Free Speech Absolutist Christopher Hitchens on This Day in History

 

This day in history: British American author and journalist Christopher Hitchens was born on this day (April 13) in 1949. 

Hitchens held complex views on abortion; being ethically opposed to it in most instances, and believing that a fetus was entitled to personhood, while holding ambiguous, changing views on its legality. He supported gun rights and the freedom of expression. 

There is a video online of Christopher Hitchens defending free speech, wherein he says some interesting things about the freedom to say anything you want. I have included some samples below: 

As John Stuart Mill* said, if all of society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person it would be most important in fact it would become even more important that that one heretic be heard because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous or appalling view.

In more modern times this has been put I think best by a personal heroine of mine Rosa Luxemburg, who said that "the freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently."

He says of the holocaust denier: "That person doesn't just have a right to speak, that person's right to speak must be given extra protection because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with." He follows this with: "One of the proudest moments of my life, that's to say in the recent past, has been defending the British historian David Irving who is now in prison in Austria for nothing more than the potential of uttering an unwelcomed thought on Austrian soil."

Hitchens also had little regard for people who were constantly offended. Hitchens: "When Dr Samuel Johnson had finished his great lexicography, the first real English dictionary, he was visited by various delegations of people to congratulate him, including a delegation of Londons' respectable womanhood, who came to his parlour in Fleet Street and said, 'Dr we want to congratulate you on your decision to exclude all indecent words from your dictionary.' And he said, 'Ladies I congratulate your persistence in looking them up.' ....

If people are determined to be offended, if they will climb up on the ladder, balancing it precariously on their own toilet cistern, to be upset by what they see through their neighbours bathroom window, There's nothing you can do about that." Christopher Hitchens.

See also: Free Speech IS the Speech You Hate - Quotations on Freedom of Expression

*[John Stuart Mill's quote is, “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”]

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The Bill of Rights on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly on this day in 1791.

From Lawrence Reed:

Americans over the age of 60 will likely remember the hilarious TV game show that ran for 25 years (1965-1980) called Hollywood Squares. On the show, host Peter Marshall (still living at age 95) once directed this question to comedian Paul Lynde: “Pride, anger, covetousness, lust, gluttony, envy and sloth are collectively known as what?”

Sustained laughter ensued when Lynde replied, “The Bill of Rights.” (The correct answer, of course, is the Seven Deadly Sins.)

It was on this very day in 1791—December 15—that a young United States of America formally adopted the first ten amendments to its Constitution that we call the Bill of Rights. Those amendments were fundamental and foundational, as bedrock as it gets, without which adoption of the Constitution itself might not have occurred. In fewer than 500 words, many of our most cherished liberties are expressed as rights to be protected. It’s a roster of instructions to government to keep out of where it doesn’t belong.

Not long ago, the late and famous trial attorney F. Lee Bailey (1933-2021) posed a poignant question to which he provided a disturbing answer: “Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee!”

Bailey was likely right, which makes it even more urgent that Americans renew a learned passion for the Bill of Rights. Toward that end, I offer here a sample of thoughts in its defense:

_____

1. The concept that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary government are inoperative when they become inconvenient or when expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and if allowed to flourish would destroy the benefit of a written Constitution and undermine the basis of our government. - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black
2. Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty? - Patrick Henry
3. The Bill of Rights wasn’t enacted to give us any rights. It was enacted so the Government could not take away from us any rights that we already had. - Kenneth G. Eade, author
4. The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. - Robert H. Jackson, Supreme Court Justice
5. Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us…In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness." - Carl Sagan, astronomer
6.  "There are two ways to choke off free expression. We've already discussed one of them: clamp down on free speech and declare some topics off-limits. That strategy is straightforward enough. The other, more insidious way to limit free expression is to try to change the very language people use" - Dennis Prager, author
7. "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States." - Noah Webster
8. "The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, … or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press." - Thomas Jefferson
9. "In 1942, there were 110,000 Japanese American citizens in good standing, law-abiding people who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had: "Right this way" into the internment camps! Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took them away! And rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re just privileges." - George Carlin
10. "The first article of the Bill of Rights provides that Congress shall make no law respecting freedom of worship or abridging freedom of opinion. There are some among us who seem to feel that this provision goes too far, even for the purpose of preventing tyranny over the mind of man. Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty. The external threat to liberty should not drive us into suppressing liberty at home. Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination." - Harry Truman
11. "In respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go farther and express our conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man to exercise, it is equally so for women. All that distinguishes man as an intelligent and accountable being, is equally true of woman; and if that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective franchise, or a hand in making and administering the laws of the land. Our doctrine is, that “Right is of no sex." - Frederick Douglass
12. "The Bill of Rights is the United States. The United States is the Bill of Rights. Compromise the Bill of Rights and you dissolve the very foundation upon which the Union stands… Nowhere in the Bill of Rights are the words ‘unless inconvenient’ to be found." - A. E. Samaan, historian

