# On the Restriction of Freedom of Expression
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 19, 2000, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312 "2000-12-19T07:22:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/1 "2000-12-19T07:22:37Z")
**Point.**
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> It is asserted that under the principles of democracy the people, or a majority of them, cannot by vote or otherwise abolish democracy and substitute a totalitarian or other non-democratic form of government; and similarly a majority has no right to abolish the basic mechanism of democracy by voting to prohibit freedom of expression. An existing majority, it is argued, cannot commit the future to a system in which a later majority cannot exercise its will. There is in short no power in a majority to alienate its freedom; there is no freedom not to be free.
–Thomas Emerson, _The System of Freedom of Expression_, p49
**Counter-point.**
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> If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.
–Oliver Wendell Holmes, _Gitlow v. United States_, 268 U.S. 652, 673
What say the Dopers? Should a democratic people have the power to restrict the rights of groups within their borders possessing non-democratic aims? Is “toleration…not owed to the intolerant,” as Emerson puts it, or are the social interests of a democratic society furthered only by free and full expression by all groups equally under the law?[sup]1[/sup]
Thoughts?
[sub][sup]1[/sup]Lest people mistake Emerson for advocating restrictions on non-democratic groups, let me point out that the quotes ascribed to him are positions of devil’s advocate, in a book which makes a strenuous, exacting case against unequal protection of expression. Thomas Emerson is one of this century’s foremost defenders of general civil liberties; so much so that he states the opposing view far better than most who hold it.[/sub]
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/2 "2000-12-19T07:52:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*
> What say the Dopers? Should a democratic people have the power to restrict the rights of groups within their borders possessing non-democratic aims? Is “toleration…not owed to the intolerant,” as Emerson puts it, or are the social interests of a democratic society furthered only by free and full expression by all groups equally under the law?[sup]1[/sup]
>
> Thoughts?
\*\*
Well toleration certainly wouldn’t make sense in some cases. It would have been a bad idea to hire communist to work in any area requiring top secret clearance during the cold war. And in fact background checks and the refusal to hire, or fire anyone currently employed, who were communist also would have been a good idea.
I think the social interest of a free society are served by full expression by all groups under the law. The whole point behind freedom of expression was to protect unpopular ideas. Groups like the KKK, who I as a white male feel threatened by their ideals, need to be able to speak out in public.
I feel that toleration is owed to almost everyone. I can tolerate almost anyone’s speech. The only thing I’m not expected to tolerate is any harmful actions any organization takes against me or someone else.
It is in our best interest to keep an atmosphere where popular and unpopular ideas can be traded.
Marc
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### Author:  [@Ptahlis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ptahlis)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/3 "2000-12-19T15:25:33Z")
I am of a mind that nothing adds a mystique of legitimacy and danger to a group or subject as an official effort to suppress it. I, for instance, do not believe in alien visitations. But when I see documents from 40 years ago released with large blocks of text blacked out, it does pique my curiosity. While I doubt that ET’s travel plans are under that black smear, I wonder just what _is_ the Government hiding from that long ago, in a UFO report no less?
Personally, I believe the only safe thing to do is allow the kooks their opportunity to express themselves. Stupid ideas will always attract a certain number of people, but I’d rather have them out in the open for all to see than operating in secret with a legitimate grudge against society.
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### Author:  [@Pyrrhonist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyrrhonist)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/4 "2000-12-19T15:48:18Z")
[QUOTE]
\*Originally posted by MGibson \*
\*\*
> [@](#):
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> I feel that toleration is owed to almost everyone. I can tolerate almost anyone’s speech. The only thing I’m not expected to tolerate is any harmful actions any organization takes against me or someone else.
> \*\*
I agree. The greatest toleration should be given to the free exchange of bad or unpopular ideas, because who is to say what currently accepted belief will be the unpopular belief of tomorrow. Groups like the KKK or MBLA (however abhorrent) should be allowed to freely exchange ideas, but their exchange should not involve those who don’t want to listen or participate. What people say or do quietly, privately, and unobtrusively should not be restricted; however, restrictions should apply when exchanges force participation or utilize violent or unlawful means. The KKK, for example, could freely discourse on why the laws should he changed to bring back slavery, but they couldn’t subvert the current law by seizing blacks and enslaving them.
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### Author:  [@Freedom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freedom)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/5 "2000-12-19T16:00:42Z")
> [@](#):
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> While I doubt that ET’s travel plans are under that black smear, I wonder just what is the Government hiding from that long ago, in a UFO report no less?
Ever wonder if there is some guy at the CIA with a sense of humor?🙂
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### Author:  [@ben901](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ben901)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/6 "2000-12-19T16:12:23Z")
> [@](#):
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> I feel that toleration is owed to almost everyone. I can tolerate almost anyone’s speech.
\*\*I see you haven’t met my boss.
What does it mean if I think opponents to freedom of expression should just shut up?
My brain hurts.
