July 4. A day off from work. A day to BBQ in the park, in the backyard, or for us city dwellers, on our roofs. A day to spend with family, watching fireworks. A day to celebrate freedom.
What does July 4 mean? What is Independence Day? Walk up and down the street and people will talk about it being "America's Birthday." Most will likely know that is has something to do with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But what does it mean to really celebrate freedom?
For me, every freedom we have and every freedom we struggle to achieve, comes from one single freedom, the freedom of speech. The freedom of speech is the tool we have to bring down oppression. The Revered Martin Luther King, Jr. and an entire generation learned this this not just from the steps of the Capitol on August 28, 1963, but also on March 9, 1964 with the decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.
But freedom of speech, and a free press, was not created during the Civil Rights Movement, even if some of the most important 1st amendment cases are outgrowths of that time period. No, these freedoms were cultivated by our founding fathers, who witnessed despotic regimes being held together because of a vice-like grip on access to information. Long before Sullivan, in 1735, was the trial of John Peter Zenger on charges of seditious libel for a scathing set of articles he published about the incumbent New York State administration. His defense counsel's closing argument is one of the greatest defenses of freedom of speech and the press ever uttered. Counsel defended the right of all freemen "publicly to remonstrate the abuses of power in the strongest terms, to put their neighbors upon their guard against the craft or open violence of men in authority."
But freedom of speech is not just about rallying against government power. It's most renowned celebrations come from the freedom of the press, Sullivan, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers. But the freedom of speech that we should celebrate today is much more individual. As John Stuart Mill wrote in "On Liberty" in 1859, "If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
This importance of what Mill is saying is crystallized when one thinks of it in terms of Mill's writings on the "marketplace of ideas." If the Zenger trial demonstrates the "abuse-checking" value of the first-amendment, the marketplace of ideas demonstrates the "truth checking" value of the first amendment. We do not silence minority opinions, as Mill stated in the paragraph above. Instead, we let ideas compete in the marketplace of ideas and let the "truth" be filtered out by the response of the public.
The marketplace has proven to be effective. Unpopular, discredited "opinion" has been filtered through the marketplace, and time and time again, has proven true. Historically, we witnessed it with Galileo, and the liberal community witnessed it with the response to the National Enquirer's story about John Edwards' affair. Although both started out as minority opinions, all attempts to suppress the truth failed. The earth does revolve around the sun, and John Edwards did have an affair, and the fact that we know these things are due, at least in part, to people insisting on their rights to free speech.
In order for either the abuse-checking or truth-checking functions of the freedoms of speech to be effective, there is great responsibility on people. The press must not back down from following stories that may be unpopular, that may lose them the next big interview with whatever administration is in power. More than the press though, we the people have the greatest responsibility. We have the obligation to maintain a free and open marketplace of ideas. We have the obligation to skirt the fine line between arguing with people about ideas and silencing them. We can't be scared of ideas we disagree with. We have to have faith that the truth of ideas will be learned because of the value of our ideas and not because we scream louder. As Thomas Emerson wrote during the summer of civil rights that was 1963, the truth cannot be revealed by suppressing unpopular views, but by the use of counter-expression.
So this July 4, in between the corn, the burgers, and the veggie kabobs, everyone should think about freedom, but not just their freedom. My freedom of speech only exists if I respect your freedoms. Society has an obligation to allow me my views and the means to express them, but I am a member of society, so I have an obligation to allow you your views and a means to express them. In doing so, remember what I think to be Mill's most crucial single sentence from On Liberty. "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."
[this is good] Eloquently said.
Posted by: SNickel | 07/06/2009 at 09:42 AM