The day Americans stop defending free speech is the day freedom starts dying—and most people won't notice until they are afraid to speak their own minds. America’s freedom of speech protects idiots, geniuses, rebels, and critics alike. Kill it, and everyone eventually gets gagged. Hence, if free speech dies, truth goes underground, fear takes over, and power becomes the only voice left standing.
Freedom is America's favorite drug. It always has been. Americans breathe it, worship it, sue over it, protest for it, and sometimes torch entire city blocks while arguing about it. Freedom is the national religion that pretends it isn't a religion. Strip away the flags, the slogans, the campaign speeches, and the chest-thumping patriotism, and you eventually arrive at a single piece of constitutional real estate that carries more weight than its modest size suggests: the First Amendment.
Just 45 words.
That is it.
Forty-five words standing between a free society and a
society where powerful people decide what everyone else is allowed to think,
say, read, hear, publish, or believe.
As an immigrant from Nigeria and a college professor in
America, I find that remarkable.
In many countries, including my country of origin Nigeria,
people speak carefully because they fear consequences. They lower their voices.
They look over their shoulders. They master the art of saying something without
actually saying it. They become political acrobats, balancing truth and
survival on the same tightrope.
America is different. Here, people do not merely speak.
They roar. Sometimes they roar intelligently. Sometimes they roar stupidly. Sometimes
they roar like a drunk man arguing with a parking meter. The point is that they
are allowed to roar. That freedom drives many Americans crazy.
Freedom of speech is probably the most irritating freedom
ever invented because it protects speech we hate just as much as speech we
love. If freedom only protected popular opinions, it would not be freedom. It
would be customer service.
The true test of free speech is not whether you support
the opinions you like. The true test is whether you can tolerate the opinions
that make your blood pressure climb faster than a rocket launch.
History proves this point.
During the colonial era, criticism of government could
land people in serious trouble. In 1735, printer John Peter Zenger was charged
with seditious libel after criticizing New York's colonial governor. His
eventual acquittal became an early symbol of press freedom in America. Long
before the Constitution existed, Americans were already fighting over who had
the right to criticize authority.
Nothing has changed. Only the technology has. The
battlefield moved from pamphlets to newspapers, from newspapers to radio, from
radio to television, and from television to social media. The weapons changed,
but the war remained the same.
Who gets to speak?
Who gets silenced?
Who decides?
Every generation fights the same ugly family argument.
The First Amendment protects freedom of religion because
government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers in
matters of faith. It protects freedom of the press because politicians
naturally dislike journalists who expose their mistakes. It protects peaceful
assembly because people occasionally need to gather and tell their leaders that
they are making a complete mess of things. It protects petition because
citizens must be able to demand change without asking permission from the very
people they are criticizing.
And then there is freedom of speech. The troublemaker. The
loudmouth. The constitutional equivalent of that relative who says exactly what
everyone else is afraid to say at Thanksgiving dinner.
Americans often claim to love free speech until someone
actually uses it. Then suddenly everyone starts searching for exceptions.
History is littered with examples. During World War I,
thousands of Americans faced legal consequences for anti-war speech. During the
Cold War, accusations and blacklists destroyed careers. During various periods
of social unrest, governments, universities, corporations, and activist groups
have all attempted, at one time or another, to limit speech they viewed as
dangerous.
Notice something? The attackers come from every
direction. The threat is never owned by one political tribe. Sometimes the
pressure comes from government. Sometimes it comes from corporations. Sometimes
it comes from activists. Sometimes it comes from angry mobs.
Everyone wants free speech for themselves. Many people
become far less enthusiastic when free speech protects their opponents. That is
where the hypocrisy enters the room. It strolls in wearing expensive shoes and
pretending not to be hypocrisy.
According to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center
over the years, substantial numbers of Americans have expressed concern that
people are increasingly afraid to say what they truly believe because of
potential social, professional, or political consequences. Whether those fears
are justified in every case is beside the point. The fear itself matters. A
society does not need formal censorship to create silence. Sometimes social
punishment does the job just fine.
I tell my students that freedom is like a muscle. Use it
or lose it. A right that sits unused eventually becomes a museum exhibit. People
admire it. People photograph it. People talk about how important it once was. But
nobody actually exercises it. That is dangerous.
The beauty of America is not that everyone agrees. The
beauty is that they do not. The country was born arguing. It remains alive
arguing. Americans argue about religion, race, taxes, immigration, education,
abortion, guns, foreign policy, climate change, and who should be blamed for
the price of eggs. The arguments never stop.
Good.
That is exactly how a free society is supposed to sound. Freedom
is noisy. Freedom is inconvenient. Freedom is messy. Freedom occasionally says
things that are offensive, foolish, ignorant, arrogant, and flat-out
ridiculous.
The alternative is worse. Far worse.
As someone who grew up in Nigeria and later built a life
in America, I recognize something many native-born Americans sometimes
overlook. The freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment are not normal
throughout human history. They are unusual. They are fragile. They are
expensive. Generations of Americans fought political battles, legal battles,
and cultural battles to preserve them.
That is why I smile whenever someone complains that
America has "too much freedom." Too much freedom? That is like
complaining that a parachute has too much fabric while falling from an
airplane.
The truth is simpler. Freedom is not America's weakness. It
is America's superpower. It attracts dreamers, entrepreneurs, dissidents,
refugees, inventors, artists, and loudmouth professors from every corner of the
planet. It attracts people who want the opportunity to think for themselves and
speak for themselves.
Including me.
After all, I am an immigrant from Nigeria who came to
America, became a college professor, and now gets paid to express opinions that
some people love and others cannot stand.
That is not a bug in the American system. That is the
system working exactly as intended. And if that occasionally annoys people?
Good.
Freedom was never designed to make us comfortable.
It was designed to keep us free.
On a different but
equally important note, readers who enjoy thoughtful analysis may also find the
titles in my “Brief Book Series”
worth exploring. You can also read them here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.
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