For additional information, see:

Rights and Non-Rights: Distinguishing the Two by Lawrence W. Reed

Historic Figures Who Recognized that Speech is Freedom’s First Line of Defense by Lawrence W. Reed

The Holiday That Isn’t by Lawrence W. Reed

George Mason: Father of the Bill of Rights by Raymond Polin

The Bill of Rights is America’s Bulwark Against Government Overreach by Gary Galles

Mercy Otis Warren: Conscience of Great Causes by Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed is FEE's President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty, having served for nearly 11 years as FEE’s president (2008-2019). He is author of the 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist? as well as Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Follow on LinkedIn and Like his public figure page on Facebook. His website is www.lawrencewreed.com.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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Milton's Free Speech Manifesto on This Day in History

This day in history: John Milton published his Areopagitica on this day in 1644. The Areopagitica is perhaps the earliest and one of the greatest manifestos in defense of free speech ever introduced. He wrote: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

The US Supreme Court cited it as an authority on the inherent value of false statements in the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan:

"Even a false statement may be deemed to make a valuable contribution to public debate, since it brings about 'the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.'” Mill, On Liberty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1947), p. 15; see also Milton, Areopagitica, in Prose Works (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1959), vol. 2, p. 561.

"The great poet John Milton wrote perhaps the first great defense of free speech when the English republican Parliament reintroduced censorship via the Licensing Order of 1643 (censorship had effectively been abolished in 1640 along with the Star Chamber, which tried Lilburne)."~Iain Murray

Here is the text of the Areopagitica:

It has been said of "Areopagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England," that it is "the piece that lies more surely than any other at the very heart of our prose literature." In 1637 the Star Chamber issued a decree regulating the printing, circulation, and importation of books, and on June 14, 1643, the Long Parliament published an order in the same spirit. Milton felt that what had been done in the days of repression and tyranny was being continued under the reign of liberty, and that the time for protest had arrived. Liberty was the central principle of Milton's faith. He regarded it as the most potent, beneficent, and sacred factor in human progress; and he applied it all round—to literature, religion, marriage, and civic life. His "Areopagitica," published in November, 1644, was an application of the principle to literature that has remained unanswered. The word "Areopagitica" is derived from Areopagus, the celebrated open-air court in Athens, whose decision in matters of public importance was regarded as final.

1: The Right of Appeal

It is not a liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth—that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for. To which we are already in good part arrived; and this will be attributed first to the strong assistance of God our Deliverer, next to your faithful guidance and undaunted wisdom, Lords and Commons of England.

If I should thus far presume upon the meek demeanour of your civil and gentle greatness, Lords and Commons, as to gainsay what your published Order hath directly said, I might defend myself with ease out of those ages to whose polite wisdom and letters we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders. Such honour was done in those days to men who professed the study of wisdom and eloquence that cities and signiories heard them gladly, and with great respect, if they had aught in public to admonish the state.

When your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever it be heard speaking, I know not what should withhold me from presenting ye with a fit instance wherein to show, both that love of truth which ye eminently profess, and that uprightness of your judgment which is not wont to be partial to yourselves, by judging over again that Order which ye have ordained to regulate printing: that no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed unless the same be first approved and licensed by such, or at least one of such, as shall be thereto appointed.

I shall lay before ye, first, that the inventors of licensing books be those whom ye will be loth to own; next, what is to be thought in general of reading, whatever sort the books be; last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth. I deny not that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.

Nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

We should be wary, therefore, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, that strikes at that ethereal essence, the breath of reason itself, and slays an immortality rather than a life.

