the conservative Christians of the Texas Board of Education trying to strong arm biblical references into the nation's Social Studies books just last week.

A quick Google search connected me with the makers of the film: The Acton Institute, "an ecumenical think-tank dedicated to the study of free-market economics informed by religious faith and moral absolutes". This no doubt venerable institution was absolutely unethical in two ways: 1) by mixing history with their own fantasies of how they wish history had been (for which they can perhaps be pardoned since after all history can be quite subjective since it's usually written by the victors) and most of all 2) by not disclosing to viewers from what perspective they are speaking, from what bias they are presenting history and instead distributing a documentary as science.

I am quite sure that an Indigenous American would not consider the American Revolution to be blood free, nor would a black man shipped here as merchandise.

Our world has a very long history of incidents in which better informed people took advantage of less informed citizens, mostly in the commercial realm. Here in the US my mind immediately goes to the purchase of Manhattan for $27 worth of baubles, the bundling and selling of average Americans' mortgages and the sale of nonexistent swaths of Wild West land to uneducated immigrants who starved to death.

Of course we can always say, "It's just business."

For me, a marker of a civilized nation is one in which those of us who have had the privilege of eating to our fill and accessing healthcare, the privilege of attaining a higher education, the privilege of being able to communicate our ideas in clear ways have a duty to use our knowledge to serve humanity in ways that help her thrive and grow, not in unethical ways that serve only our selfish desires.

But abusive speech and its older brother hate speech will continue feeding violence in America until the day we step out of our naive belief that all speech is inherently good and really take responsibility for the abject damage it has caused in the lives of our fellow citizens.