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 Monday, May 18, 2009

Standing Up for Truly Free Speech

By Greg Perkins @ 12:01 AM

Brian Jennings is the author of a new book on the Fairness Doctrine, Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio, and he came through Boise on his promotional tour a couple days ago. The biggest talk-radio station in the area had a live-broadcast event featuring him and local talk show host Nate Shelman (who was the anchor speaker for Boise's Tax Day Tea Party). It was all about free speech, censorship, and the Fairness Doctrine.

The book's author is a Conservative, distressed at the Left's use of the Fairness Doctrine to disrupt or destroy Conservative talk radio, and most everyone in the audience seemed to identify as a Conservative as well. After listening for a while, I decided to actually go there in person to see if I could get some mic time and maybe inject a little principled thought into the conversation. I figured a couple minutes on air had to be at least as effective as a letter to the editor. :^)

Why did I go there? Well, people recognize there's something seriously wrong with the Fairness Doctrine, and they can (and did) talk about how it is a blunt political weapon involving arbitrary powers and undefined terms, constitutes censorship, is a violation of free speech, and so on. But what I wasn't hearing was any principled stand for the absolute right to free speech and the consistent rejection of censorship. Without this, their argument is basically reduced to a flowery appeal to partisan interests. Demanding that people follow a principle only works if you're doing so yourself! More important, they should uphold the crucial ideas that make human life possible in society, and which brought about the best country in the world.

So there I was, sitting among a couple hundred conservative folks, trying to figure out how I could point out hypocrisy and inspire a genuine stand for liberty without being booed out of the room.

I waited, surveying the discussion... Eventually, a lady who was known and liked by the host and audience took the mic and talked about how the Left says the Right is "just as bad" and should therefore feel guilty, which she and the audience of course rejected out of hand. Sweet! Now all I had to do was try to springboard from her comments, contradict her in a way that wouldn't make me seem like a jerk, articulate my point while the host did his thing, and keep my own off-the-cuff mental chaos from making me look like a fool or a crank. :^)

Here's an mp3 of me working it out: greg-on-kboi.mp3 (That's a 2.5 minute slice of the entire three-hour program, starting from 2:14:56.)

I think it was worth the effort. While I wasn't nearly as smooth and clear as I would have liked, I managed to get the essential points across, and in a way that worked for an audience that could have easily been alienated. Either way, it was good training for the next opportunity! And nice fodder for a letter to the editor I'm about to go write.

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 Comments

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 7:45:30 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Rosemary Gately
E-mail: rgg120(at)gmail.com

You did a good job of making that important point, Greg, and it the host (and audience, too, judging from the applause) agreed.

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 8:14:16 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Richard
E-mail: rbramwell(at)sympatico.ca

Great Job Greg. It was great how the moderator grasped it, and -as per Rosemary, it was well received by the live audience. I hope it resounded as well with the rest of the radio audience. Though it may be dwindling, there are still many Americans with the proper sense of life who will respond to its presentation as being an explicit principle. Love it. (from Canada, no less).

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 8:14:17 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Richard
E-mail: rbramwell(at)sympatico.ca

Great Job Greg. It was great how the moderator grasped it, and -as per Rosemary, it was well received by the live audience. I hope it resounded as well with the rest of the radio audience. Though it may be dwindling, there are still many Americans with the proper sense of life who will respond to its presentation as being an explicit principle. Love it. (from Canada, no less).

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 8:15:26 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Richard
E-mail: rbramwell(at)sympatico.ca

Sorry, I accidentally hit Enter twice.

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 8:40:49 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Mark Wickens
E-mail: noodlefood(at)wickens.ca
URL: http://randex.org/

Congrats, Greg, and thank you! I thought you did very well.

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 9:53:48 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Michael Labeit
E-mail: logician179(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://unit-perspective.blogspot.com

I admire your initiative.

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 10:21:24 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://dianahsieh.com/blog

Thanks! It was gratifying to see it go over so well -- besides all the nodding and smiling and claps, the lady I'd essentially corrected greeted me with glowing praise as I sat back down, and several others in the area moved closer to express appreciation as well.

