After reading Charlotte Allen’s blog on “The Left’s War on Free Speech,” it’s difficult to conclude that the so-called progressives at the American Civil Liberties Union were ever much dedicated to free speech. More likely, they’ve been committed to squashing it. And now it seems the time is ripe for them to do so. Allen quotes several advocates for curbing the right to think out loud. In part, she writes:
The watchword was that of one of the Supreme Court’s most liberal justices, Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), who wrote: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Now for many progressives, it seems, the remedy is…enforced silence.-
Now for many progressives, it seems, the remedy is …enforced silence. Here is author William D. Cohan, writing in the Huffington Post to wonder “if there should be limits to saying or writing whatever you please in online forums that can sully someone’s reputation with impunity and impair his or her ability to make a living.”
This sort of thing should make us all shudder. Allen continues:
Cohan’s Huffington Post piece is titled “How Much Free Speech Is Too Much?” His answer:
“What’s clear is that we’re are at a crucial moment where the ability of technology to permit instant, unvetted and unfiltered commentary is running head-first into the justified concerns of those whose reputations can be torn asunder unfairly by it. It’s a conundrum for sure and one that needs some serious sorting out.”
He’s not the only liberal to complain that America’s 1st Amendment allows just plain too much free speech.
Cohan echoes the voice of tyranny quoted in The Singing Revolution: “Whenever you give free speech to people, then things get out of hand.”
In fact, free speech is a use it or lose it proposition. Keep talking!
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