by pehiatt » Fri Aug 22, 2008 12:29 pm
Almost everyone holds some beliefs or ideas that go against popular opinion. Expressing those beliefs and ideas however are not always in one’s self interest. There is a price to pay for free expression.
The men in black suits are out there reading our e-mail, blogs, and forum post and looking at the images we create. They operate under the pretense of protecting society from terrorism, pornography, obscenity and socially dangerous ideas. They often go too fare using laws against constitutionally unprotected speech to restrict protected expression.
The Bush administration restricted (censored) images of death and destruction caused by Katrina and the aftermath created by government mismanagement. It also suppressed images of coffins of servicemen returning from Iraq and pictures of soldiers wounded or killed in combat.
Bush also significantly redacted and revised scientifically supported government reports on socially important issues in order to promote its own unfounded political point of view.
This however is not the kind of censorship and suppression of free expression that I am worried about. We have laws and courts that are generally committed to protecting free speech and there are people who continually fight, at least to some degree, to expose truth.
There is a much more insidious form of censorship which includes self censorship in order to protect self interest of a job, a family, friends, a neighborhood, or the very forums that we use to express our ideas.
What I worry about is: “The will of the majority is the most general of laws, and it establishes certain habits to which everyone must then conform…” (1)
While a true democracy with real freedom of speech requires dialogue on both sides of any debate, what the courts have termed, “the marketplace of ideas,”(2) this concept in practice has its limitations. Americans do not easily tolerate debate on many ideas.
What price are you willing to pay to express an unpopular belief?
History shows that for the most part people are quite willing to tip toe through convention into the gas chambers, ending up in ovens and going up in smoke rather than rock the boat.
Freedom of expression is seen as a means of promoting a “marketplace of ideas”, in which competing ideas vie for supremacy to the end of attaining the truth has been criticized on the ground that there is no guarantee that the free expression of ideas will in fact lead to the truth. Indeed, as history attests, it is quite possible that dangerous, destructive and inherently untrue ideas may prevail, at least in the short run.”
Tocqueville went on to point out that; “When once the Americans have taken up an idea, whether it be well or ill founded, nothing is more difficult than to eradicate it from their minds… among whom this liberty exists cling to their opinions as much from pride as from conviction. They cherish them because they hold them to be just and because they chose them of their own free will…
In countries where all the theories of social science have been contested in their turn, men who have adopted one of them stick to it, not so much because they are sure of its truth as because they are not sure that there is any better to be had. In the present age men are not very ready to die for their opinions, but they are rarely inclined to change them; there are few martyrs as well as few apostates.” (3)
This leads to a much more insidious form of censorship which includes self censorship in order to protect self interest of a job, a family and friends, a neighborhood, and the very forums that we use to express our ideas
We tout the internet as a forum of free expression but like other media such as newspapers and television, ISPs and Websites are commercial enterprises and they have bottom lines to protect. They therefore legally impose “Terms of Service” that limit expression because the first Amendment only protects people from government censorship not private action.
Terms of service from a popular web community Facebook is typical of how web administrators control speech.
“Welcome to Facebook, a social utility that connects you with the people around you. [Providing that] you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that, in the sole judgment of Company, is objectionable…or which may expose Company or its users to any harm or liability of any type.
You understand and agree that the Company may, but is not obligated to, review the Site and may delete or remove (without notice) any Site Content or User Content in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason…” (4)
I use Google which has similar language: “you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Google’s sole discretion, without prior notice to you.”
Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service… If you misbehave, we may terminate our agreement with you. This might result in your access to some or all of our services being disabled. Don’t say you weren’t warned.” (5)
Google goes one step further with their warning: “Google isn’t responsible for things that might happen to you as a consequence of your use of our services. Unfortunately, everything in life has some risk.”
Humans are not rational and Americans are highly divided on many issues. What can happen includes being driven out of a neighborhood or even the extremes of having your house burned down and you killed by well meaning people (your good neighbors) who believe differently than you.
I do not take my responsibility to speak up against injustice or make any of my ideas public lightly. But I reserve the right to chose when and where I speak out.
We each have to determine for ourselves when and where we speak and chose what price we are willing to pay for that “RIGHT”
Have fun jabber away. You all have important things to say. Create profound and thought provoking images. Unfortunately some of you will quietly disappear only to be followed later by the rest of us. Its part of the human condition. Pick and chose carefully.
(1) Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, Chapter 11: LIBERTY OF THE PRESS IN THE UNITED STATES, From the Henry Reeve Translation, revised and corrected, 1899, Electronic edition deposited and marked-up by ASGRP, the American Studies Programs at the University of Virginia, June 1, 1997.
(2) “marketplace of ideas” metaphor was coined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his famous dissent in A
ams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919).
(3) Tocqueville
(4) Facebook Terms of Use, Last Revision: June 7, 2008.
(5) Provision of the Services by Google, 2008.