Of course, not everyone would agree with the notion of actually standing up for rights as absolutes, like the elderly theocrat who caught my elbow as I was leaving. My message got through, though: he wanted to explain how what I'd said was nice and all, but that allowing indecency wasn't what the Founders had in mind. Of course I disagreed and pointed out that in seeking to ban pornography or whatever, that he simply wasn't an advocate for free speech and wasn't recognizing or acting on the principle of rights at all -- that he was doing the opposite: advocating the systematic violation of the rights the Founders had fought so hard for. (He went on to construe our government and rights as a God-given thing, which lead to a brief and annoyingly wide-ranging debate in the foyer, apparently to the delight of the young bartender serving folks there. Man, I really need to be better about recognizing, controlling, and smoothly shutting down that kind of goofiness instead of getting sucked in. :^)

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 10:21:47 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Guy Adamson
URL: http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/index.html

Awesome job, Greg! The audience really seemed to grasp and appreciate your distinction between rights and standards-- with property rights as the foundation. I also enjoyed your interaction with the host. Good thinking on your feet!

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 10:24:04 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Khartoum
E-mail: track2me(at)gmail.com
URL: http://khartoum-khartoum.blogspot.com/

Great job! Glad we have people like you still around!

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 10:29:50 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Khartoum
E-mail: track2me(at)gmail.com
URL: http://khartoum-khartoum.blogspot.com/

This quote by Voltaire would probably have fit right in:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 10:42:45 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog

Voltaire never said that; it has been widely but wrongly attributed to him.

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 11:32:13 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com

From Wikiquote:

"Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression."

Now that's a bit of a conundrum; the direct quote is from Hall, but the words were describing her take on Voltaire's actual ideas. So the quote could be said as belonging to Voltaire in spirit, but not the letter...

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 11:46:40 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: C Andrew
E-mail: ca4papen(at)mindspring.com

In his A Book of French Quotations (1963), Norbert Guterman suggested that the probable source for the quotation was a line in a 6 February 1770 letter to M. le Riche: ``Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.''

So it looks like Hall might have even come fairly close to the "letter" of the sentiment.

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 16:14:30 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2

Greg,

Thanks to the Conservatives' expansion of obscenity (not even "pornography") laws, there are people in US federal prisons serving time for writing - or even just reading - fantasy stories that juries in conservative districts disapprove of. I am duly amused by the screams of "censorship" emanating from conservatives now that their speech could be next going into the same grinder. And those are the people whom you believe to be capable of understanding the concept of "principle?"

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 20:05:34 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: BrianS

Just listened to your 3 min of fame. You did a great job and spoke very eloquently and seem to have gotten through to the host to boot. :)

Monday, May 18, 2009 at 20:18:18 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com

Adam: not necessarily. Remember that while many people grasp that something is wrong with mainstream politics, very few of them are capable of identifying the fact that both "sides" are wrong and contradictory; the majority of them end up picking one side instead of breaking out of that box.

That means that both "sides" contain a lot of people which have chosen to identify themselves as being on that side, but are silently dissastisfied nonetheless with its inconsistencies, the one you note not being the least of them.

The challenge for us is simply: where is the best prospecting? Where are the best of those who do not break the box? Can they be helped out of the box with a little help?

There was a time when center-left was the best place to look. That time, IMO, ended in the 1970's, when those of an Enlightenment bend migrated away from the increasingly socialist "liberalism" towards the ostensively free-market conservatism. (That they did so is a measure of how badly that libertarianism has fared at presenting itself as a third alternative).

The conservatives pushing censorship are the more consistent ones, no doubt. I highly doubt, however, that there are very many of *those* particular conservatives who would be receptive to Greg's message. That's the old guy who pulled him aside afterwards and started prattling about God. Those are the enemy. We don't care about those.

It's the ones who think that conservatism is the best match to their convictions (some implicit, some explicit) **for lack of awareness of alternatives** -- the ones capable of thinking in principles, if only they can be given a boost -- that we need to find and reach.

Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 10:37:59 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Greebo
E-mail: greebo(at)comcast.net

Well said, Sir. Well said.

Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 11:23:25 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Kelly
E-mail: kellymcnulty(at)gmail.com
URL: http://rantfromtherock.blogspot.com/

Nice work, Greg! And I love the part about the bartender enjoying the impromptu lobby debate. :-)

Friday, May 22, 2009 at 13:50:34 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Elisheva Levin
E-mail: elisheva(at)spinn.net
URL: http://ragamuffinstudies.blogspot.com

Wow! I am never so eloquent when called upon to speak extemporaneously. You did a great job. I went to our event with Bryan Jennings here in Albuquerque, but did not have a chance to ask a question. It was interesting though, that our audience ran the gamut from conservatives through libertarian-leaning people. I think most would have appreciated your comment, though some still do not understand that the freedom they want for themselves must also belong to those they disagree with.

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