Through 13 posts I have not found any serious defense of free speech. Let us consider how the left has turned the world upside down. The very idea of providing a teacher with tenure is to free them from real and potential intimidation of the intellectual quest by the state. In other words, society since the Middle Ages has believed that Socrates must be protected from the hemlock or the electoral integrity of the Academy will be lost to the demagogues of the state.
Can we conceive of a situation in which this woman might be protected from making the same remarks inside the classroom by tenure and yet be denied the right to streak freely and preserve her job in the public square? Have we not turned the world upside down?
Our problem arises out of the coercive nature of public education. Although parents have a technical right in most jurisdictions to homeschool their children or to place their children in a private school or a religious school, as a practical matter these options are severely limited by finances. Put another way, a child is drafted into an institution which we call a school and held there by force of arms if necessary. There he will go unless his parents post his bail.
Since we compel children to sit in indoctrination sessions hour after hour, parents naturally want to control the indoctrination process. In a sensible society the parents would be given the option and the wherewithal by way of vouchers to send their children to a school of their choice whose curriculum comports with their values. But the left will not permit this because the teachers unions have a vested interest in the fruits of tenure. Once again the world is stood on its head because the teachers do not defend their tenure because they want to emulate Socrates but because they want to be protected by the state from the buffeting of competition. So the parents lose even more influence over the indoctrination of their own children.
Suppose this despicable teacher, who is clearly an anti-Semite, had gone to the public square and spoken the following sentence into the television camera and microphone:
"I think we should amend the Constitution so that 'Zionist Jews and the Federal Reserve" [can be] run out of this country.'"?
Her anti-Semitism would be no less despicable but would her First Amendment rights be more defensible?
It occurs to me that free speech ought to enjoy more protection in the public square from punishment by the state. I believe that a substitute teacher should have the constitutional right to say these despicable things in the public square without losing her job. I believe that if she had said them in the classroom, she should lose her job. If the woman were a teacher in a private school, the state could not fire her, but could the state compel the private school to fire her? Is there a difference in principle? It seems to me that the First Amendment does not protect despicable people from reactions in society, only from reactions by the government.
Our temptation as conservatives is to react to the substance of the speech and then decide whether it should be protected. I believe this is a very, very dangerous path. I am even reluctant for the state to control speech in the classroom but I see no other choice when we are dealing with children of tender years who are literally forced to sit and listen. The real solution is to end the incarceration system we call public education.
If you believe in free speech I think you have to support the voucher system. I do not want the superintendent of schools deciding what my children can hear and can not hear nor do I want him to decide what kind of political speech is fit for my children to hear, nor do I want him to decide whether public utterances of political speech somehow disqualify a teacher because the superintendent finds those words despicable. I want that power to be in my hands not in the hands of the state. So long as we have compulsory public education with no remedial voucher system, we will face this dilemma.
At the end of the day we have lost free speech in the public square, we have lost control over speech that our children are compelled to hear in school, we have lost control of the souls of our children.
