The new reign of witches: Your free speech is now their security threat

There have been a few moments in American history when the First Amendment wasn't worth a tinker's cuss.

When the French revolution frightened American aristocrats in 1798, Congress passed a law called the Sedition Act.

About two dozen editors went to jail for short periods of time, having been convicted of nothing more than saying unflattering things about John Adams, then president. Jefferson called the turbulent period a "reign of witches." He and James Madison penned the famous Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which asserted a state's right to nullify a federal law. The ultimate impact of that confrontation was tragic, in that nullifcation would later fuel the fight to keep the institution of slavery.

When the First World War frightened American miltarists in 1918, another Sedition Act passed Congress. Over two thousand were arrested and jailed for publicly disagreeing with the war. The spirit of the law remained in effect long after the war, when labor movements demanded rights long denied and were silenced. At one point, Upton Sinclair was dragged off a stage by police while reciting the First Amendment. The suppression of "reds" during the 1920s was a violation of basic American freedom.

These days we don't need a formal sedition law. Mundane things like zoning laws work just as well. It is not ony illegal to pass out political literature in most semi-public areas such as shopping centers and airports, it is also be illegal to pass out political literature in city parks. Roanoke, Virginia, like many other places, has an annual festival in the park that bans political literature in the public park. Why? Because the city has leased the park to the festival organizers. Now it's no longer a public park. Just a waive of the pen, and two hundred years of jurisprudence collapses. Amazing.

In Massachusetts in May 2004, a newspaper columnist was told that all political literature would have to be left behind on entering a public hall to hear the state governor talk about education policy. Even a few pieces of paper were seen as somehow "disruptive."Around the same time in New Mexico, teachers were fired for allowing students to express anti-war sentiments in poetry or art work.

Throughout the political campaign of 2004, dissenter after dissenter was thrown out of campagin rallies. No candidate wanted to allow a second of airtime to an opposing view. The Bush campaign was particularly adamant about this, but the Kerry campaign was not blameless, nor was Clinton before him. An atmosphere of concord, unanimity and consensus was absolutely required withing the political party.

In the aftermath, highly choreographed "town hall" meetings and paid softball questions at press conferences mark any "modern" presidency. Seeking the truth is in itself subversive.

You may say "we" (which is to say our soldiers) are fighting for freedom in the Middle East or the Himalayas, but in fact, we (at home) have utterly lost sight of what it means to be free in our day to day lives.

Protest at a 1980 campaign rally for Ronald Reagan. These demonstrators were not arrested, harrassed or expelled -- unlike anyone who dared to raise a sign at a political ralley in 2004. (AP Photo).

As the new "Patriot Act" comes up for renewal, its hardly amazing that the same ugly government that got caught by the 1977 Church Committee hearings now seeks to legitimize the things that were once illegal (and which were done anyway). Spying on dissidents, keeping files on their political activities, not just trying to prevent violence but trying to prevent all forms of political and social expression outside a narrowly defined "norm."

No doubt even this column is regularly enshrined in some fixed medium by some underpaid bureaucrat. Hey, guys. How are things in Langley?

Louis Brandies once said, in his famous dissent in the Whitney case in 1927:

The men who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the process of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion.

Brandies might have been right about the American revolution, but it would be wrong to make this same statement about the people who inherited that revolution.

Are we going back to the day when a witch hunt would turn up a new victim at any given moment?

Are we entering a new reign of witches?

What would Jefferson do?

 

 

Link:

Clinton rejects freedom of speech