Free Speech and Free Counter-speech. Our First Amendment Rights

When the Supreme Court in Citizens United held that all corporations -- profit, non-profit and ecclesiastical -- had the First Amendment right to use their corporate funds to voice and "broadcast" their political and economic ideas (as The New York Times or The Washington Post do on a daily basis), the court was vilified.

The essence of Citizens United was that your right to "speak" necessarily assumes that someone who disagrees with you has the right to engage in "counter-speech."

When I was a law student, one of my professors said, "A nation teaming with a myriad of competing entities, large and small, each espousing and pursuing its own competing interest, must of necessity remain free and democratic. The totalitarian state can brook no dissenting entities."

His remark was reminiscent of what the great Justice Oliver Holmes said in Abrams v. U.S. "Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition.

"To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent …

"But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe ... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market ….

"That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

"Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country."

So what is happening in our modern "free marketplace of ideas?"

When I was a boy, living in a Chicago suburb, Chicago had four major newspapers: the Chicago Tribune, the Sun Times, the Daily News and the Herald American. They spoke with very different voices. The Tribune was staunchly conservative. The Sun Times was pro-Democrat, but independent of Chicago political control. The Daily News was scholarly and literary. The Herald American was something right out of Ben Hecht's play, the"Front Page."

Today, only the Tribune and Sun Times survive.

Running parallel to the demise of many newspapers is the phenomenon of merger. In June 2000, the Tribune acquired the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company.

That merger added seven daily newspapers to the Tribune's chain, including the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, and the Long Island-based Newday. Additionally, the Tribune acquired TV stations in New York and LA to go along with WGN-Chicago.

As each independent newspaper, TV station or radio station died off, America lost one more independent purveyor of ideas. As media holding companies gobble up small media companies, "thought monopoly" tends to replace diverse and independent thought.

But what should be more worrisome is the emergence of the intolerant tyranny of "political correctness." Disfavored speakers are shouted down so their voices can't be heard. Riot, as at Berkeley, becomes the left's weapon of choice to suppress disfavored speech. The infallible apostles of the religion of "clean energy," hold that "error has no rights," and that any politician or corporation espousing contrary "heretical" views must be silenced -- denied any right of "counter-speech." What other way of thinking can justify the attempted assassination of Rep. Steve Scalise and his fellow baseball-practicing Republican Congressmen because their politics was objectionable to the shooter?

When I was a boy, that's exactly the way things were in the USSR. All newspapers and media were a monopoly of the Communist Party and the Soviet State. All Soviet "truth" came from Pravda, or other state-controlled media. There was no marketplace of ideas.

Dissent was punishable with a one-way ticket to Siberia. Ancient history? How is counter speech being tolerated in Venezuela today?

The choice is yours: a free marketplace of ideas, or totalitarianism.

Posted: QCOline.com July 16, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea