Freedom of speech is a protected right, but also a complex issue

February 21, 2023

One of the founding principles of the United States that Americans cherish is the right to freedom of speech. Its origins date back to ancient Greece. The Greeks considered free speech, meaning to “speak candidly,” a democratic principle.

America is one of the nations where this is considered important. Our Founders thought it was so important as to earn inclusion in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Americans have the protected right to criticize the government and speak their minds without fear of being censored or persecuted.

Through the two-plus centuries of America’s existence, the courts have ruled on this right. For example, in 1919, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Schenck v. United States that individuals are not entitled to speech that presents a “clear and present danger” to society. On the other hand, in1969, the court declared in Brandenburg v. Ohio that, generally, even inflammatory speech, such as racist language by a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, should be protected unless it is likely to cause violence.

So, dangerous language is not protected, but inflammatory speech that is not dangerous is protected.

In a free society, all citizens must be able to think for themselves, to choose their goals and pathways to achieve them. In America, people are free to express their ideas, even if those ideas are unpopular, or wrong. And, as we have seen, those “wrong” ideas may sometimes be proven right. 

But on the world stage, just how free is speech in America? World Population Review in 2020 listed the “Top 30 Countries with the Most Freedom of Speech/Expression.” And the United States ranks near the bottom of that list, along with Luxembourg and Peru, with a rating of .74 on a 1.00-point scale

Leading the world are: Denmark at .95; Belgium at .87; and Finland, Switzerland and Uruguay at .86. In between those high marks and the U.S. position are 22 other nations who rated higher than we did. Lowest of all nations is Panama at .65. We are closer to the bottom than we are to the top.

Interestingly, while the U.S. ranked at the bottom of the top 30 nations for free speech, a Pew Research Center poll ranked the U.S. at the very top of the list of “Whose Citizens Value Free Speech the Most.”

Why would the nation whose citizens value free speech more than any other nation not have the greatest degree of free speech?

“We the people tell the government what to do. It doesn’t tell us,” former President Ronald Reagan once said. “We the people are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. 

“Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our constitution is a document in which we the people tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the people are free,” he said. 

Obviously, if the American people value free speech more than any other people, and if they have told the government through the Constitution that we will have free speech, then government isn’t doing its job on this subject.

There is incontrovertible evidence that some social media platforms play favorites with political opinions. Platforms have the right to control content. They can control “misinformation” or “disinformation,” and “false information.” But it is not okay to term things as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” or say that something is “false” because it is contrary to their political opinion.

A New York Post opinion piece by Miranda Devine said that a “little-noticed federal lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, is uncovering astonishing evidence of an entrenched censorship scheme cooked up between the federal government and Big Tech …” Sixty-seven officials and agencies are accused of pressuring Facebook, Twitter and Google to censor users for alleged misinformation or disinformation. The Post was one victim of this alleged malfeasance.

Former Hawaii Democrat Congresswoman and former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard appeared before a new subcommittee of the House of Representatives that is dedicated to probing the weaponization of the federal government earlier this month. She expressed the necessity of maintaining free speech in the United States, even when some of that speech is objectionable to some, and that includes hate speech, she said.

She cited efforts by social media to control the information that users could see, including her accounts on some of those media sites that were suspended or blocked without explanation. 

This action has social media, and perhaps also federal government agencies, putting themselves in place to decide what the rest of us can and will see, hear and read. Having some ideas blocked by social media — or worse, government agencies — is not freedom of speech. It is, in fact, un-American.

In addition to the previous quote from Reagan, he also offered these, which are fitting: “Government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem." And, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

All of those who are elected, appointed or hired to work for the people in the federal government need to stop being politicians and start being Americans.