James M. Redwine

First Amendment

You Shall Know the Truth & the Truth Will Set You Free (John 8:32)

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Jesus was born in Palestine and did much of his teaching there about 2,000 years ago. The words Jesus spoke were so offensive to the chief Jewish scribes and priests they called upon the Romans to crucify him even though he had committed no crime except, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place” (Luke 23:5). Actually he was just calling for peace and justice.

The Chief Pharisee, Joseph Caiaphas, and his ruling Judaic council charged Jesus with heresy and asked the Romans to try him. The Roman rulers, Pontius Pilate and King Herod, could find no fault in his behavior and planned to release him. Pilate then called together the chief priests and the religious rulers and the populace, to tell them Jesus would be released. “But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified” (Luke 22:6-25). So, Jesus was crucified for expressing views those in power in the Sanhedrin found offensive. Those eye witness accounts as reported in the Bible come from the famous authors of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all of whom were Jewish. Ergo, the knee jerk response of contemporary society and Trump’s White House that they were being anti-semitic would lie fallow.

The Romans, much like those today in American academia who caved to the financial threats from the Trump Administration, just washed their hands of the matter (Matthew 27:11-26). However, the shame of shirking the most sacred duty of a college, that is, preserving the free flow of ideas, cannot be so easily cleansed.

Another Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, who advocates in America today for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel has not been charged with any crime, but is currently imprisoned in America for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, principally during his tenure at Columbia University. He was arrested by the power of President Donald Trump’s Executive Branch that disagrees with Khalil’s calls for peace in Gaza and an end to the slaughter by the Zionists of over 50,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. Khalil’s peaceful support for the resistance of the Palestinian people from 1948 until now to the military actions and occupations by Israel in Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Yemen is at odds with the positions of the Trump and Zionist Israeli administrations.

The myopic view of Israel’s Zionistic actions over the past seventy-seven years is reminiscent of lessons from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Just as a narcissistic ruler is conned into parading naked before an adoring crowd until an innocent child exposes his vanity, Presidents Biden and Trump find no fault with the Zionists in Israel. That is the very purpose of the First Amendment, to expose the truth.

When our government will brook no dissent nor even consider opposing views, great harm and even greater injustice may occur. Protests and free speech in a non-violent academic atmosphere are vital to preserving our democracy. Just as our Founders feared, a silenced majority leads to tyranny from a minority.

Many Jewish people at Columbia University, and in much of the rest of the world, agree with Khalil or, at a minimum, believe he has the right to peaceably, publicly express his views. In America, Free Speech is not anti-semitic or pro-Palestinian; it is an essential element to preserving our democracy. As the Jewish and Roman rulers of 2,000 years ago discovered, power abused can lead to rights denied and even a country being destroyed. 1948 might have been a new beginning for Israel, but it may not survive the Zionist dream of total conquest of its neighbors in the Middle East while being abetted by our government, much of the media and academia.

The First Amendment to our Constitution is first because our Founders knew it is vital to democracy. When our institutions sell their principles for money or succumb to fear of speaking the truth because they may be branded anti-semitic, we may eventually reap the whirlwind, perhaps even a nuclear one.

Thanks, Robert

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Last week my friend and fellow member of the Fourth Estate, Robert Smith, published a commentary on the appropriateness of mixing religion and government; it isn’t.

In adopting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the 1776ers relied on the wisdom gained from thousands of years of bad experiences of religion being misused by those in power. It is no accident that Freedom of and from Religion and Freedom of Expression and the Press are joined:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I realize those few of you who read this column already are aware of this bedrock of our democracy. Robert understands that also. He concluded his commentary with this thought:

“It just surprises me that something as basic as creating respectfully neutral spaces in public around intensely personal matters even needs to be explained.”

Of course, Robert has a right to be surprised that in America that was born by the midwifery of Freedom from Governmental interference with Freedom of Choice, anyone who is public-spirited enough to accept the responsibility of serving in any governmental function would violate his or her sacred oath by interjecting their personal religion into public, governmental matters. Most American adults have been weaned on years of formal and incidental realization that the surest way to harm Religious Liberty is by governmental force of any particular Faith.

So, because just as Robert, I am amazed and concerned such issues still require mention in a newspaper, I will just say, Thank you, Robert!

A Slippery Slope

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At December fifth’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce, presidents of Harvard, Penn and M.I.T. answered questions about free speech matters at their universities. One should first question what our government was doing micro-managing private speech and assemblage at non-governmental institutions. Another dangerous issue was raised when a wealthy alumnus of Penn threatened to withdraw a one hundred-million-dollar donation if Penn did not fire its president who did not testify as the alumnus approved. President Elizabeth Magill and Penn bowed to the combined pressure of politics and money; she and the Chairman of Penn’s Board almost immediately resigned. The Black female president of Harvard, Dr. Claudine Gay, and the Jewish female president of M.I.T., Dr. Sally Kornbluth, have not, as yet, stepped down. Congress took umbrage at the three university presidents’ responses to a hypothetical question about possible antisemitism on their campuses. Each president stated free speech is vital on college campuses and all speech and protest must be judged within the context it is made. Congress was offended by the failure to unequivocally prohibit the hypothetical call for Jewish genocide without regard to the circumstances and context in which such hypothetical speech might be uttered.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seeks to guarantee all the rights set forth in the Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Our Founders knew Free Speech is essential to preserving all of our rights. As former slave Frederick Douglass stated:

“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.”

