How the Left Amended the First Amendment

National Review ^ | 5/12/2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Servant of the Cross]

Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire or traditionalists who produce beloved movies like The Sound of Music.

The First Amendment to the Constitution instead was designed to protect the obnoxious, the provocative, the uncouth, and the creepy — on the principle that if the foulmouths can say or express what they wish and the public can put up with it, then everyone else is assured of free speech.

Every time the West has forgotten that fact — from putting on trial cranky Socrates or incendiary Jesus to routinely burning books in the Third Reich — we have come to regret what followed. Censorship, of course, is never branded as extreme and dangerous, but rather as a moderate and helpful means to curb the hate speech of a bald, barefooted crank philosopher who pollutes young minds and introduces wacky and dangerous cults, or a hatemonger who whips innocent people in front of a temple in between his faked and hokey miracles, or traitorous Jews who scribble and call their first-grade art the equivalent of Rembrandt or their perverted sexual fantasies the stuff of Hegel. Banning free expression is never presented as provocative, but always the final act of an aggrieved and understandably provoked society.

Lately, the West in general and America in particular seems to have forgotten the free-speech pillar of Western constitutional government.

[Servant of the Cross]

Apparently there is no longer a First Amendment as our Founders wrote it, but instead something like an Orwellian Amendment 1.5 ...

[sauropod]

BFL when my ‘pooter decides to behave.

[cripplecreek]

The language of the 3rd Reich by Victor Klemperer explains it well.

The nazis manipulated the German language as a means of manipulating German society.

[Pollster1]

The nazis manipulated the German language as a means of manipulating German society.

It's a socialist thing. That's why the national socialists did it. That's why the soviet socialists did it. That's why Obama's minions do it. Socialists like wielding power over others, and socialist ideas will not stand on their own if presented honestly.

[nathanbedford]

Not surprisingly, it is illuminating of this issue to follow the money. Victor David Hanson recounts the chilling effect of sheer physical terror on free speech and we all understand the visceral drive for power of, for example, academic leftists who want to do away with free speech to get their way.

But consider the effect money has had on academics. The entire University structure and the entire union structure from K-12 is sustained by the flow of money but progressive money, money from the public trough, the tale of which will not benefit these institutions for the telling. The case of Scott Walker's reforms in Wisconsin are instructive as is the reaction to those reforms.

Similarly, crony capitalists who might in their heart of hearts actually believe they are free market capitalists would not be pleased to have satellite shone upon their relationship with government. Government itself is becoming less and less transparent even as it becomes more and more intrusive. There is big business in farming the government and free speech is the equivalent of herbicide to the harvest.

It is one thing to be intellectually in favor of free speech and quite another to pony up for it.

[central_va]

I see you are back to your old ways.....

[nathanbedford]

I'm trying to cut back.

I am going to try to post only after five o'clock or only on weekends or never alone or only while standing up. I have it under control, I only post socially.

[central_va]

You are good man, you should download all of you posts and compile it into a book.

[nathanbedford]

My wife would call you an enabler.

[Fightin Whitey]

I am going to try to post only after five o'clock or only on weekends or never alone or only while standing up. I have it under control, I only post socially.

My wife would call you an enabler.

.

There's a program for that.

lol

[Servant of the Cross]

Jihadists seek to make this asymmetry quite clear to Western societies and ... they are enabled by [Liberals] who prefer tranquility to freedom of expression.

[SaraJohnson]

The pervert smash mouth, communist propaganda of “progressives” and the treasonous, back stabbing globalists would have been socially shunned from power but not legally banned in the past. Now they want to ban decency and speech about American cultural freedom and the constitution. They want to ban America.

[MrB]

The ideological foundation of all leftism
involved the manipulation of language.
(See Gen 3)

[stylin19a]

...and the public can put up with it,...
couldn't get by this.

[Servant of the Cross]

"Without free speech, the United States becomes just another two-bit society of sycophants, opportunists, and toadies who warp expression for their own careerist and political agendas. How odd that we of the 21st century lack the vision and courage of our 18th-century Founders, who warned us of exactly what we are now becoming."