Speaking too Freel
WOLFSON, ADAM
Books Speaking Too Freely By Adam Wolfson With the recent electoral triumph of conservatism, the question will increasingly be asked: What is this "conservatism"? How that question is answered is...
...To them, family values are a siren song, distracting us from the "bigger task in a democracy" (as the foreword to Speaking Freely has it): "safeguarding freedom of speech...
...Says one of them, "There is a regulatory slippery slope...
...His co-contributors fret over a new road to serfdom...
...And Bandow argues that "[i]t makes no sense to force New York City to abide by the values of Salt Lake City"-as though left-wing intellectuals and avant-garde artists were being persecuted by middle America...
...Interestingly enough, the authors avoid referring to themselves as libertarian...
...But we would benefit from exploring what the founders intended by the word "speech" and why they thought "speech" worth protecting...
...why the Federal Communications Commission must be combated...
...So, although Speaking Freely describes itself as "written by and for conservatives," it is actually a book written by persons belonging to a relatively modern species of conservatism, known more properly as libertarianism...
...For starters, individual rights are not self-enforcing...
...But the First Amendment does not exist in a moral vacuum...
...Now: It is true that conservatives have made their peace with capitalism...
...Besides, better that they read the real thing than watch a Hollywood dramatization...
...In fact, the culture war had been onesided until quite recently, when middle America awoke to discover that it could not regulate abortion, could not pray in its schools, and was required by law to tolerate flag burning and pornography...
...I myself am not too worried that any of this will happen...
...How that question is answered is important, for it is no longer merely an academic one, fought out among out-of-power conservatives...
...Still another warns that the FCC could condemn Joyce's Ulysses as "indecent...
...Devotion to the latter ideal has meant that conservatives traditionally have, in fact, supported limits on freedom of speech...
...For example, Corry, without irony, compares the V-chip legislation to "George Orwell's old horror: the Ministry of Truth...
...Of course, parents should do as much as they can...
...that feels it has a "right" to pornography...
...Theoretical generalizations about freedom and responsibility, however intelligent, will do little to help ordinary Americans maintain, or regain, control over their homes and neighborhoods...
...In fact, the government would be doing no more than leveling the playing field a bit between the parent and Hollywood...
...Rather, how the question is answered will have serious legislative consequences...
...Signs of decay are everywhere around us, and they especially animate the most potent segment of the contemporary Republican party: religious conservatives...
...Most conservatives, contrary to the suspicions of some libertarians, do indeed regard freedom of speech as an indispensable right...
...Thus the futility of Doug Bandow's urging parents to monitor their children's viewing habits...
...Another contributor, Doug Bandow, alleges that censorship enhances the role and power of the state at the expense of the individual...
...Writes contributor John Corry, "Conservatism seeks to expand, not curtail, our range of choices...
...The contributors are dismayed that the Republican Congress is acquiescing in legislative "attacks on the First Amendment," introduced by liberal Democrats...
...To be sure, a diet of Friedman and Hayek is crucial to understanding the many flaws of socialism...
...Take the question of V-chip legislation-V for violence...
...But the problems faced by America today are fundamentally social and moral...
...Such an investigation would shed light on whether there is a constitutional right to watch peep shows...
...Adam Thierer of the Heritage Foundation posits a constitutional rationale for why regulations of content violate the First Amendment, only subsequently observing that "moral questions remain to be resolved about whether government efforts to promote or regulate children's programming are really just...
...But the linking of freedom of speech to limited government is not so simple...
...Instead, conservatives have sought to balance the freedom of the Big City with the virtue of the Small City...
...Moral judgments may be difficult, but they are worth making because they are inseparable from living in a decent society...
...In his 1758 "Letter to M. d'Alembert," Rousseau points out that there is a place for censorship in the small republic, but not in the big, bustling commercial city...
...Rousseau's Big City-where there is a right of sorts to freedom of speech, but where the populace is made up largely of "rascals," "without religion or principle"-has never been the locus of American conservatives...
