Congress Shall Make No Law…
Free speech is not a partisan issue.
Opinion piece: Anna Kerr
Photo: Kjell Redal
Hooded figures break windows in nearby shops and set fires to the property around them. Others assault a man wearing his “Make America Great Again” hat. Muffled chants fill the air. Armed police lob tear gas in attempts to disperse the rioting crowd.
This was the scene at what started as a peaceful protest after anarchists stole the nation’s attention at University of California, Berkeley in early February 2017.
Students were protesting the “alt-right,” conservative Milo Yiannopoulos’ visit to the campus. Yiannopoulos is infamous among the left for his controversial speeches. Although he claims he is not anti-semitic or racist, his actions and language argue otherwise. His praise for Trump is loyal and unwavering. Yiannopoulos has offended people of diverse identities and backgrounds, especially feminists and members of the LGBTQ community, while identifying as gay himself.
But the destructive scene at UC Berkeley that led to the cancellation of the event not only casts a negative light on our generation’s political reactions — it was also unconstitutional. The authors of the Constitution enacted protections for free speech precisely to protect unpopular opinions, like Yiannopoulos’. Legally, people have the right to speak their minds, especially on matters of public concern, regardless as to whether or not their speech offends listeners.
This idea was reinforced by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio. When Clarence Brandenburg, a prominent Ku Klux Klan leader from rural Ohio, contacted a reporter to cover the rally at which he was to speak. Brandenburg forwarded claims that “our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race,” and that there might be “revengeance” against racial and religious minorities. Despite Brandenburg’s less-than-accurate vocabulary, the Supreme Court determined that what he said was protected under the First Amendment. The Court’s reasoning for the ruling was that Brandenburg’s speech did not carry “a clear and present danger,” and did not “incite imminent lawless action.” These are the standards still applicable today when determining whether any given speech is protected by the Constitution.
Yiannopoulos’ speech at Berkeley did not incite imminent physical violence. The protesters were right to stand up against his visit and their beliefs, as the First Amendment also protects peaceful assembly, but what started as another manifestation of protected speech quickly devolved into a crime. Attempting to silence an individual or a group of people because you disagree with their beliefs does not create a safe or balanced democracy.
With both parties unwilling to acknowledge what needs to change in their own parties and listen to the other side, the gap between them is only growing. I recently heard someone say that we only listen to respond and refute; we do not listen to understand.
In 1616, both the Holy Office of the Vatican and his scientific peers condemned Galileo Galilei’s theory of a universe in which the earth revolves around the sun. In 1859, Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” and received major backlash from religious fundamentalists. Without these voices — both wildly unpopular at their time — we would not be the advanced society we are today.
Former President Barack Obama brought up this idea for the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, “Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.”
If we, as a nation, have any hopes of moving forward as a united people, we must move beyond speech policing. We must listen to understand instead of listen to refute. We cannot claim to be open-minded liberals but be unwilling to investigate and understand the other side.