PRINTUnpopular speech is good speech
The civil rights, gender equality and women’s suffrage movements all began with small groups of people who had big ideas — ideas considered by most to be at best subversive, if not contrary to the natural order.
MEGHAN KRANE
Protesters gather every Saturday at the Columbia Post Office to share their views of the Iraq War with passersby. Their signs carry slogans that range from sentiments of support for the troops to calls for the impeachment of the president — sometimes both.
July 26, 2007 | 12:00 a.m. CST
On Memorial Day, thousands of miles away from his home in Bourbon, Army Corporal James Summers III thundered through the Iraqi desert with a rescue team toward a crashed Apache helicopter. The mission had been one soldier short, so Summers, 21, volunteered to go.
He and four other soldiers died when their Bradley fighting vehicle struck an improvised explosive device.
The day before his funeral, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., announced it would picket the memorial service and proclaimed “God Himself Has Now Become America’s Terrorist, Killing and Maiming American Troops in Strange Lands for Fag Sins.”
No one in Bourbon recalled seeing a single protester. Had the Westboro group made an appearance, they would have had to comply with a Missouri law that regulates the time and place of funeral protests. They would also have had to contend with the Patriot Guard Riders — a nationwide group of motorcyclists who protect grieving families from said protesters. Sixty riders led Cpl. Summers’ funeral procession as guests of the family.
The law, passed in 2006 and named after Army Specialist Edward Lee Myers, another Missouri soldier killed in Iraq, could be considered a benign restriction of free speech, so why not further restrict funeral protesters, with, say, more compelling methods?
Although most Missourians wouldn’t shed a tear if the Westboro Baptist Church was chased back to Kansas, being banished for what they say, no matter how despicable, would be contrary to society’s greater interests. There is value in distasteful dissent.
Remember the Ku Klux Klan?
Charles Davis does. He grew up in Georgia in the ’60s when the Klan was still active and influential.
Davis, director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, teaches the principles of American journalism to undergraduates at MU. He tells students that before the Klan picked up a microphone and stepped onto the stage, it thrived as an underground rebel organization. “They were very much a part of the social fabric in their own way,” Davis says. “They weren’t very different than the Rotary Club, except for their hateful, bigoted message.”
Some estimate its membership reached six million at its peak in the 1920s. But something happened, and the clandestine powerhouse started to decline. The FBI estimated there were only a few thousand active members by the 1970s. Now the Klan is widely regarded as an embarrassing anachronism.
“They fought like mad for their own First Amendment right to speak,” Davis says. “It was really then they began to decline in both numbers and significance.”
The Klan’s message died in the marketplace of ideas. In the economics of free speech, what they supplied far outweighed demand; society just didn’t buy it.
The Westboro Baptist Church might not hold as much influence in the political arena as the Klan once did. But it’s still important to protect speech, regardless of who’s doing the talking. Freedom of speech allows fringe groups to expose themselves to the wider world, and it’s much easier to evaluate dissidents’ ideas when they send out press releases than when they lurk in the shadows.
Dissent prevents mob rule and impedes the stagnation of civilization. The civil rights, gender equality and women’s suffrage movements all began with small groups of people who had big ideas — ideas considered by most to be at best subversive, if not contrary to the natural order.
Instruments of change
People used to mock Bill Wickersham back in the early 1960s, when he was considered a member of the lunatic fringe. And some still do. He spends most Saturday mornings outside the Columbia Post Office holding a sign that reads: “Support the troops. Impeach the commander-in-chief.”
Wickersham was once a soldier. He missed going to Korea by just a couple years and spent most of his service at Fort Lee, Va., after which he became program director at Memorial Student Union. In 1962, he joined a small group opposed to nuclear proliferation. They went to church groups, dormitories and homes. Eventually, their platform expanded to include opposition to American involvement in Vietnam. On “Vietnam Sundays” they went door-to-door to spread their message.
“The idea that you would be challenging the government and president — it fell on deaf ears,” he says.
