David Michael Miller
Now is a moment in history when we get to do some hard thinking about what free speech means in a free society.
On the one hand we have clown candidate Donald Trump proving that it is our birthright as Americans to make idiots of ourselves in the public square. Trump has spent his campaign insulting every person and group he can think of, endlessly bragging about everything from his wealth to how many women he’s slept with, and making outrageous, fact-free claims. He’s said, for example, that the president wants to allow 200,000 Syrian refugees into the country when there is no such plan and that police refuse to go into certain parts of London for fear of Muslim terrorists who control those neighborhoods. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said that that simply isn’t true but that there are parts of New York he wouldn’t go to for fear of running into Donald Trump.
Trump proves that the First Amendment is a very long rope that a person can use to wrap around his own neck. He won’t be the Republican nominee, much less president of the United States, but the fact that his fascist (that word is not over-the-top) rhetoric is gaining traction with a significant fraction of Americans should be a cause for concern. If the polls are to be believed, Trump’s ideas resonate with about one in three Republican voters, which would make that maybe one in 10 Americans.
Nonetheless, when the First Amendment is firing on all cylinders with a robust free press and a good educational system, foolish ideas will be their own undoing. I have confidence that the very same speech rights that allow Trump to say idiotic things will cause his failure as a candidate in the end.
On the other side of the free speech debate is what Trump likes to refer to as “politically correct” speech, usually associated with some controversies on university campuses. That has flared up here when what appeared to be a relatively innocuous statement by UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank was met with resistance from some professors who now want the regents to weigh in with a different policy.
The part of Blank’s statement that got people’s hackles up was this: “While individuals are always free to express their own beliefs, no one is entitled to express them in ways that diminish others, or that devalue the presence of anyone that is part of our Badger community.”
I didn’t initially read that as especially problematic, but three professors took issue with Blank’s statement in what I took to be a thoughtful piece in the Wisconsin State Journal. I read it and understood their point.
Now, the regents have passed a new statement that shades more in the direction of free speech rights. “Although the university greatly values civility,” it reads, “concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as justification for closing off discussion of ideas.”
That’s another statement that’s hard to disagree with, but it seems to me that what’s really needed is just a healthy dose of good judgment. If we’re going to be good citizens then we should acknowledge that we have not just rights but also responsibilities.
As speakers we have a responsibility to try not to be unnecessarily offensive, understanding that all offensive comments are not necessarily a bad thing. Just the other day, for example, I wrote about guns and implied that people who want a concealed carry permit are paranoid. That would be pretty offensive to anybody with one of those permits, and I knew it when I wrote it. I intended to offend because I really do think it is crazy and irresponsible for people to carry a loaded firearm in public. I presented statistics on firearm use to back up my argument. I thought I was making a valid point in a way that would bring attention to it.
You might disagree and call me paranoid for being so worried about people packing heat. You could summon your own facts and show that concealed carry, while it hasn’t prevented a lot of crime, hasn’t resulted in a lot of mayhem either. So, all right, call me paranoid. I’ll take it in the spirit it was offered. I won’t demand an apology or go look for a safe space. I’m making spirited comments in the public square, and I should be able to handle the return fire.
Which brings me to my second point. We have a responsibility as listeners to not go out of our way to seek out offense. And once we hear something that bothers us, I think we should give the speaker broad leeway. The problem with listening closely for offense is that you tend to not hear other valid points that are being made.
So we’ve got people like Trump and his followers going out of their way to give offense while folks in another world are going out of their way to find it. What’s needed in both cases are not laws, policies or codes that impinge on speech. What’s needed is just some good judgment.