And to paraphrase my fellow columnist, Benjamin Franklin, who published Poor Richard’s Almanac, freedom of speech is the freedom that secures all the others. Of course, Franklin was concerned as an individual citizen, a working member of the press and an influential Founding Father.

Congresspersons who set themselves up as the arbiters of speech and assembly at private universities may see themselves as protecting students from hateful speech and protests. But it is the core mission of our colleges and universities to provide forums where differing views of important issues may be aired and debated. Students go on to be future presidents of other colleges or even of the United States. They will become members of the Supreme Court and Congress and will serve throughout our nation on school boards and in local, state and federal government. It is imperative that they learn to challenge the status quo and themselves. A good starting point is the First Amendment.

 

The Book Club

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Phil Ochs (1940-1976) was an American folk singer who wrote and sang about the dangers of governmental suppression of human rights. One of his favorite topics was censorship. In his song Outside of a Small Circle of Friends, his lyrics include:

“Oh there’s a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his pain.
But we’re busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.”

Ochs is addressing his lyrics to the hypocrisy of selective censorship. That, of course, is the greatest danger of suppression of ideas; certain groups seek to deny the thoughts of certain other groups and individuals while the ideals of other groups and individuals are allowed to flourish.

It may be coincidental that recent political discord in America includes powerful movements to ban thought or it may be that competing strident voices seeking to drown out conflicting thoughts are the source of the stalemate of constructive solutions to our current social miasma. As various special interest groups attempt to censor the airing of the ideals of other special interest groups such as by banning books in public schools, the education of future leaders suffers. It is reasonable to assume when these narrowly indoctrinated children become adults, they will continue the process of increasing public ignorance. And children being children and the internet being ubiquitous we should not be surprised if public school education in general is eschewed and our nation might lose sight of some of its founding principles that have helped right our ship of state for over two hundred years.

While there are numerous special interest groups that seek to have our public schools, including even our colleges and universities, deny free expression, often the banning of unwelcomed ideas comes from religious sects. In America that often includes Christian denominations that see themselves as protecting children by shielding them from the dangers of sexually aberrant thought.

I recall my own Christian upbringing when some of the first stories I was taught, even before I started my formal public schooling, were from the Bible. The realization of their nakedness by Adam and Eve and Lot’s having children with both of his daughters after his wife was turned into a pillar of salt and the adultery and homosexuality of Sodom and Gomorrah were stories related matter of factly by various teachers and preachers to me and my young friends. Then there is the ultimate Christian story I was taught untold times by Sunday School teachers and ministers about God having a child with an unsophisticated young Hebrew girl. I am fairly sure no Christian right group nor any Me Too group is calling for the Bible to be banned for depicting incest among Lot and his daughters, sodomy, the machinations of an Immaculate Conception or as the Bible says, “God’s only begotten son”. And billions of people, including me, have enjoyed the Christmas Story without a thought for Mary’s lack of input in the decision.

The point, of course, is that the evils sought to be avoided by book banning are not nearly as damaging as the suppression of free speech or the violation of First Amendment rights. Schools should not stock or teach pornographic materials. However, the Bible is great literature that should be taught along with many of the other books some groups want to ban. Public schools should not teach the faiths of particular religions as fact but should expose students to the lessons and wisdom of all great literature including the myths that have helped guide many successful civilizations. We need to teach our students how to make sound, informed judgments. The best way to do that is to expand their minds not narrow their horizons.

 

TikTok

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Congress and President Biden have decided to save America from the disclosure of state secrets by the Kardashian wannabees of our society. Peg and I do not do TikTok but occasionally some marginally functioning teenager will create a TikTok post that is so lacking in taste and talent that the main stream media airs it as a parody. Those are the only TikToks I have seen; that’s plenty.

Physically unattractive people gyrating to two-beat music while wearing too small bikinis is not my choice of leisure listening and viewing. Fortunately, the shameless exhibitionists who are totally lacking in true self-images almost never say anything. So, at least, we only are assaulted by their physical repugnance.

Why we are paying our leaders to spend countless hours on the foibles of misguided or unguided youths while Congress is profligately spending 100 billion dollars per year arming every country from Ukraine to Israel is a mystery to me. Perhaps they should concentrate on such issues as war and the environment or even why our banks are failing and why inflation is wreaking havoc on our 401(k)s. Regardless, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is going before Congress’ House Energy and Commerce Committee this month to explain the First Amendment to people who should already know it.

