THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH DILEMMA

Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want
--Devo "Freedom of Choice"

How the left reads the first amendment

Multiple recent events have bombarded us recently which are almost violently challenging basis American assumptions about rights and liberty.  For centuries, the USA has been founded on some very basic principles of rights and freedoms.  The founding documents of the United States were very strong on the concepts of liberty, laying out foundational principles about what freedoms and privileges all humans enjoy, and the American government is legally ordered to defend.

There have always been those who opposed liberty because of moral or cultural concerns; there were those who said rock and roll music was evil and bad for kids, so it should be silence, there were those who said that blacks could not be allowed in public pools, and so on.  And today that continues with those who say that Alex Jones must not be allowed to speak in public.

The common theme has always been the same, those in power, the establishment, oppose voices and ideas which challenge their power and dominance.  The people who protested for unlimited freedom of expression in Berkeley grew up to oppose freedom of expression today: what changed is that back then, they were the rebels and today, they are The Man.

And each time, the debate rages over what is freedom of speech, how much the first amendment protects, and what freedoms mean.  The debates are usually confusing and confused, with few people on either side who really comprehend the topic very well.

What is at stake here are two sometimes conflicting principles, both stated in the first amendment: the freedom of expression and the freedom of association.  Does my freedom of speech trump your ability to choose who you associate with?  Does you freedom of association compel me to engage in certain expressions or suppress others?

This sounds terribly theoretical, but it comes up regularly in the news.  Can you compel me to bake you a cake?  Do you have to allow me to post on your social media site?  Can you fire me for what I've said in the past on social media?  If you protest, can I stop your protest because I find you offensive and evil?  Is speech violence?

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The more proper way of  stating this is "freedom of expression" since the idea is that "speech" can take various different forms.  This doesn't just protect words, but art, music, and a host of other expressions which can contain controversial or political import.

Its important to remember that there are two versions of this concept which are used in public life, but often confused or interchanged.

The first amendment contains the requirement by the people that the federal government protect and not attack free expression insofar as it does not materially damage other rights.  That is the legal, constitutional version and it only applies to government, not any other.  You cannot condemn a private business for violating the first amendment: it is not limiting their actions, only the government's.

The second concept, however is broader. Freedom of expression ("speech," the press, assembly etc) is an innate, God-given, inalienable right all human beings share simply by being human. We all have the right to freedom of expression merely by being human, although that right's expression can be suppressed (you can be silenced, you just still have the right to speech).

Why is this important?  As a society, we agree to an informal and unwritten contract: we will give up certain non-critical freedoms in order to gain greater safety and expression of our overall rights. I have the right to express myself however I wish even if it is lying and damaging to people, but we have agreed that it is illegal to slander or libel someone. I have the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater (as the saying goes) but have agreed that it ought to be illegal to create chaos and riot that may harm people or businesses.

In other words, while the constitutional protection of free expression only applies to the federal government, the right of free expression is universal and should be protected in all peoples in all situations.  There is no legal compulsion and ought be no governmental penalty, but the social contract hinges on the defense of human rights and our willingness to tolerate and however reluctantly defend the rights of others.

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION

This is also in the first amendment (along with freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to petition the government if over violations of rights, although that last one is pretty well forgotten).  It is written in the form of "peaceably assemble" but is again broader than that simple concept.  People have the right to associate with who they please -- or do not please -- and the government may not compel them to either.

This means that you can choose who you will work with or play with, who you will hang with or not, who you will allow into your circle of friends or private club or not.  Government may not tell anyone that they must associate with -- work with, work for, or otherwise be with -- or must not.

However like all rights, such as freedom of expression, there are societally-agreed limits.  No right's free expression may legally violate another person's human rights.  You may not use your freedom of association to ban Mexicans from your business: they have freedom of association, too.

INALIENABLE BUT LIMITED

Now remember, the key thing here is that you have the right to do these things, but you do not have the legal freedom to do so.  In other words, you can do them, but will face punishment.  

What I mean is this: you have the right to slander people all day long, because the freedom of expression is unlimited and innate.  It cannot be taken away or limited; it is inherent, an "inalienable" (un-removable) part of being human.  But, and this is an important 'but,' your free expression of that right may be limited in some circumstances.  

