Image by Daniela Vladimirova via Flickr
Joshua Corvington | Staff Writer
opinion@fiusm.com
Free Speech has often been manipulated to hide bigotry under the guise of protecting oneself against censorship, especially in political arguments, debates on websites and even among common people.
The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States lays out the basic freedoms granted to people living here that Congress cannot infringe upon: press, religion, assembly, petition of grievances and speech. This includes both written words and symbolic gestures.
Free Speech, however, hasn’t always been a guaranteed right for anyone to say anything that crosses their minds. It’s quite a surprise, then, that the “anti-censorship” defense continues to occur within political and social debate over the Internet and in real life.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, when the 14th Amendment to the Constitution added due process to the states, the Supreme Court started applying most of the original Bill of Rights to state governments – most notably since the 1920s.
There have been plenty of court cases since regarding the issue of speech. They stretch as far back as 1943 with West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, which ruled that students were not to be forced to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Rights covered under the First Amendment according to uscourts.gov, include students wearing black armbands to protest a war at school, advertising commercial products and professional services, engaging in symbolic speech (e.g. burning the flag in protest), contributing to political campaigns and using certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages among a host of others.
The list of expressions or types of speech that aren’t protected also varies. According to the First Amendment Center, the main categories of unprotected speech are inciting imminent or lawless action, defamation – which is illegal only if factually false – obscenity, child pornography, fighting words and threats.
Hate speech is a bit of a gray area, it is protected from federal government action, as long as it doesn’t spark hate crimes and threats aren’t involved. Employers can, however, fire employees who disrupt the environment, students can be disciplined for vulgarity and hate speech generally isn’t tolerated on websites, places of work and government institutions. The First Amendment may protect the right to speech, but does not shield anyone from criticism or punishment.
The core of the “free speech” defense is that people should be able to say what they wish, whenever they wish, heedless of people around them. This defense, often heard on the Internet or in political venues, is apparently designed to protect against an Orwellian society where everything is controlled and manipulated by the government via the “political correctness thought police.” This defense completely neglects the fact that people are not entitled to be agreed with, heard, replied to or taken seriously; people have to watch what they say and how they say it in the “real world” because there are consequences.
The Internet is still relatively new, but most websites have ethics policies that lay out what cannot be said or done using their service. Harassment, any form of discrimination or death threats are banned according to many Terms of Service agreements that most people skim over. These agreements are taken very seriously and cannot be ignored lest a user be suspended or banned for violating them.
Likewise, military members’ speech and speech of prisoners is broadly restricted. This has been the case since roughly the Civil War and that is not going to change.
For example, the case of Gary Stein, the so-called “Tea Party Marine.” Stein was discharged from the Marine Corps for insubordination when he condemned President Obama as an “enemy,” among many slurs on Facebook.
According to the Huffington Post, the Marine was found to have clashed with superiors before and been given multiple opportunities to back off. This, combined with his slurs on Facebook, resulted in his discharge.
Free Speech will probably be a point of contention for a long time in the United States, but freedom from consequence isn’t a guaranteed right under the First Amendment. However, Free Speech is, in the end, a very precious concept. It is not something to be abused or toyed with.
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