Perhaps, because I spent 26 years on the bench, I have never had an iota of use for political correctness or lies. I believe they stand in the way of finding facts -- of determining the truth.
For a verdict to be just, it must be based on the truth. On a larger scale, for a democracy to function, the voters must also have the truth. Do not misunderstand. I have no use for liars.
But in silencing a speaker as a “liar,” “bigot,” “fear-monger,” or “war-monger,” the politically correct, true-believer may well be squelching truth and imperiling the nation.
Our Supreme Court has said our judicial system “assumes that adversarial testing [of evidence] will ultimately advance the public interest in truth and fairness. Our belief [is] that debate between adversaries is ... essential to the truth-seeking function of trials.”
An English Judge, Lord Eldon, perhaps put it best: “Truth is best discovered by powerful statements on both sides of the question.”
Our Supreme Court summed it up: “The very premise of our adversary system ... is that partisan advocacy on both sides of a case will best promote the ultimate objective.”
Nearly 100 years ago, in his great dissenting opinion in Abrams v. U.S. (1919) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:
“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. ...
“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, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
“That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment ... 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.”
In 2012, in U.S. v. Alvarez, our Supreme Court once again, in a case involving a man prosecuted for lying about having received the Congressional Medal of Honor, followed the lead of Justice Holmes.
“Content-based restrictions on speech have been permitted, as a general matter, only when confined to the few ‘historic and traditional categories [of expression] long familiar to the bar,’ ... Among these categories are advocacy intended, and likely, to incite imminent lawless action, ... obscenity, ... defamation, ... speech integral to criminal conduct, ... so-called ‘fighting words,’ ... child pornography ... fraud, ... and speech presenting some grave and imminent threat the government has the power to prevent ...
“Absent ... is any general exception to the First Amendment for false statements. This comports with the common understanding that some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee.
“The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. ... Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person.”
The danger of political correctness is best illustrated by the case of Winston Churchill. During the 1930s, Churchill was a voice crying in the wilderness. For his incessant attempts to warn the British people against Adolf Hitler’s intentions, Churchill was labeled a “war-monger,” a “militarist,” a “fear-monger.”
In the first volume of his history of WWII, Churchill writes, “The multitudes remained plunged in ignorance of the simplest ... facts, and their leaders seeking there votes, did not dare to undeceive them. The newspapers, after their fashion, reflected and emphasized the prevailing opinions. ... No one in great authority had the wit, ascendancy or detachment from public folly to declare these fundamental brutal facts to the electorate; nor would anyone have been believed if they had.”
In reference to Britain’s utter unpreparedness to oppose Hitler, Churchill writes with bitterness of what we now call political correctness:
“We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history the conduct [of all parties], both in and out of office. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation.”
When Hitler struck in 1939, Churchill was vindicated. His warning came true.
Those who sought to silence him, had been wrong. And in being wrong, they enabled Hitler to ravage Europe, murder 6 million Jews and nearly win the war.
Posted: Saturday, February 6, 2016 12:00 am.
