Since the republican form of government presupposes freedom of speech as axiomatic, does it really need a defense? Logically speaking, it would not. Yet, throughout our country, public forums of citizens are being organized for the purpose of intelligent and frank analyses of and discussions regarding public questions. Perhaps this is symptomatic of a sentiment that there must be this kind of participation in matters politic lest such participation be curtailed and civil liberty conceivably perish in the end. Should it be that such misgivings have actually been felt, it may also be known that they are not without foundation.
What should be the necessity for these many and imposing discourses and declarations, pro or con, regarding what has appeared to be the axiom of freedom of speech in a democracy? Would they not really seem to give indication of some subtle undercurrent of intolerant thought on the one hand or possibly of a radicalism and license in speech on the other, both of which threaten to break forth into a violent eruption jeopardizing the exercise of that civil right? That such is the case we can easily recognize in foreign and even domestic affairs. In some quarters freedom of speech has been abolished by governmental decree, while in other instances the abolition of freedom of speech has been brought on by the articulate but irrational sentiment of the masses. Indeed, national crises have a way of causing mass hysteria in which individual liberties are suppressed. Wars are such instances, but equally also, the so -called “war in peace” concerning which not a little has been heard of late, and it should be remembered that in our complex civilization it is impossible to eliminate the effect of past events or to achieve an airtight insulation against foreign influences.
Strictures in Time of War
How well do we remember the strictures placed upon public speech during the period of our participation in the World War! And the most drastic of these were applied by public opinion even upon perfectly harmless language. That war psychology gave birth to the enactment of anti-free-speech laws in 34 states since 1917. While the original purpose of these laws was to control and eliminate sedition and criminal syndicalism, it is apparent that they may lend themselves to applications exceeding in the limitation of speech the intent of their authors. The tendency toward legislative restrictions on freedom of speech has other ramifications. Out of the depression crisis and the drastic measures taken for the purposes of saving the situation, emerged a spirit that wished to find in emergencies the justification for the employment of extraordinary powers that would brook no resistance and would regard public criticism under the caption of sedition. The “crackdown” tactics of the blue eagle were definitely tending toward the restriction of free discussion in newspapers; and strange enough, even a code for the churches was proposed. Outside of our country it is now not uncommon for freedom of speech to be abolished. The philosophy of some states regards freedom of speech as a vice rather than as a virtue.
Two observations at this point may serve to clear the ground for what follows.
None other than Abraham Lincoln justified the suppression of free speech in the face of serious emergency, and did so by arguing: “I can no more be persuaded that the government can constitutionally take no strong measures in time of rebellion because it can be shown that the same could not lawfully be taken in time of peace, than I can be persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man which is not good for a well one.” This logic would seem invulnerable, but its implications are dangerous to the democratic theory of government that Lincoln himself so classically enunciated. Does democracy cease in a national crisis? Whose is the right to declare war? Surely, in war the people are not the ones who have become sick and are in need of a doctor to prescribe heroic medicine for them. If a government is in need of the public’s counsel and representation in peace, what makes that unnecessary in war? If free speech is normally a wholesome thing serving to direct a nation helpfully, why should it not be desirable when the nation is in a state of ill-health? Is it not true that crises may arise of equal danger to a nation though no state of war exists, and is then the suspension of ordinary civil liberties, among them free speech, justified? If so, when may freedom of speech flourish? Obviously, any situation could be construed as in need of emergency measures, and the local upshot of such reasoning would be a corporate state.
Wars Won Without Suppression of Free Speech
On the other hand, a war can be won without the suppression of speech, i.e., of a free speech which is not actually treasonable by being a deliberate communication of information to the enemy. Rupert Hughes tells of having lived in England when that country was at war with the Boers. “Hyde Park,” he writes (1927), “has always been sacred to free speech, and one afternoon I saw an old white-bearded pacifist denouncing the government for attacking the Boers. He would have been lynched in this country for the same conduct during any of our wars. One half-drunken soldier, just back from South Africa, grew so indignant that he began to call the old man names. The crowd at once protested and roared, ‘Fair pl’y! Fair pl’y!’ and let the old man talk himself out. England won the war without checking freedom of speech.” The classicist among historians, Athenian Thucydides, put into the mouth of Pericles an undying eulogy of his city’s democracy: “Although domestic affairs absorb much of our time, we pay assiduous attention to our politics, and among all the calls of business we are well versed in the art of statescraft…. We can either criticize others’ proposals or formulate our own; since to us discussion is no obstacle to action, but action without discussion can have no possible chance of success. For herein lies our gain, that we bring to the battle not only an unequaled courage, but also the advantage of previous debate.” The survival of Athens over Sparta justified the wisdom of the Periclean point of view.