You legally are not allowed to destructively lie about someone, even though you have the innate right to do so.  This concept is easier to understand in some examples than others, as we'll see.

Again, this comes down to the social contract: in order to have any semblance of culture and cohesive, orderly society, we agree to hedges on our expression of rights.  Those boundaries on our free expression of our rights are to be as limited and few as possible, but must exist for humanity to coexist.  Thus, we have libel laws, we have laws about not being able to ban someone from business.  Nobody can legally say "we don't serve your kind here" despite having the right to do so.

A RETURN TO PROFESSIONALISM

"We don't get to pick who wins, detective. Even if that means no one does."
--Special Agent David Rossi, Criminal Minds

Last time I posted, it was a lament at the collapse of professionalism across our culture, especially in the newsroom.  We've gone from grizzled professionals to hippie dippie space cadets with an agenda and as a result not just the quality of the product, but people's trust in the product of news has plummeted.

While its fun to mock annoying people and its easy to criticize, what can be done about this?  What is the solution?  What would professionalism look like, and be like?  How can the news media earn back any level of respect and trustworthiness?

NO GOLDEN AGE

The first thing to remember is that there never was a golden age of journalistic professionalism and accuracy.  They've always been misleading, lazy, incompetent, sloppy, and ignorant with occasional outstanding exceptions.  The biggest thing that's changed in the news is not so much the people involved, but the transparency and ease of fact checking.

50 years ago, you got the newspaper and had TV and radio news and that was it.  It took a special access to Nexis/Lexis database to dig into stories, and hours in microfiche at the library or local newspaper's "morgue" to find the story elsewhere or dig into the past to find consistency or support for the story.  Reporters were just as likely to mess things up or spin it, people just had no way to fact check them.  

That said, things have gotten significantly worse.  Where before a reporter might get things wrong or have a slant, today they actively push a specific agenda in their storytelling (there are a host of devices used, as covered in bias in my older bit on reporting), and suppress information that is problematic to their agenda.  Where before most strong opinion statements were excised from reporting and restricted to the op/ed page, now its showing up in news articles.  When President Trump was elected, even prestigious newspapers literally stated that they were going to abandon any pretense of objectivity and specifically oppose the man.

CLEANING HOUSE

The first hurdle is to get journalism to move back to its proper, necessary, and original purpose.  The reason that the 1st amendment specifically protects the press, and the reason the news media is called the "fourth estate" in the USA (fourth after congress, presidency, and supreme court) is very significant.  It refers to the need for a Democratic Republic to have an informed public in order to vote and choose proper representatives.  Ignorant and ill-informed people make worse choices than they would if well-informed.

The purpose of the news media is to accurately, and usefully, inform.  That means not only does their job require them to be factual and complete, but cover useful, valuable, and noteworthy events.  In no place does this job ever require or even find value in manipulating people's opinions, pushing an agenda, assisting an agenda, or silencing another agenda.

The problem with most journalism today is that they are specifically taught and personally inclined to think of their job not as information but as changing the world, making the world a better place, or fighting evil.  They are literally taught in Journalism School that they are not just reporting news to inform, but reporting news to shape a better future, that they have a moral responsibility to do so.

That has to change for anything positive to come out of the news.  Journalists need to learn to report the facts, and back away.  And the only way for that to begin to happen is to clean up J-school and expectations of young would-be journalists.  Start them out with the right perspective and goals, and you will weed out the ones who think its a religious calling or political platform.

KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

Part of the need for fact-based reporting is the need for reporters to understand the difference between fact an opinion.  This is a challenging lesson for a lot of younger people, since they've been largely raised to think that there is no actual absolute truth, that truth is a narrative and you make your own truth up.  They have to understand that there actually is such a thing as an objective fact, and to recognize that as opposed to what they feel, think, believe, or wish to be true.

Anything that isn't the facts and information in a story needs to be relegated to the opinion pages or one's social media feed.  This includes things such as playing "hide the party" and burying the lede.  Hide the Party is when you don't mention a scandal-plagued politician's party until deep into the article (if ever) when they are a Democrat, where you list the party affiliation early and often if it is Republican.  