2: The History of Repression

In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than in any other part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the magistrate cared to take notice of—those either blasphemous and atheistical, or libellous. The Romans, for many ages trained up only to a military roughness, knew of learning little. There libellous authors were quickly cast into prison, and the like severity was used if aught were impiously written. Except in these two points, how the world went in books the magistrate kept no reckoning.

By the time the emperors were become Christians, the books of those whom they took to be grand heretics were examined, refuted, and condemned in the general councils, and not till then were prohibited.

As for the writings of heathen authors, unless they were plain invectives against Christianity, they met with no interdict that can be cited till about the year 400. The primitive councils and bishops were wont only to declare what books were not commendable, passing no further till after the year 800, after which time the popes of Rome extended their dominion over men's eyes, as they had before over their judgments, burning and prohibiting to be read what they fancied not, till Martin V. by his Bull not only prohibited, but was the first that excommunicated the reading of heretical books; for about that time Wickliffe and Huss, growing terrible, drove the papal court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed (as if St. Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also out of Paradise), unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of two or three glutton friars.

Not from any ancient state or polity or church, nor by any statute left us by our ancestors, but from the most tyrannous Inquisition have ye this book-licensing. Till then books were as freely admitted into the world as any other birth. No envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring. That ye like not now these most certain authors of this licensing Order, all men who know the integrity of your actions will clear ye readily.

3: The Futility of Prohibition

But some will say, "What though the inventors were bad, the thing, for all that, may be good?" It may be so, yet I am of those who believe it will be a harder alchemy than Lullius ever knew to sublimate any good use out of such an invention.

Good and evil in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably. As the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. And how can we more safely, and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

'Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to temptations without necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain things. To both these objections one answer will serve—that to all men such books are not temptations, nor vanities, but useful drugs and materials wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong medicines. The rest, as children and childish men, who have not the art to qualify and prepare these working minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly they cannot be by all the licensing that sainted Inquisition could ever yet contrive.

This Order of licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed. If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be thought honest. Our garments, also, should be referred to the licensing of some more sober workmasters to see them cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth? Who shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no further? Lastly, who shall forbid and separate all idle resort, all evil company? If every action which is good or evil in man at ripe years were to be under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a name?

When God gave Adam reason, he gave him reason to choose, for reason is but choosing. Wherefore did he create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

Why should we then affect a rigour contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by abridging or scanting those means which books freely permitted are both to the trial of virtue and the exercise of truth?

4: An Indignity to Learning

I lastly proceed from the no good it can do to the manifest hurt it causes in being, first, the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning and to learned men. If ye be loth to dishearten utterly and discontent the free and ingenuous sort of such as were born to study, and love learning for itself, not for lucre or any other end but the service of God and of truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind, then know that so far to distrust the judgment and the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in learning, and never yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner, is the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him.

When a man writes to the world he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends. If in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him to that state of maturity as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing, and if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print with his censor's hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer, it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.

And, further, to me it seems an undervaluing and vilifying of the whole nation. I cannot set so light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and solid judgment which is in England, as that it can be comprehended in any twenty capacities how good soever, much less that it should not pass except their superintendence be over it, except it be sifted and strained with their strainers, that it should be uncurrent without their manual stamp. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolised and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards.

Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors—a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language and our theologic arts? By all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in His Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He, then, but reveal Himself to His servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen?

Behold now this vast city—a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? Where there is much desire to learn, there, of necessity, will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligencies to join and unite in one general search after truth, could we but forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men.

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

What should ye do then? Should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, and free, and humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which our own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple. Whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensing to make her victorious. Those are the shifts and defences that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.

See also: Free Speech Leads to Tolerance and Prosperity
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/12/free-speech-leads-to-tolerance-and.html

Free Speech IS the Speech You Hate - Quotations on Freedom of Expression
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2017/04/free-speech-is-speech-you-hate.html

Your Free Speech Is More Important Than My Feelings
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/04/your-free-speech-is-more-important-than.html

Read the Areopagitica
http://files.libertyfund.org/files/103/1224_Bk.pdf
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/608

Listen to the Areopagitica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgTiHr-bXhI

The Gettysburg Address on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: The Gettysburg Address was delivered by Abraham Lincoln on this day in 1863.  

It is as follows:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Decades later, H.L. Mencken offered a sharp criticism to Lincoln's address: "The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.

But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — 'that government of the people, by the people, for the people,' should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege."

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