...But about the only philosophic forefathers they mention are Friedman and Hayek...
...A new book, which claims to be from a "conservative perspective," makes the case that conservatives who favor any limits on speech- censorship, to be blunt-are untrue to their conservatism...
...This reticence seems caused, not by relativism, but by a fear that even minor limits on liberty inevitably culminate in totalitarian shackles...
...In the end, libertarians are not overly concerned with family values...
...why commercial speech deserves the same legal protections as political speech...
...Another worries that a TV rating system "would effectively rule some Biblical dramatizations and much of Shakespeare off the air...
...But there is an even more essential reason why limited government is no companion of an expansive right to freedom of speech...
...censorship is hopelessly antagonistic to both of them...
...Corry cites the plain words of the First Amendment- "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech"- as though they settled the matter...
...This is so because, in the big city, vulgar amusements and a large police force, rather than virtue and self-discipline, keep the populace from doing great harm to one another and to the state...
...But without something like the V-chip, working parents have no way of preventing their kids from feasting on the daily helping of sex and violence served up by Hollywood...
...The writers in Speaking Freely acknowledge that children themselves understand that they are influenced by values depicted on TV, and that most Americans believe that the government has a role to play in protecting the social and moral fabric of the nation...
...And if it does, those who desire to read the Bible or Shakespeare will find an old copy somewhere...
...Fortunately, the American people have not slipped so far...
...But Daniel E. Troy, a former law clerk of Judge Robert H. Bork, sounds much like a liberal activist when he insists that the courts must not defer to legislatures in determining the extent of the First Amendment...
...Those who are certain that even minor regulations of speech lead straight to the Gulag should consider another slippery slope: A people that cares more for petty amusements than for voting...
...Conservatives, they assert, must return to their principles-libertarian ones...
...It is a part of a whole, the U.S...
...This is all the more necessary today, when, in many middle- and lower-middle-class families, both parents must work...
...Troy is skeptical that they can manage to distinguish commercial speech from non-commercial speech...
...The Speaking Freely essayists condemn even minor regulations as violations of "conservative" principle...
...Must there be conflict between the First Amendment and family values...
...This would require that manufacturers place in TV sets a computer chip capable of screening out programming unsuitable for younger children...
...But Bandow is skeptical that Americans can even come up with a workable definition of pornography...
...The authors' argument runs as follows: The aims of conservatism have always been liberty and limited government...
...And nowhere more than in the area of free speech...
...Adam Wolfson is the executive editor of the Public Interest...
...But when it includes the freedom to make movies depicting the torching of subway attendants-and a real attendant by the name of Harry Kaufman actually gets torched and killed-some re-thinking is due...
...that constructs a conflict between freedom of speech and the moral education of its children (and opts for the former)-this people will scarcely care whether it rules itself or is ruled by a junta...
...It takes a strong central government to enforce a broad right to freedom of speech...
...but they have never regarded it as the ideal...
...Though no government censorship is involved (the owner of the TV, not any bureaucrat, activates the chip), John Corry condemns this legislation as an unwarranted government curtailment of individual rights...
...that considers even so small a measure as the V-chip an unjustified infringement upon its "liberty...
...The book, a collection of essays titled Speaking Freely: The Public Interest in Unfettered Speech: Essays from a Conservative Perspective (The Media Institute, 113 pages, $14.95), touches on a variety of themes: why conservatives should avoid the (liberal) trap of censoring television violence...
...And yet, if there need to be limits on speech, of what sort should they be...
...Conservatives should be as much the friends of ordinary Americans as of abstract principles...
...It is thus unsurprising that the Supreme Court's ever-more generous reading of the First Amendment has gone hand in glove with the expansion of the federal government's power in the 20th century...
...Barely a word is said of Burke, Aristotle, or Tocqueville- even of Locke...
...Constitution, the preamble to which begins by invoking what should be more than an afterthought: the matter of justice...
...Someone, after all, has to ensure that these rights are protected...
Vol. 1 • December 1995 • No. 15