Bury the lede is when you conceal the main point of the story in the headline or early paragraphs on the assumption that most people only read those parts and will miss the key story.  Why do this?  So you can technically have covered a topic (say, Benghazi) while misleading readers on the story.

Knowing that there is actual fact and truth, and distinguishing between that and opinion is a skill not being taught in school, let alone J-School, and not taught while learning while on the job.  I say this because I can see that these reporters literally do not seem to understand the distinction from their social media commentary and writing in news stories.  They honestly think that their spin on something is the facts.

NO POLLS

By sticking to "just the facts, ma'am" reporting will be forced away from certain kinds of news stories.  For example, in the last year and a half we've been assaulted by a deluge of rumors printed as news.  A nameless White House contact claims they head something, and the reporter third hand prints that as news.  Its not news.  Its rumor, its unsubstantiated hearsay, and its almost always utterly wrong and humiliating for the news organization.  After reading this stuff the fiftieth time, even the densest partisan starts to suspect they might not be able to trust the news.

Another form of non-news printed as facts is the poll.  Journalists love polls.  Pundits love polls.  News junkies love polls.  And as I have written about dozens of times in the past, polls are almost all trash, and even where they are useful are not news.  It is not news that you asked a group of people something and they all said "x."  That is simply a collection of opinions.  It means nothing.

I get it, people want to know the future, and love to read astrology tea leaves tarot cards opinion polling.  They want that druid to look at the entrails of the goat and see the future.  They want to know what they do not and cannot know, in advance, for some sense of comfort and peace.  But that is not news, its simply someone's or some group of people's opinions.  And opinions are not news.

Further, despite claims by pollsters and statisticians, they are not even scientific: too much depends on how, where, and to whom you poll, not to mention that claiming a question asked of a thousand people somehow rationally represents the ideas of over three hundred million.

Even when polls are not massaged through careful choice of who is polled and when or how the questions are asked, such as asking more Democrats than Republicans, or calling at a time of day you can reliably avoid opinions you don't want to hear from, its still not reliably scientific.

And the worst kind of poll reporting is when a news organization has an opinion or idea that they want to print as a story, but don't have the actual story to run.  So they do a poll on this topic, then report on the poll; they aren't reporting the news they are creating the "news" and that's not their job.

EVEN HANDED

Another key thing for journalists to re-learn and carry out is that they have to be hard-hitting, ruthless, and agnostic in their determination to report the facts.  Who is hurt or helped, what agenda is driven, how people respond to the facts, none of that matters.  What matters is the truth and accuracy.  This means that reporters have to ignore the party of the person they are writing about or what "narrative" is being carried out and just hit the facts.

Whether the subject of a news story or investigation is of party x or party y, whether they are conservative or libertarian or leftist or whatever, the news reporter needs to attack the story from the same perspective: facts, truth, completion; what I can support and substantiate.  Writing a story about a homosexual black lesbian in a wheelchair should not be any different job than an old white industrialist laying off workers.  Stick to the facts; do your job.

Informing the public means giving them the information they need to decide for themselves, and all the information they need to decide for themselves.  News reporters are not, as failed Seattle Times reporter stated "the deciders."  They are the voices of the facts, not the ones who pick and shape it.

Further, personalities and ego are not part of the job.  Nobody wants to know who is reporting the news.  They want the facts.  This is not a job for people who want the limelight.  Its a job for people who want their work to shine.  Its not "the news by Jim Acosta" its just the news.

ANTAGONISTIC

Additionally, the critical job of the reporter in order to fulfill their task as the fourth estate is to be the one who goes after those in power.  They have a duty to dig into corruption, incompetence, illegality, and failure from those in power, no matter who they are.  The press is only a fourth estate -- a check against the other three -- if they take their role seriously as being that check.  

The press needs to be the voice of justice against those in power who try to be above justice.  The press needs to give voters the information they require to properly vote and choose candidates.  If it will not do so, or worse, only does so with certain types of those in power, they are better being entirely gone than continuing to betray their very reason for existence.

FINAL KEYS

The main key is consistency.  I don't care if the press goes after president Trump and ties to find fault in him if they do so with President Obama as well.  Adulating and cheering one while despising the other is a complete failure of professionalism.  It is an abdication of their role as the fourth estate.  The journalist who only goes after one party, no matter what party, is a disaster and a total failure of a journalist.  They are betraying the people and their very profession.

