All Engine & No Brake?

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . .”—James Madison

“It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formulation of public opinion.”

—Josef Göbbels

CLEMSON, SC—(Weekly Hubris)—1/3/11—Several years ago in a Greenville News guest editorial, a friend and former colleague re-toasted the old chestnut about falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater. I wrote him privately and teasingly reminded him of a scene in Aristophanes’ comic masterpiece, Lysistrata, in which the old men of Athens build a “fire” on stage to smoke out the women who have seized the Acropolis, where the city’s treasury is located.

I said that if one of these old men shouts, “Fire!”, he is well within his rights, whether the fire is real or not. It’s in the script. But if the director shouts, “Fire!” from back stage or the mezzanine, and there’s a panic, he’s subject to penalties.

My point is that there are limits to what, where, when, and how we speak off stage.

The First Amendment’s 45 words have not been revised since they were written in 1791. Numerous court decisions since then, however, have effectively truncated what many Americans still consider a constitutional guarantee of absolute free speech. But absolutes are best left in the physics lab, where the speed of light has already been exceeded, and absolute zero has been approached to within one tenth of a billionth of a degree Kelvin.

The heirs of Einstein have precious few absolutes left, moral or otherwise.

Despite the Supreme Court’s truncations, many academics in 2010 still regard the freedom to speak in a classroom as unconditional. Forty years ago, I probably felt the same way; today, I have reservations. These may have begun when I glossed a scene in a Humanities class involving Homer’s treatment of Ganymede and Zeus. I said the fictional relationship was pedophiliac and left it at that, but what if I’d earnestly advocated child rape from my bully pulpit? A more experienced colleague said that I might well champion such a position, but there’s nothing in any tenure contract that stops a university from firing me for what it considers moral turpitude. I don’t think I could blame them.

By the same token, should a chemistry professor in the name of relevance teach students to cook crystal meth in a freshman lab? Does a physics teacher have the right to demonstrate to undergraduates how to make a nuclear device if one can gather enough radium from old clock faces? Does a microbiology professor have the right to show sophomores how to cultivate anthrax spores? Can a college football coach at the Air Force Academy hang a banner in the dressing room reading, “I am a member of Team Jesus Christ first”? Or do elementary school teachers have the right to teach prejudice?

In Riceville, Iowa at the height of the Civil Rights movement, a third-grade teacher decided that she would teach her pupils about racial prejudice. She, therefore, told her all-white class that brown-eyed children are superior to blue. Within minutes, the tenor of the class changed. The following day, she told her charges she’d been mistaken: blue-eyed children are superior. In short order, the blues were pushing the browns off the sliding boards at recess. An unannounced stunt like that today would get a teacher fired; in the 60’s, she was interviewed like a celebrity, though many in the state regarded her as “evil.”

I’ll never forget the self-professed neo-Nazi I taught in a sophomore American literature course.

During a discussion of Phillis Wheatley, the young skinhead expressed his view that without the poet’s white owners and patrons, she never would have set pen to paper. In the class discussion of Frederick Douglass, he said the Black abolitionist would not have become a writer without the white genes of his former owner and father. I wanted to wring his pimply neck, but I cornered my tongue and let the class put him in his place. Some of my best classroom moments have involved saying nothing while the free speech of my students won the day.

But let’s leave the classroom and pursue the issue of speech limits elsewhere.

Should angry disabled vets be permitted to burn a flag at Arlington? No, but I’d support them if they burned one in their front yards after being denied VA compensation they felt they were entitled to.

Should a Muslim woman living in the US be allowed to pose for her driver’s license picture with only her eyes showing behind her veil? For reasons of public safety in this age of terrorism, she may not, but she can wear her burka in the grocery, on the beach, and in the bowling alley if she wishes.

Does anyone have the right to preach on Main Street using a megaphone? No, but I’d support their right to speak if they’d take their sermons to the Speakers’ Corner of the local Hyde Park. They need to lose the megaphone, too, if houses or businesses are nearby.

Do teachers of minority literature have a right to invite members of the KKK to their classrooms? No, but I’d support them if they arranged the talk for a campus auditorium where the police could insure the safety of all.

Do Muslim prayer calls have a right to drift into Roman Catholic neighborhoods? I think so, because the tolling of Catholic bells in Muslim neighborhoods violates no noise ordinances.

Should the Rev. Fred Phelps be permitted to denounce the friends of a homosexual Marine at his funeral? Of course not, but I’d support Phelps’s right to speak against homosexuals in the military in a public forum.

Should an interviewer be permitted to change a quotation as long as the meaning is not substantially altered? In my opinion, quotation marks are sacred, but the courts now permit changes.

Should a farmer be allowed to make a rope noose to help him haul hay bales into his hayloft? Of course, but he may not hang this noose from a tree in his Black neighbor’s yard.

And finally, just as no one had the right to publish Anne Frank’s address in 1942, diplomatic cables that hide no crime, trade secrets, patient records, student transcripts, nuclear encryption codes, wartime troop movements, and the identity of undercover police are all restricted “speech.”

Jet-powered automobiles more suitable for the Bonneville Salt Flats should be banned from public highways for the same reason that one person’s absolute liberty threatens the rest of us. Without limits, freedom is trespassed. Freedom, as my father likes to say, is a lot like salt—a pinch sharpens the flavor, but a pound will kill you.