Despotisms, ancient and modern, have developed along almost invariable lines and manifest phenomena that are instructive to those who are concerned about civil liberties, especially about that of our present subject. Repressive of free speech as these despotisms are, they all had their genesis of times when free speech was permitted. Taking free advantage of that freedom, and loudly demanding the right of it, if at any time a threat against it appeared, they finally created incidents that could be turned to their advantage and upon rising into power suppressed those very liberties that they had formerly claimed for themselves. I cannot help citing Thucydides once more in an observation regarding the rise of tyrannies (e.g., the kind that caused the downfall of Athens) that is strikingly contemporary in significance. “Thus the class war led to a complete moral breakdown throughout the Greek world. Sincerity, one of the chief elements in idealism, was laughed out of existence; and a spirit of suspicious antagonism prevailed. Conciliation could find no basis, seeing that pledges had lost their validity and oaths their sanction. Men relied solely upon a despairing resolve to take nothing for granted and security was sought by precautionary measures, not by mutual trust. Inferior intelligences usually had the best of it; for consciousness of their own inadequacy and the dread lest an opponent’s quicker wits or superior powers of speech would enable him to get his blows in first, inclined them to ruthless action.” This fine commentary strongly hints at that psychosis that is behind the political philosophy of suppression.
The Concept of a State God
The nations of antiquity had developed with certain universal presuppositions. Among these were the slavery of the majority, and a religious sanction taking the form of either a city-state or national cult on the one hand, or on the other, associations of deity for the ruler. Obviously, in those monarchies where the king was the incarnation of Ra or the divine genius of his empire or the representative of Asshur, public participation in matters of government was precluded by the simple fact that the decrees from the throne partook of the essence of oracular utterances. In the centuries that we call the Middle Ages and that represented the implanting of the Roman imperial ideal upon European territories, the ancient concept was refined into an abstract yet practical outworking worldview, through the scholastic application of a synthesis between Aristotelianism and a theological interpretation of the universe centered around the concept of the “State God.” The religious presupposition persisted with its implication of “divine right.” Imperium and sacerdotium were congruent. The philosophy of realism defined the nation as a universal, that is, a metaphysical entity, in which the individual personality was completely submerged. Furthermore, on that view no improvement could be made in the existing state of things; for whatever was, was right. Scholars and thinkers had only one function, namely, to justify and approve of things as they were.
This political theory has its outcropping in the contemporary philosophies of corporate states and other intensive forms of nationalism. Here we have notions of graduated degrees of citizenship; government by decrees that know no free reactions in speech by citizens, and that tacitly, at least, imply the claim for themselves of oracular revelation or the equivalent thereof; and even the religious sanction, be it the church which Fascism appropriates for itself (though they are by no means synonymous), or a Teutonic religion to embrace all Germans, or a national Shinto, or a Soviet antireligion which, after all, manifests itself with all the psychological symptoms of religious fervor and actually employs cult practices, such as the public display of the embalmed remains of its founder. Apropos of this I quote the trenchant analysis of the situation made by Dr. Nichol Macnicol of Edinburgh, formerly Wilde Lecturer on Natural and Comparative Religion in Oxford University, in a lecture delivered last year at Columbia University on “Religious Values of Contemporary Indian Nationalism”: “What we see in the case of the violent and uncontrolled nationalisms that have arisen in so many lands, both of the East and of the West, in recent years is that they take to themselves in their arrogance the authority that belongs to God only and claim the supreme lordship over men’s lives; such a nationalism has been transformed in large measure into a religion.”
This article first appeared in Liberty magazine in 1938, second quarterly issue. Obviously, with World War II looming, the topic was of more than theoretical interest. This is one of a series of articles from the Liberty heritage that we have reused during the 100th year of publication to remind our readers of the consistency in the message over the past century. Editor.
This article first appeared in Liberty magazine
in 1938, second quarterly issue. Obviously, with
World War II looming, the topic was of more than
theoretical interest. This is one of a series of articles
from the Liberty heritage that we have reused
during the 100th year of publication to remind
our readers of the consistency in the message over
the past century. Editor.
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