That means no pictures of one politician with a halo and their opponent scowling and looking angry.  It means no news stories condemning the number of vacations taken by one and admiring the other for knowing how to relax and take time off to recharge.  It means no news stories focusing on one politician's stupid gaffes and none on the other's.

No reporter can avoid bias, but what they can do is have rigorous, ruthless professionals in positions of authority in the job.  Editors should be without mercy or personal attachment with reporters, tearing down everything that does not belong and building up what does.  Reporters need to both be encouraged to do what is right and crushed for doing what is wrong.

The only way this can happen, of course, is if people are so disgusted by the incompetence, sloth, ignorance, credulity, bias, and overall lack of professionalism in news reporting that they abandon it to the point of bankruptcy and ruin in the industry.  From the ashes, a new breed can arise that is honest, hard-working, focused on the job, and professional.

Lacking that?  I just see things getting worse and worse, with people dividing more viciously into sides and bubbling themselves with their favored news sources to the exclusion of everything that might help them know the facts.

THE END OF PROFESSIONALISM

"Never grow up, that's me!"
--Peter Pan

Its not so big a thing any more but there was a time when the free independent newspaper was significant in every college town and city.  Back before the Simpsons was a cartoon short on The Tracy Ullman Show, Matt Groenig was known for a quirky, depressing cartoon called Life In Hell that ran in these underground/alternative newspapers, along with other regulars such as Politenessman.

These newspapers were run by hippies and neo-hippies who were usually in college or dropouts from college that worked on various newsletters and such and would generally contain the latest hard left cant, stories on the glories of hemp, and extensive, seedy classifieds in the back that paid for the operation.  

This is where you'd read about how we should only have free trade coffee and when the next drum circle in the park was going to be.  They'd cover all the most recent leftist academic concepts, calling for things like universal basic income, free health care, and basically everything the left is pushing for now, while labeling anyone who disagrees with them as fascist.  Often they were pretty low key about it all, not as strident and angry as today.

You could generally tell who would write for this: white guys with dreadlocks, girls with oddly colored and cut hair, old hippies, etc.  They had a sort of predictable look and patchoulli aura, but the papers were good for a read while eating at the local bistro or getting some coffee.  Stacks were outside the record store and the head shop, and nearby any restaurant or coffee shop downtown that catered to college students.

These were the people that weren't professional enough, that weren't skilled enough and who didn't have the focus and talent to work on a real newspaper.  They were the people who could not simply write the news, they had to give their perspective.  The people who thought just covering events was too boring or beneath them.  The people who had an agenda rather than a job to do.

That was then.  Today, these people are running major newspapers.  Don't think so?  Check this out:

Oh, and this:

These are people who worked for or are working for the New York Times.  This is the single most prestigious and respected newspaper in the United States.  30 years ago, these people wouldn't have been allowed through the front door, let alone given a job -- still less made an editor.  Now they're running the place.

That's why the mainstream, established newspapers today read and sound like the old free "alternative" papers of the past.  Because all those old newsmen and women, all the hard core journalists, those grizzled editors, they're all gone.  They've been replaced by the alternative paper people.  So you get the same quality and tone and content of the old alternative papers.  The same outrageous blatant bias, the same lack of fact checking and hysteria, the same ridiculous outlook.

I mean, look at the content the New York Times is putting out these days:

This is exactly the kind of trash you'd get in those old papers.  I don't so much mean the lame concept (although that's pretty much beneath contempt) but the awful art and ridiculous tone.  Put aside the hypocrisy of someone who constantly yells about homophobia using homosexuality as an insult and attack.  Just look at the quality here.  This is middle school level thought and work.

Again, this is the New York Times, the "old gray lady" of news, the single most prestigious news organization in the United States.  This is how far it has sunk, and its not alone in the nation.

And this effect is not just the news media.  When's the last time you went into a bank and saw anyone working there who looked like a banker?  A doctor who seemed professional and like a doctor?  A professor who seemed learned and discerning?  Pastors who seem dignified and reverential?  This lack of professionalism is nearly gone around us.  I don't simply mean casual dress, I mean someone who puts out a front and an aura of professionalism and mature dignity.

