Unamended Speech

 

    The written Constitution of the United States is an intricately structured document worked out over a long period of vigorous debate, complex compromises, and artful dodges.  The deliberations in Philadelphia occupied several months of the year 1787.  But there was definitely something about the process that, if not quite haphazard or spur-of-the-moment, was dramatically incomplete.  It gave intricate instructions about how laws were to be made, but said very little about the people for whom they were to be made, interpreted, and enforced. The over-all authority for the document was grand and noble—it was the people of the new nation expressing themselves through elected representation.  But precious little was said of the people themselves.  The wise men who had devised the document were of course aware that their work, however impressive, was partial and radically incomplete, and they made pretty precise rules about how it could be improved, corrected, clarified and expanded—all of which activities fell within the definition of a single word, to wit, amendment.

 

    Amending the Constitution began almost immediately with ten more or less related amendments largely concerning the rights of individual citizens as opposed to governmental structures.  These we call the Bill of Rights.  The First Amendment is a doozy: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  There is probably more cultural history packed into these forty-five words than was lost in the tragic incineration of the Library of Alexandria.  The blanket authorization of freedom of religious belief and practice, freedom of speech, freedom to write and publish, freedom to petition the Government—extraordinary!  Freedom of speech is what is on my mind at the moment, as various voices in or around the Trump Administration are seeking to get rid of a foreign-born “student activist” from Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil.  They don’t like some of the things he has said, but since most of them know in their heart of hearts that he presents what many of us regard as an open-and-shut free speech case they are trying to find some possible criminality in his personal or intellectual associations to justify his expulsion.  This evasion offers a kind of screen behind which an illiberal idea can to some extent enjoy a spurious plausibility.  And it does seem destined for success.  One highly respectable conservative guru—respected by me, among others—has declared that this is not a free speech case at all, but an administrative issue of immigration status and the shade of green on Mr. Khalil's green card.   Mr. Khalil’s offense is a thought-crime.  He appears to be an open supporter of Hamas, for example, and so…so what?  The Bill of Rights says nothing about qualifying the rights of people with whom we disagree, or whose ideas most or even all the rest of us may actually find repellent, even dangerous. 

 

    Many of the greatest quotations in history are not actually quotations yet accurately represent the thought of those to whom they are attributed.  If Voltaire didn’t actually utter the following words, he certainly lived them: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  That sentence structure dramatizes, quite gratuitously, Voltaire’s own privilege of dissenting from the ideas expressed.  And it is the template of most such expressions.  It contains its own implicit “virtue signalling”.  But Mr. Khalil’s right to express his ideas is in no way dependent upon what Voltaire, you, I, or anybody else might think about Khalil or his ideas.  Not that there is no good explanation for the hostility to “absolute” freedom of speech.  Quite apart from the business of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater—or its contemporary telephonic form, “SWATing,” making maliciously false reports to the police--people don’t much like hearing themselves, their country, their political ideas, their religious beliefs roughly countered, denied, traduced or insulted.  I certainly don’t.  But that is one of several annoyances you simply have to suck up if you sincerely adhere to democracy.  It could even happen that your preferred candidate in a presidential election might not prevail.

 

    Majoritarian rule, a feature of our democracy, is hardly without its inconveniences.  But Churchill’s famous, possibly sardonic, remarks on the topic still command attention: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

 

    There are many inconveniences attendant upon old age.  I discover new ones daily.  But one enjoys also the great advantages of memory, experience, and perspective.  I can laugh out loud at much of the apocalypticism of certain sections of the American press.  I repeatedly read that “never before in American history have we witnessed” this, that, or another enormity that I last witnessed in my thirties or forties if not later.  Democracy does require work, apparently more work than most citizens are willing, or perhaps too many of them, able, to perform.  Perhaps it really is the best of an imperfect suite of options.  Things are often very messy in democratic systems.  But the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.  Churchill has a discouraging word of wisdom on that subject too: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”