When our Constitution was adopted the very First Amendment provided:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The great English legal philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), helped lead the Enlightenment. The American legal philosopher, James Madison (1751-1836), owed so much to Locke in Madison’s drafting of our Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Both Locke and Madison strongly believed Freedom of Speech was essential to preserving all other freedoms.

It is ironic that our leaders of today cite fear of Russia and China as they call for restrictions on free speech. We have long rightfully complained that China and Russia severely restrict their citizens’ right to freely express themselves. Now we want to make federal law based on that same fear of American citizens that the Chinese and Russians enforce as to such patriots as Alexei Navalny. At least, Navalny actually has something to say that Putin should fear, that is the truth. TikTokers pretty much simply wish to share their irrelevant and boorish behaviors.

My guess is our leaders are as clueless about the workings of TikTok as I am and that they are simply knee-jerking to baseless fears of the very people who put them in office. What about such public policy as the 1966 Freedom of Information Act that was enacted to guarantee the people could monitor their government? Then there is the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act that allows taxpayers to track government spending. Have our current leaders decided too much information in the hands of Americans is dangerous, at least if that information can be accessed by foreign governments, as they can easily do with a simple request for data?

Of course, Congress and the President say they fear China and Russia and other countries will mine the internet data and use it against us. But every credit card transaction, every online post such as filing a tax return, every cell phone use is already “mineable.”  Any hostile foreign country can already legally obtain more information than they would ever need via our own legal system. I ask you, Gentle Reader, is there anything on TikTok that could be used to start a lawnmower much less build a nuclear weapon?

I would like for our leaders to revisit Joseph Goebbels who was evil but prescient when he said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” In other words, our government is making its own reality and using that as the basis to restrict our rights under the First Amendment.

Another author that should be considered is Franz Kafka whose hero, Joseph K in The Trial, pointed out that the enacted laws made it impossible for anyone to rely on what the law truly is. This is much like George Orwell’s “Newspeak” in 1984 where the only true purpose of governmental language was to control the populace.

In other words, instead of taking Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as our free speech guides, perhaps we should look to our Constitution and our history and rationally analyze TikTok and its mainly pathetic users. I point out that just last year (2022) the European Union, which we look upon favorably, passed the Data Act (Digital Accountability and Transparency Act) that was designed to standardize international contracting and commerce by standardizing digital and internet language. Should we not also want to clarify by expanding instead of restricting internet usage even if the usage may be frivolous?

I call upon Congress and the President to not put the means as Kafka might say, “to exercise discretionary moral judgment” by the lone U.S. Secretary of Commerce to determine “freedom of speech” when it comes to foreign technologies and companies. That is how the proposed anti-TikTok law is structured. Instead, let’s have faith in ourselves and also recognize the banality and futility of trying to draft laws that defy human nature and common sense and by the way, are most likely unconstitutional and unenforceable.

The National Inquirers

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Investigative journalism that uncovers and publicizes official corruption has an American tradition going back to John Peter Zenger who was born in Germany in 1697 and died in New York in 1746. Zenger was a printer who wrote exposé articles about our English cousins’ ham-fisted governance of New York, especially by the Royal Governor William Cosby. Cosby took umbrage at these early efforts to inform Americans about government malfeasance. Cosby had Zenger charged with libel but in 1735 a jury refused to convict Zenger because the jury determined that what Zenger wrote about Cosby was the truth. What Zenger printed about Cosby related directly and only to Cosby’s actions as governor. Cosby’s personal life was not in issue. Such subjects as the state of his laundry or personal habits were not material to Cosby’s official actions. There was no “need to know” any salacious scatology.

The First Amendment is our best protection from bad government but it should not be cited in support of mere muckraking. Gossip is fun, if it is about others, but it is not germane to curing our body politic of corruption or bad decisions. And a bipartisan cooperation on matters of national importance would be most welcome. We have certainly been blessed many times before with such attitudes. For example, Republican President William Howard Taft appointed Republican Henry L. Stimson (1867-1950) as Secretary of war (now Secretary of Defense) in 1911-1913. Then later two Democratic presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, appointed Stimson for the same position (1940-1945). Stimson had the experience and knowledge America needed. His political party affiliation was irrelevant to understanding and meeting the threats to our country from Japan and Germany.

But even though Stimson was not naïve about foreign designs on American assets he famously eschewed delving into personal matters. Stimson’s most famous quote relates to secret Japanese dispatches. Stimson explained trust cannot be established by distrust. He succinctly posited: “Gentlemen do not read one another’s mail.”

As story after story and book after book come out about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and Mike Pence the muckraking inundates the investigative journalism. We do need to know our politicians’ philosophies, positions and past performances. But such information is sometimes obfuscated by “revelations” about their personal lives and peccadilloes.