Things change. In May 1965, teach-ins were held at universities across the nation, including MU. Wickersham’s protests culminated with the gathering of thousands of students in MU’s Quadrangle where they forced an audience with then-Chancellor John Schwada.
Although not all Vietnam-Iraq analogies work, both conflicts began with strong support from the general public. Protesters were heckled until it became clear that they might have some valid arguments.
The most recent ABC/Washington Post poll shows that only 36 percent of Americans think the Iraq War is worth fighting. That’s nearly a complete reversal in public opinion from four years ago when 70 percent of Americans were in favor of the war. Back then, protesters were a lonely lot. Now anti-war protesters far outnumber those who would stay the course.
Mike Murray has been coming from Ashland to protest nearly every week for the past few years. “I think it’s important to be a witness to the possibility and necessity of a nonviolent society and peaceful world,” he says. It’s a lofty goal for a man standing by a post office in mid-Missouri for an hour a week, but Murray is undeterred.
“You never know about the total consequences of what you do,” he says. “I think we do have an impact. The more people see us the more that seed gets planted in their head.”
Of parrots and patriots
The now-myriad perspectives on the war in Iraq are very different from the divisive anti-war/pro-troop rhetoric employed by the war’s architects. These perspectives exist because protesters forced a sustained public discussion. “Dissent compels society to expand the parameters of the conversation,” Davis says. “Nothing is black- and-white, yes or no, as it seems early on in the conversation.”
Hypernationalism reigned supreme after Sept. 11, when questioning the president was considered treasonous. Journalists included few dissenting viewpoints, and those that did ask the rare tough questions were labeled traitors.
In an attempt to achieve some balance in its coverage, the media often quoted Robert C. Byrd, an aged Democratic Senator from West Virginia, who made an unsuccessful bid to convince the Senate to oppose giving President Bush the power to wage a pre-emptive war.
In a speech to the Senate in 2002, Byrd pleaded for citizens to pay attention when he chastised his fellow lawmakers by quoting Herman Goering, the founder of the Gestapo. “It is the leaders of a country who determine the policy,” Byrd said. “It is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. “...All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Davis says the prevailing attitude at the time was, “Shut up, and let the leader lead.” Officials and the public ridiculed, marginalized or ostracized those who didn’t support the government.
“What do they mean by patriotism? Patriotism usually has to do with love — affection, good feeling — for one’s homeland,” Wickersham says. “What is my country? Is it the government? Is it the military? Is it the people? Is it the Constitution? Is it the bold traditions and freedoms? Just what is it we’re loving?”
Webster defines patriotism as “love for or devotion to one’s country.” It doesn’t say anything about allegiance to an elected politician. People swear fealty to monarchs and dictators, but not to presidents in a democratic society.
Patriotism is not unquestioning support of every move made by government. In a system founded on checks and balances, hypernationalism removes the biggest check of all: the American people.
Tyranny is the product of complacent citizenship, or, as the radical environmentalist Edward Abbey once said, “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
People who lived under tyranny created this nation, and they wrote the Constitution to cure forever their colonial hangover. The colonies were wary of trading their relative autonomy for an all-powerful federal government, so they founded a tradition of protecting minority speech from the majority.
They agreed to ratify the Constitution in exchange for the assurance they would be able to address their grievances through dissent — with free speech, a free press, the right to assemble, the right to petition the government and the right to worship as they wished.
The system perpetually, if not slowly and painfully, fleshes out the best attainable truth.
“That’s why I’m struck by people who would have the leader of this country, regardless of who it is, be unquestioned,” Davis says. “It’s un-American.”
It takes little courage to stand silent with the majority and protect the status quo, but, as Wickersham says, true patriots accept their responsibilities as citizens and stand up when they see injustice. “I view patriotism like being part of a family,” he says. “If a family member commits a crime, it is my responsibility tell someone.”
Perhaps those who would silence their neighbors would rather be living in a totalitarian regime where speaking freely might cost them their lives.
No, freedom isn’t free. It requires participation, and it requires most of us to be offended much of the time.
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