The need to turn everything casual is acceptable to some level, I don't think everyone has to wear a suit and tie.  But there's a point at which casual becomes just sloppy, then becomes contempt for customers and surrounding people.  If you cannot give a sense of competence and adulthood, its difficult to trust you with anything weighty or meaningful.

Its another topic, but the entire cultural idea of growing up as a trap and that "adulting" is something you do when you have to, then get back to being Peter Pan as soon as possible is incredibly corrosive to culture and our future.  Its related to the candy and num nums approach to life.  But this goes beyond never wanting to grow up, its more a rebellion against ever having to get out of bed or comb your hair.  Its the early teen rebellion against taking showers and wearing clean clothes, its simply a tantrum against having to do anything for anyone except yourself.

THE TURNING OF THE AGE

"In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763."
--Albert Bushnell Hart

Through history there are periods of political change which, in retrospect, are easy to identify and study.  Times that things shifted to a different paradigm, a different structure and model of doing things.  You can see sometimes to a very small time period when it takes place.  In the mid-1800s for example, Europe suddenly began to shift away from monarchies to representative democracies, usually with a figurehead monarch.

At the time its not possible to see how this will turn out, and usually the people living then could not even see the shift, only the turmoil and chaos that results.  The game Civilization allows you to change your civilization to another style of government when you have learned that form.  Tyranny to Monarchy, or to Republic.  Doing so results in years, sometimes decades of chaos and upheaval.  All your production ceases, there's civil unrest, etc.  That's not far off from the truth.

I wonder now, if we're not in one of those transitions.  Things look pretty chaotic now, and people are talking about a civil war in the USA.  Things seem irredeemably divided, and getting worse.  There are murderous attacks on political opponents: a congressman shot in a softball game.  A church shot up.  A Senator attacked while mowing his lawn.  Police shot by a sniper.  Violence in the streets, with cars burned and shops attacked.  People in political rallies being beaten by opponents.

This kind of chaos results when society is in turmoil, and particularly when the power structure in place is threatened by a new movement.  The last time it was in the late 1960s when the left started to seriously challenge the establishment right.  Bombs, shootings, kidnappings, highjackings and so on were happening as part of that turmoil.

Now, we're seeing the establishment left being challenged seriously.  And the fighting is getting to the same level of fever pitch (with the same side as before being the most violent).  Yet what is going on overall?  Its not so much right vs left, as it is people who really just want to be left alone sick and tired of the crap.  This isn't really a political battle at all in the same stark lines as before, its more a cultural battle of people who want to run your life vs people who want to run their own.

Mind you, that's largely how the left portrayed the fight in the 60s, but really in the end it came down to "we have the perfect utopian answer and you're in the way, old man."  They sold it as free love and peace and tolerance, but as we can clearly see, that was just a front: they wanted themselves tolerated, not anyone else.  They wanted themselves to be left in peace, but not for you to.

A NEW PARADIGM?

In any case, the shift is moving today in a different kind of direction, less a shift between political factions than a shift between entire systems and political structures.  The old system, since the late 1700s, has been political parties who gather to offer up candidates and run things as a coalition.  In America its basically two parties, and in other nations its a parliamentary system that's still just two parties, but there are more little parties who can, if they manage to build a group together, can for a short time challenge one of the main two parties.

In time, political parties start to, as H.L. Mencken said, believe their own lies.  They start to be about less the people they allegedly represent and more the party its self as a body and an organization.  The pressure becomes not about electing but preserving and increasing power of the party not its goals or the people it allegedly represents.  And when that happens, both parties tend to drift toward the same sort of place, a corrupt center left where its about what keeps you in office and makes you rich and powerful.

Today though, with the internet, its a matter of some debate whether political parties really even need to exist at all.  Can we have a more direct system, where candidates just reach out to the public directly without going through a party structure?  Are we getting to where the funding and politicking, the campaigning is more direct to the voters and less through an organization?

If so, that would destroy both the Republican and Democratic Party, to which I say "good riddence."  Neither party cares about or is remotely interested in the country or its people, the voters, or even pretending to represent them.  I'll give just two of many examples of the problem with the parties as they exist right now.