~~ben901~~
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### Author:  [@Necros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Necros)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/7 "2000-12-19T17:38:35Z")
I swear I’m not following you around, **Gadarene** ; it’s just that you’re startingt he most interesting GD threads lately. 🙂
To me it would seem contingent on your view of the right of freedom of expression. If you view freedom of expression as a natural right, with limits placed only for the most compelling need, the populace has no right to infringe on anyone’s freedoms of expression, regardless of the views they hold.
If, though, you regard rights as something granted by to society because it’s the “right thing to do,” then there is no such reverence attached to these rights, and they can be violated when politically or socially expedient. I know there are people who feel this way (they are often the ones clamoring to feel “safe,” and willing to deprive others of rights that they seem to view as gifted by society in order to feel thus), and I’m glad to know Emerson doesn’t. So, this faction wants dissention, unease and restlessness cured, and will do what it takes to do it, including abrogating the rights of those they feel will cuase unrest, or _might_ cause unrest. I think this viewpoint is dangerously seductive for governments, but we’ve succeeded in resisting in in the US so far.
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### Author:  [@RoboDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RoboDude)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/8 "2000-12-19T17:43:01Z")
* * *
## Should a democratic people have the power to restrict the rights of groups within their borders possessing non-democratic aims?
If we did, we would be no better than they.
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### Author:  [@Ptahlis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ptahlis)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/9 "2000-12-19T17:54:31Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Necros \*
> \*\*So, this faction wants dissention, unease and restlessness cured, and will do what it takes to do it, including abrogating the rights of those they feel will cuase unrest, or _might_ cause unrest. I think this viewpoint is dangerously seductive for governments, but we’ve succeeded in resisting in in the US so far. \*\*
Weellll… Recently anyway. There have been sedition laws, and that period of McCarthyism. Hopefully we have learned our lesson, although that may be too optimistic considering some of the legislative proposals regarding the internet.
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### Author:  [@Necros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Necros)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/10 "2000-12-19T18:27:29Z")
Yeah, you’re right. I should have qualified it with “except for a few bumps in the road.” 🙂
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### Author:  [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/11 "2000-12-19T18:45:21Z")
Just to throw in another thought:
Several posters have suggested that it is actually more effective, in combating the message of “offensive” groups, to allow them free expression. Or at least that it would be counterproductive to ban them. But I would suggest that even if this is true, it is only a happenstance of our culture and society. It is not an inherent part of human nature or an inherent rule of sociology. It is possible for masses of people to be led astray, e.g. Germans by the Nazis.
So the question (to holders of this position) is this: Are your views merely a statement the wisdom of policies to be pursued **in our present circumstance** , or are you stating what you believe to be inherent rights of man? If the latter, then you should support your position without the considerations that you bring up.
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### Author:  [@Ptahlis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ptahlis)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/12 "2000-12-19T19:49:34Z")
Well Izzy, I was thinking of our society as it stands now, but I think that what I said is generally applicable across the board. I won’t go so far as to say that it is universal; everything has its context.
Hitler though, since you brought him up, built much of his early popular support and power base because the unpopular government in power tried to suppress him and his party IIRC.
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### Author:  [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/13 "2000-12-22T05:24:55Z")
Emerson’s five reasons that a democratic society _should_ tolerate opinion which attacks the fundamental institutions of democracy. These are all quotes, from pages 51-53 of the book already cited.
[ol]
[li]Even if we consider freedom of expression an absolute value, forever true and unchangeable, nevertheless it is important that it remain open to challenge. Otherwise it becomes “a dead dogma,” ill-understood, lacking in vitality, and vulnerable to erosion or full-scale attack.[/li][li]Groups which express views hostile to democracy, or which would abolish democratic institutions if they came to power, do not operate in a political vacuum. They advance other ideas that may be valid, or partially valid, or at least relevant within the democratic framework. Moreover, groups holding the prohibited views usually represent real grievances, which should be heard and heeded.[/li][li]It is difficult or impossible to say when the anti-democratic opinions of a group go to the essence of the democratic process, and would destroy it, or when they are mere modifications of the process within the framework of basic democratic theory.[/li][li]Resort to the suppression of anti-democratic groups imperils the process by which freedom of expression promotes unity and achieves consent throughout a society. It intensifies hostility, drives the opposition underground, and encourages the solution of problems by force rather than by reason.[/li][li]Suppression of any group in the society destroys the atmosphere of freedom essential to the life and progress of a healthy community…It eliminates the possibility of winning over opponents to the ways of democracy and establishes motives and precedents for the destruction of all democratic procedures.[/li][/ol]
Persuasive?
Also…
**Necros:**
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> Yeah, you’re right. I should have qualified it with “except for a few bumps in the road.”
