Brainwashing

...Few legal theories or concepts of speech in a liberal democracy reach beyond Government regulation of private speech to consider the Government's own involvement in communication enterprises...

...Our large and generally robust private media, the balkanization of our Government into Federal, state, and thousands of local jurisdictions, and our free-speech traditions protect us from the publishing of a Pravda or the hanging of loudspeakers in Hanover Square...

...The facts are startling...

...This link between free expression and self-governance, Yudof says, should apply to Government speech as well...

...Through these and other examples, Yudof, a law professor at the University of Texas, persuasively argues that the threat of indoctrination in America is both real and occasionally realized...

...Many will disagree, too, with Yudof s suggested solution for the problem of propaganda...

...From the hubbub of this "marketplace of ideas," the theory goes, the citizens of a democracy—the self-governors—will be fully informed and can intelligently decide whom to vote for and what opinions to form on important issues of the day...

...As a lawyer, Yudof sees significant First Amendment issues in our general inattention to Government speech and its dangers...

...Withholding the Pentagon papers," he writes, "may be as effective in distorting national policy debates as silencing antiwar advocates...

...And so, Yudof concludes, the courts and the legislatures should scrutinize Government speech to make sure it does not skew our system of self-governance...

...This is not easy, he admits: We all rely on the Government for much vital information, and it sometimes requires Solomonic wisdom to decide whether particular Government utterances are informational or indoctrinating...

...11 At the height of the Boston busing crisis in the early 1970s, that city's school committee distributed to its 97,000 students a partisan pamphlet urging passage of a state anti-busing law...

...Even the staunchest champions of free speech, he believes, simply read the First Amendment too stingily: "Students of the Constitution," he observes, "endlessly debate whether small groups of Nazis may march...

...During World War I, the Creel Committee canvassed the country with propaganda intended to justify American involvement in the war...

...And Government silence, Yudof says, can be as influential as Government speech...

...Francis J. Flaherty (Francis J. Flaherty, a laywer, is a contributing editor of The Progressive and a former editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review...

...Though Yudof expects that the institutional jealousy between the legislative and executive branches will make legislators good watchdogs, one need look no further back than the McCarthy era to wonder how holy the First Amendment is in the halls of Congress...

...If, for instance, Congress forbids anarchists from promoting their ideas, then not only are anarchists denied the vital right of self-expression, but the anarchists' fellow citizens are themselves deprived of hearing the anarchists' point of view...

...And those who cherish free speech, he rightly claims, logically should look at Government speech as well as Government abridgements of private speech in their efforts to preserve that sine qua non of self-government...

...For all the alarms his topic rings, Yudof is no doomsayer...

...Our Federal, state, and local governments, he says, possess vast resources, command the close attention of the mass media, and monopolize much vital public information...

...But the march of Government, a communicator immensely more powerful than a small group of malcontents, is ignored...

...But there has been and will continue to be propaganda here, Yudof says...

...Unlike many lawyer-authors, Yudof does not confine himself to legal issues, nor does he succumb to the overly footnoted style common in constitutional discourse...

...If a state spends money in a campaign against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, for instance, then the public's view of the wisdom of that law will be just as distorted as would be their assessment of anarchism should the Government forbid discussion of that political doctrine...

...Despite the historic role of the courts as guardians of the First Amendment, Yudof favors more limited judicial involvement in matters of Government speech...

...H In 1979, the Alaska legislature ran a $2.3 million advertising campaign to drum up support for a Federal bill permitting development of Alaska's wilds...

...Through the years, countless judges and lawyers have observed that the American right of free speech is bound up with American democracy...

...But, Yudof rightly contends, if we look beyond the text of the amendment to its goals, we'll find that Government speech is implicated as well...

...But when the Government interferes with this intellectual bazaar, self-government is endangered...

...He agrees that, for many reasons, there is no imminent threat of wholesale brainwashing in America...

...In lively and readable prose, he scrutinizes all aspects of the phenomenon of propaganda: its history, its politics, its relationship to the First Amendment, and the tough questions it raises about how to distinguish "good" Government speech from the propagandistic variety...

...As alarming as Yudof s limning of American propaganda is, the most important feature of this book is his broad reading of the First Amendment...

...There may not be any Government loudspeakers blaring in our streets, says Mark G. Yudof in When Government Speaks, but there is, in fact, American propaganda: 11 In 1943, the Roosevelt Administration published a self-congratulatory brochure titled Roosevelt of America—President, Champion of Liberty, United States Leader in the War to Win Lasting and Worldwide Peace...

...And people cannot govern themselves on the basis of less than full information...

...In 1975, the Federal Government was one of the nation's ten largest advertisers...

...Both types of Government intervention, Yudof argues, tamper with the free marketplace of ideas...

...Yudof acknowledges that civil libertarians focus on Government restriction of private speech because that is what the First Amendment talks about: "Congress shall make no law," the amendment commands, "abridging the freedom of speech...

...Courts faced with such claims, he says, should tell the Congress or the relevant state legislature that it must explicitly authorize the Government communication at issue...

...In democracies the people rule, and to rule effectively the people must be able to discuss and debate public issues freely, without any restriction or fear of retribution...