The guardian of every other right

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While doing research for last week’s column on Frederick Douglass, I stumbled on this quote by him: “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they, first of all, strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble if men are allowed to reason... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

Our government guarantees the right of free speech through the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Free speech means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government. Government is the keyword here.

Unfortunately there are those in America who are circumventing the government to stifle speech, any speech they disagree with. 

Free speech is constantly under attack — where it should be promoted — on college campuses controlled by progressives. Many colleges ban speech that is “offensive.” For example, Georgia Gwinnett College stopped a student from speaking about his religious faith because it “disturbed the comfort of persons.”

I’m sure some took offense at what Douglass had to say about slavery in the mid 1800’s. Who among you believe he should have been silenced because what he had to say ‘disturbed the comfort’ of some of his listeners?

Our founding fathers never imagined corporations worth billions of dollars would wield the power to suppress speech and ideas. But they do.

A longtime Levi Strauss & Co. executive, Jennifer Sey was recently forced to leave the company after she spoke against closing schools due to COVID-19.

When she refused to stop speaking out in support of children over school closures, Sey says, she was accused of being a racist. A Democrat her entire “voting life,” she discovered how the wok crowd demonizes those they disagree with. By the way, she is the mother of two black children.

To keep from being silenced, Sey lost her job and turned down a $1 million severance pay.

If you are not in lockstep with the left in America today, you are attacked and your ideas suppressed. Just ask Spotify podcast star Joe Rogan who dared interview cardiologist Peter McCullough in December 2021. 

Many things McCullough said are deemed misinformation. What he said may have been wrong. But, as liberal comedian Jon Stewart recently stated: ‘Who gets to decide what’s misinformation?

The attack on free speech the free flow of information by academia and corporations is wrong. The biggest threat to our liberty may come from the large social media companies, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google.

For example, Facebook suppressed information for more than a year, suggesting the likely possibility that the coronavirus leaked from China’s Wuhan lab.

Twitter banned former President Donald Trump from its services. I know people who have had their Facebook accounts locked because of their conservative views.

Cancel culture has led to people losing their jobs, resignations and boycotts. It threatens free speech and open debate. An editorial in the Washington Examiner said this, “There is no way we can evolve into a more tolerant society if all people are deemed irremediably racist for things they wrote as teenagers and if major publications target non-public figures. Beyond that, however, the spirit of open speech and debate, in which there is an exchange of a wide array of ideas, is crucial to the survival of the republic.”

NBC Sports Sideline Reporter Michele Tafoya left her job of almost 30 years after this year’s Super Bowl to talk freely about her children’s school, emphasizing that skin color matters and separating children into their race. In a report on Fox News, she pointed out that many of her friends agree with her but “are afraid to talk.” 

Douglass was a master of words. We should heed his words on free speech or we will eventually lose our liberty. Founding Father and the fourth President of the United States, James Madison put it this way, free speech is the “effectual guardian of every other right.”