Even this, um, isn’t really true at all. In his 1920 concurrence in _Whitney v. California_, Justice Louis Brandeis set the strage for the modern conception of free speech; before then, it had really never been a serious consideration. Brandeis outlines in the opinion how the suppression of free speech went against everything the Framers stood for; he invokes the Founding Fathers umpteen times as proponents of unrestricted free speech. In doing so, he removes freedom of speech from the context in which it had arisen that past decade (protests by organized labor, criticism of the war effort, and the Espionage Act of 1917)–he was seeking to set forth the ideas in his opinion as–in the words of an article in the _William & Mary Law Review_–“timeless principles of American liberty,” characterizing past transgressions, as y’all have, as nothing more than bumps in the road.
The trouble is, it was bad history. He ascribed to the Framers a unified mind on the matter which they simply did not possess (something which was seen as early as the Alien & Sedition Acts). Free speech has never been remotely a constant in American history _until_ the 1920s; _Legacy of Suppression_ by Pulitzer Prize-winner Leonard Levy illustrates this quite well. As the law review article says,
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> [Brandeis’s] efforts to attribute his own and his generation’s justifications for free speech to a mythical “they” was not a sign of ignorance but of ingenuity. It would be one thing to advance reasons for protecting dissent based on the exigencies of the moment; it was quite another to relocate these rationales in the minds of omnipotent lawgivers, long dead yet imbued with an aura of mystical prescience.
We’ve suppressed dissent in this country for longer than we’ve celebrated it; and when we celebrate it, we do so sporadically.
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### Author:  [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/14 "2000-12-22T05:58:51Z")
Good topic.
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> I am of a mind that nothing adds a mystique of legitimacy and danger to a group or subject as an official effort to suppress it.
And I am of the same mind, **Ptahlis**.
My example would be flag burners. I don’t always disagree with their point of view, but their methods are only counterproductive. If opponents would simply ignore them, they would soon grow tired of buying flags to burn.
Peace,
mangeorge
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### Author:  [@Necros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Necros)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/15 "2000-12-22T16:23:29Z")
Well, if I can claim, by following his logic, to be half the man Brandeis was, even though wrong, I’ll be OK. 🙂
I had not, previously, read any Levy. Looking on Amazon, I fear I’ll have to spend large sums of money on them in the near future. I don’t find _Legacy of Suppression_, though.
I do completely agree with your point 1, though. In order for it to remain vibrant, FofE must be continually challenged. Every time a library bans a book and someone takes them to court, it gets stronger. Every time the KKK has a rally, and the court upholds its right to do so is a good thing. I guess others’ ignorance makes it better in the long run. Maybe we shouldn’t try _too_ hard to stampt it out entirely…
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### Author:  [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/16 "2000-12-22T16:43:59Z")
Free speech rocks.
Wouldn’t have it any other way.
stoid
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### Author:  [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/17 "2000-12-22T16:47:24Z")
Levy’s great (and he lives in my hometown!). The revised and enlarged edition of _Legacy of Suppression_, entitled _Emergence of a Free Press_, is available at [ABE Books](http://www.abebooks.com) for $7.
Recommended.
(I’m gonna join in the debate on this one, I swear; let’s le t the coffee kick in first, though!)
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### Author:  [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/18 "2000-12-22T16:57:44Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Stoidela \*
> Free speech rocks.
_All_ free speech, **Stoid**? Or just the speech that we, as a democratic society, have historically recognized to be free?
'Cause contexts change. To quote Emerson again, “It is commonplace that the accepted laws and institutions of today were the subversive heresies of yesterday.” Slander, for example, isn’t protected speech today–I’m betting you don’t have any real problem with that fact. But who’s to say that in tomorrow’s society slander won’t become accepted? If at that time you still felt slander should be restricted (as almost everyone feels today), you’d be branded a reactionary.
My point is that it’s almost tautological to declare an unconditional support for free speech when “free speech” is defined as any speech which is currently free. Speech in a society will _never_ be wholly free; it’s just a question of the extent to which (and the ways in which) the boundaries are drawn.
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### Author:  [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/19 "2000-12-22T17:13:53Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Gadarene \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by Stoidela \*
> > Free speech rocks.
>
> _All_ free speech, **Stoid**? Or just the speech that we, as a democratic society, have historically recognized to be free?
>
> \*\*
I was actually going to go into the details and say that I’m not even sure I’m against yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, at least from the stand point of having that be “illegal”. I’d rather it were simply an litigable thing. If you yell “Fire” in a crowded theater and there is no fire, and I run out screaming and break my leg, I can sue your ass.
In the case of slander, same deal. I think we should be free to sue each other for it, but I don’t want the government telling me what I can say or not.
I think the biggest down side to free speech is the way it facilitates quackery. But I’ll take it…if it means protecting our ability to get information about alternative forms of health care that do work.
So, without having examined the question from every imaginable angle, in microscopic detail, I’d have to say, yeah, all speech.
stoid
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### Author:  [@Necros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Necros)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2000, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-restriction-of-freedom-of-expression/46312/20 "2000-12-22T17:25:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I think we should be free to sue each other for it, but I don’t want the government telling me what I can say or not.
Come with me, **Stoidela** …come over to the Dark Side of Libertarianism…🙂
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