This page is intended to be a resource for people defending freedom of speech - especially in the schools. It is conveniently sized for printing. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a discussion of our First Amendment rights.

First Amendment Links: (updated as they come in)
Here are some links to excellent resources on free speech. Feel free to contact me at george@wiman.us to suggest others. I'll add to the list as they come in.

• ACLU Free Speech Section - American Civil Liberties Union resource page
• What you can't say - an essay on heresy by Paul Graham (and feedback)
• A little less freedom of speech - an essay by Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby
• Adversity.net - an activist site countering "reverse discrimination" and racial victimology while observing that, in the final analysis, there is only one kind of discrimination.

Quotes on the first amendment:

"...every time someone is sued or punished or forced to hire a lawyer just for expressing an opinion or making a comment that someone of a different color finds offensive, all of us are left with a little less freedom of speech." - Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

"Back in the era of terms like "well-adjusted," the idea seemed to be that there was something wrong with you if you thought things you didn't dare say out loud. This seems backward. Almost certainly, there is something wrong with you if you don't think things you don't dare say out loud." - Paul Graham

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
-- George Carlin (source unknown)

“When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and to re-establish themselves alone.”
- George Santayana, The Life Of Reason: Reasons in Science (1905-06)

“Sometimes words do hurt, but we learn to live with that hurt as the price of freedom. The alternative is to submit our speech to bias guidelines, official censors, language police, and thought police.”
- Diane Ravitch

“No one has the right to be spared sacrilege - not Jews, not Muslims, not ethnic minorities, not me, and not you.”
- Johathan Rauch

“Ignore them.”
- Johathan Rauch, on what to do about people who say offensive things.

“This and only this: absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.”
- Jonathan Rauch, answering the question, ‘what should be done to asuage the feelings of people who have been offended by the insensitive speech of others.

Discussion about the first amendment:

The authors of our The Bill of Rights did an immortal thing; hauling together in a single work the seminal concepts that made the United States greatest among nations. It guides us in interpreting the Constitution of which it is part. It is a flame that will burn as long as we care to tend it.

But some people are uncomfortable in the glare of that flame. The first amendment in particular seems to make certain individuals shrink back, as if they were afraid of the injury it might do them. Best they should consider the injury it would do us all if we should allow the flame to sputter and grow weak.

Most attacks on the first amendment seem follow these lines:

• The framers didn't really mean it when they said, "no law..."
• Let's restrict your speech, not mine
• They surely didn't mean offensive speech
• Allowing offensive speech might lead to disorder
• Offensive speech fails to respect diversity
• Some restrictions on our rights are needed for the sake of security
• When you work for the government, you should have less freedom of speech

The framers didn't really mean it when they said, "no law..."
Oh, but they did mean it. They knew what bottomless tyranny flows from the notion that the government - especially the whim of a monarch - should dictate our deepest beliefs. They knew the impulse to make others believe as we do runs in human blood, and needed to be addressed right up front.

Let's restrict your speech, not mine...
Assaults on freedom of speech are unrelenting, but no one ever means to curtail their own speech. They believe earnestly that the speech of others poses some threat, either to security or to a civil society. Lately, threats to freedom of speech have taken the form of assertions that offensive speech violates the offended person's rights.

But "freedom from offense" isn't in the constitution, and the notion that offensive speech violates others' rights simply undermines the idea of free speech itself. That assault on free speech should not be supported by the courts, yet every year thousands of lawsuits are filed by someone who was offended by someone else's speech. The courts, by failing to reject these lawsuits, aid and abet the efforts of some citizens to abridge other citizens' freedom of speech.

They surely didn't mean offensive speech.
Few people will state their objection as plainly as this, but it is often the substance of their complaint. What other speech needs protection? And if you could define which offensive speech should be protected, wouldn't that simply begin a game of redefining others' offensive speech into an unprotected category? The Soviet Union used to arrest people who distributed political literature for "selling pornography." For that matter, it was once considered offensive to advocate the independence of the Colonies from the Crown.

Allowing offensive speech might lead to disorder.
Yes, it might. This argument advocates a crime against freedom in the name of public safety. The solution is to teach our children that the correct response to offensive speech is counter-speech. This is where our schools fail miserably to teach a core principle of our democracy: by curtailing our children's freedom of speech - and that of their teachers too. How can they learn how to respond to offensive speech if they are told what they can or cannot say?

Offensive speech fails to respect diversity.
It is hard to fathom what is meant by diversity, when the thoughts and feelings of some group are suppressed to protect the delicate sensibilities of some other group. Do they mean diversity of skin color? Or diversity of ideas? The former can only be served by the latter. And the latter is not served by suppressing anyone's speech.

Some restrictions on our rights are needed for the sake of security.
No doubt the paradox of our rights versus public security is a real head-scratcher, but the framers lived in dangerous times, too. They didn't mean to let us off the hook so easily. So it's a tough problem? We'd better get busy figuring it out.

At least we're keeping teachers from talking about God!
I truly think this is a misinterpretation of the First Amendment - that no one in government, and particularly in schools, can ever express religious faith. This is a blind spot that First Amendment advocates have, because it is a special pleading that the teacher's First Amendment rights must be abridged at the schoolhouse door. But in case no one has noticed, that is still censoring someone's speech and the practice of their religion. Teachers are people too, and they don't cease to be American citizens at work. Children also have a right to know what their teachers really think.

Freedom depends on a "marketplace of ideas," wherein good ideas and bad ideas all compete for the popular mind. I can't fathom the notion that children should be protected from living in such a marketplace, then turned loose upon it when they get a high school diploma. What experience have they had for digesting the flood of malarky that descends upon them then?

Schools best serve children - and therefore society - as a microcosm of the society in which the children will one day live as citizens. It is a terrible to treat children as if they are not citizens, and as if they do not have the same basic rights as the rest of us.

Children are not nearly as stupid as their guardians believe. If you make it clear that there is a difference between the opinions of a teacher and the curriculum of the state, they can follow that. This allows teachers to live as men and women of conscience, and it allows students to learn how to function in the marketplace of ideas.

When you work for the government, you should have less freedom of speech
... because you represent the government. Or so goes the popular reasoning. But this is a terrible message for society, in that it translates into an assumption that our employers own our souls. It's easy for companies to follow that example too, and just reduce everyone to functional automatons at work. Life and work are part of the same thing! You don't stop being a person of conscience because you're drawing a paycheck.

Religious gag rules for teachers, civic officials, etc. amount to a "law prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. Or humanism. Stopping the flow of ideas in - of all places, a school - is preposterous.

How can you be so insensitive?
The overwrought vice of "sensitivity" posing as a virtue threatens freedom of speech in our schools, our newspapers, our workplaces, and even in government. Somehow we have got it in our heads that schools should never offend anyone. The claim is that the offensive speech is "disrespectful of diversity" or that someone's "rights" were violated if they were ever offended.

Diversity has to be all-natural, organic
You can't make artificial diversity. It has to grow from the fertile soil of a society where people are free to speak their minds. It issues from counter speech, from reasoned argument, from a deep conviction on everyone's part that your freedom to have your say ensures my freedom to do the same.

Just to recap: offensive speech should be met with counter-speech. Got it? Not with lawsuits, or legislation, etc.

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