How America’s "Reverence" for Free Speech is used to Bury New and Provocative Ideas
By
David Gotttfried
When I was 10, and it was 1968, I viewed a television program which tried to be “hip” and exploit the youth revolution and the very much in vogue “New Left.” In one segment of the show, young people were selected at random and asked to opine on political subjects great and small. Most of the young people (They asked kids as young as ten what they thought) had nothing intelligent to say. The implied message of the program seemed to be this: Most people are babbling idiots. Ergo, we really don’t need more free expression and politics should be reserved for experts.
During our presidential debates, individuals often ask the candidates questions. In 1992, one woman had a particularly stupid question: How were you, Mr. Candidate, personally affected by the federal deficit. George Bush had trouble answering the question because he was honest, i.e., no one is directly affected by the debt. The debt hurts us because it can make interest rates rise and that can make it more difficult for us to buy homes and cars and might impede the ability of businesses to borrow money to expand. But it is hard to relate all the economic dynamics in a brief exchange. Clinton answered the question by not answering the question and his non answer was a winner. Billy simply waxed sympathetically and told us how he felt the pain of people who could not find jobs. The woman’s question, and Clinton’s answer, was the blithering gibberish of idiots. The way in which the woman presented the question made it clear that she did not know much about economics. This conveyed the idea that people have nothing to say.
Sometimes, the moronic evening television news will ask people on the Street what they think about various phenomena. Most people don’t know what they are talking about because they listen to the evening news where they hear the blather of people like themselves. (You will counter by saying that nowadays there are such things as the internet, but I will bet my right kidney that most people have read neither the Nation, nor the National Review, on line; For every internet user conducting rarefied research there are ten looking at porn) Once the local New York television news asked pedestrians what they thought about a rain storm. I distinctly recall a plump middle aged woman stoutly saying that the downpour was terrible and that “they ought to do something” about the rain.
Similarly, I remember how Mayor Guiliani, who had many faults, was able to deftly rebut complaints about his policies at forums that allegedly showcased our open and free political debate. At one forum, a woman of color complained about our poor educational system. She ranted about the failure of so many students to learn and, after strategic and ego-disabling jabs from the Mayor, she fell apart and said that she did not know how to spell the word intelligent and she asked the Mayor if he knew how to spell the word intelligent. The unspoken message: The people are truly stupid, free speech can be dispensed with and the alliance of the Three Emperors [An agreement among the Russian Tzar, the king of Prussia (embryonic Germany) and the Austrian Emperor to combat democracy and the right of self determination anywhere in the world.] had its merits.
However, free speech is needed. We must hear dissenters. We must hear from people who are not in power. However, they must first become EDUCATED.
Karl Marx said that no revolution can be had with the lumpenproletariat. They consisted of poor people who had been warped by their poverty, and their psychological problems made them poor candidates for activism. They were the alcoholics, drug addicts, wife-beaters and thieves of the slums. Some black radicals, in the late Sixties, explicitly said that they would welcome the lumpenproletariat into their ranks. As soon as your radical organization consorts with “volunteers” which will rob your organization blind, your organization is doomed.
Similarly, we will get nowhere with people who are unaware, disengaged and mentally lazy.
Some students in the 60’s protested against the rigors of academia. They fought to make the curriculum easier (They claimed that the tough subjects were irrelevant). The demands of these so-called leftist students harmed the left. The less education the students got, the dumber they got, and they became more susceptible to the facile and stupid bromides of men like Ronald Reagan.
Also, the government in a very physical sense facilitates “free speech” and consequently quashes the dynamism of provocative politics. More specifically, police departments have adopted crowd control techniques which are meant to sap political demonstrations of their energy. These crowd control techniques posit that if you expect a crowd of ten thousand, the police should give them enough space to hold thirty thousand. This will make the crowds sparser and the physical distances between people will undermine their ability to cohere, emotionally and intellectually, and they will never become the tight united fist that can seize political power.
So very simply, we have a regime of free speech and crowd control techniques which relies heavily on the old adage that if you give them enough rope, they will hang themselves with it. In the end, our endorsement of a vulgar form of free speech, in which babbling assholes chatter about all manner of inanities ad nauseum, makes us sick of free speech.