When the Tea Party movement arose in 2008, the Republican Party that it largely supported actively worked to destroy them, to the point of asking the Democrat president to attack the Tea Party movement through the IRS.  There was a concerted effort by the GOP to destroy the Tea Party movement.  Why?  Not because it was an enemy to their stated politics and platform, but because the Tea Party Movement was a threat to the Republican Party's power and mey.

Then in 2016, the Democratic Party had two major candidates for president: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  Both were pretty hard left, but one was favored by the Democratic Party machine, so much so that they blatantly and deliberately cheated repeatedly in primary elections to make sure that she won -- with the system so heavily rigged that even in elections that she lost, Hillary Clinton got more delegates for the convention.

In both cases a challenge to the party machine was destroyed not for being opposed to what the party claims to stand for, but for being a threat to their power and structure.  The party its self is its primary concern, not the people it allegedly represents.  There's too much money and power in the party system and leadership to give up.  This inevitably corrupts, if not legally, the morally and in terms of honor and honesty.

What if it became the system where candidates used crowdfunding and structures of that kind to pay for campaigns?  And what if they reached out to voters, not by the usual structures or through the party system, but directly to their constituents through the internet and public appearances?  

I think that President Trump may be the first of this new structure, possibly.  Self-funded, largely campaigned not through the usual old system but through the media and social media.  He reached voters less through advertising and political party systems than through simply reaching voters where they live.  

Now I'm not pretending President Trump is a man like Abraham Lincoln, but I do find a parallel in this: Lincoln was the first president from the new Republican Party.

HOW TO BUILD THIS

To make this work there has to be three things in place.

First there has to be a non partisan and non-censoring social media platform in place which is popular and widely used.  Twitter was that platform when Trump ran for office in 2016, but has since become significantly less so largely in response to Trump's success.  Twitter was pretty apolitical and let people say what they wanted to a large degree until it became clear that this was allowing their political foes to succeed, which they were not willing to allow.

Second, there needs to be an apolitical, non partisan, and most importantly free crowdfunding platform which allows candidates to raise money for their campaign without paying a fee to the platform.  Sites such as GoFundMe have in the past decided they didn't like someone (such as a pizza shop raising money to fight lawsuits and state government leaning on them), and disallowed the campaign.  That cannot be a part of any platform a political candidate used to raise money with.

Third, there has to be a general shift away from political parties by the voters.  People need to get away from the idea that this is the way it always has been and thus must always be.  People have to abandon party concepts entirely and vote based on principles, politics, and platform irregardless of party affiliation -- or without it entirely.

Fourth, the bodies of power such as congress have to move away from the strictly two party concept into a more shifting, changing system of coalitions not based on permanent power structures, but based on specific bills and policies.  Instead of having a majority and minority power, there'd simply be representatives.  Instead of party line votes, there'd be blocks that formed for one bill then reformed for another, consisting of different members.  Senator Yoont may want to cut taxes, but is opposed to welfare reform.  Senator Floont may want to increase the EPA's budget, but is opposed to cuts in the military, and so on.

THE VIEW FROM HERE

I can't see the future any better than anyone else.  And I'm in the middle of the change, which means I'm no more able to read what is happening than you are.  But I get a sense that there is a major change taking place, that the political parties as they exist right now aren't likely to much longer, and I get the feeling that this is where things are headed.

The important thing to keep in mind is that when big shifts of this kind happen they are almost never what the last big shift was or in a way that is expected at the time.  As human beings we tend to try to put everything into a context of what we are most familiar with, particularly what we've experienced in the past.  But that's not always how it goes, and almost never with major events.  Too often we're fixated on the last big evil to see the next one.  And too often we're so busy trying to fit what we see happening into the boxes we're comfortable with like a kid hammering shapes through a toy.  But that star-shaped block won't fit through the circle-shaped hole.

All this talk about a new civil war and the unrest of the 70s may be missing the point entirely, and I think is.  Preparing for and pushing for what we think is happening when something else entirely is would be a pretty major mistake.

Oh, and I'm not saying what comes next is necessarily going to be better.  I doubt it will be.  I think we're moving into a stage where we're not in a constitutional republic any longer.  I just believe we do not know what it is going to be like and trying to predict by making things fit it into old patterns will not work.