When people call for censorship,
they often argue that offensive speech is harmful to the vulnerable and oppressed.
But the reality is that a system of robust and
uninhibited free speech is actually an oppressed person's strongest weapon.
Oppressed and marginalized minorities, by definition, have little political power.
Powerful majorities that are allowed to implement restrictions on speech will
inevitably do so in a way that guards the status quo from dissent and disruption.
This is why our founders considered the right to free speech so
important that they purposely took that power away.
Granting majorities the authority to determine when speech is harmful and
to censor it only invites further oppression.
And you don't need to look too far back in history to see how that plays out.
In 1835, abolitionists mailed over 100,000 anti-slavery pamphlets to
slaveholders in the South.
This led to violence by slaveholders against abolition advocates and
those seen as interfering with slavery.
In a letter to his colleague, Postmaster General Amos Kendall described
the pamphlets as, quote, incendiary missiles intended to inflame.
He went so far as to say that it was patriotic to suppress them
in order to protect their local communities.
Within weeks, postmasters had barred abolitionist pamphlets from the mail and
many communities passed laws banning such literature outright.
Censorship of civil rights advocacy continued during the civil rights movement
of the 1950s and the 1960s.
Student protesters in South Carolina and Louisiana were arrested for disturbing
the peace, not because they were violent, but because their opponents were.
Eventually, the Supreme Court overturned these convictions on the ground that
a listener's reaction to the students' advocacy could not be used to punish or
silence an unpopular point of view.
But the Abolitionist and Civil Rights movements are not the only causes to have
suffered the sting of censorship.
Women in the 19th century who wished to publish
often had to write under male pen names.
And women suffragettes face arrest as they picketed and demonstrated for
their right to vote.
Lesbian and
gay activists have seen their literature and art prohibited as obscenity.
Preventing them for
decades from integrating themselves from the culture and norms of American society.
High school students have faced obstruction from administrators
when they've sought to establish gay straight alliance clubs.
In 1985, Texas A&M University refused to grant recognition to
the Gay Student Services club, with the Board of Regents taking the position that
quote so-called gay activities run diabolically counter to the traditions and
standards of Texas A&M University.
A federal appellate court later ruled that the University's actions violated
students' first amendment rights.
In overturning the convictions of the civil rights protesters in the 60s,
the Supreme Court reminded us that dispute is a function of free speech, and
that free speech, quote,
may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest.
Creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.
The American experience has shown that sentiment to be indisputably accurate.
All of these movements have been remarkably successful, and
the world is a far different place as a result.
Minority groups have caused huge cultural shifts and
have gained legal equality at a relatively rapid pace.
History is stocked with ideas like these that began as offensive and
heretical, but ultimately fought their way to acceptance.
Some of them even became the cultural and societal status quo themselves.
But this societal change is only possible through the power of persuasion.
Which in turn relies on a system in which ideas can be freely expressed and
debated without official censorship.
Gay rights and free speech advocate Jonathan Rauch calls this a system of
liberal science, where defensible truths survive rigorous checking through public
discourse and criticism, and ideas found unworthy can be discarded.
Others call this system the marketplace of ideas.
But, no matter what you call it,
it's the only system that ensures the continuous testing of the status quo, and
allows us to explore new and innovative ideas for moving forward.
Had the powers that be been allowed to silence advocates of abolition,
civil rights, women's suffrage and
gay rights, our democracy would look much different today.
Who knows what important changes we would stifle if we don't learn from our past.
Finally, it's important to remember that if you aren't aware of your surroundings,
you can't adequately guard yourself from danger.
Driving certain ideas or thoughts underground does
nothing to eliminate them, and preventing them from being expressed
only robs us of an opportunity.
An opportunity to not only persuade them but
also to be aware of our own surroundings.
As FIRE co-founder and chairman Harvey Silverglate said when defending the rights
of a neo-Nazi group, if there are Nazis in the room, I want to know who they are so
I can keep an eye on them.