Defending Freedom of Speech When It's Actually Threatened

The events in Ferguson, MO, are appalling for a number of reasons. Let me understate it by saying when citizens are trying to get answers for why police shot an unarmed kid and left his body lying in the street, it is overkill for a militarized police force to fire rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds of unarmed protestors. Many others have more incisive takes on all this than I will ever have and I leave it to them.

However, one thing that does strike me is the very real abuses of the First Amendment in all this. Two reporters were arrested after taking pictures of police officers in a McDonald’s. The police fired tear gas into a network’s camera crew and dismantled their equipment. These are real examples of the government arresting and/or harassing journalists to prevent them from doing their jobs of keeping the public informed, not to mention harassing the unarmed public from assembling.

I’m sure plenty of people are outraged about this, given what I’ve been reading. I’m also sure that the outrage will be nothing compared to the sustained howling that happened during a completely imaginary First Amendment violation: When the network suspended Duck Dynasty after its cast said some unsavory things.

Remember that? First Amendment Weekend Warriors were screaming about how that reality show star’s freedom of speech rights were violated. Was he rotting in some gulag somewhere after being convicted in a show trial and nobody ever heard from him again? No, the show just went off the air for awhile. Nobody suppressed this guy’s freedom of speech. The worst thing that happened was a few weeks of reruns. Compare that to the Tiananmen Square in Missouri.

There simply was no First Amendment violation in the case of Duck Dynasty and to believe otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of what our foundational American rights actually entail. These are the people who start arguments online and when someone challenges them, they say, “You can’t tell me to shut up!!1! Ever heard of a little thing called the Constitution?!!!???!!” In short, the duck guy can’t be arrested for saying what he said but the network was well within its rights to deny him a platform. Speech is free; airtime is not.

It strikes me that we are much more passionate about defending the speech that entertains us and disrupts our reality TV shows than about defending speech when its suppression threatens the public good in a real way. The fact that police in riot gear with anti-landmine vehicles are threatening the public and journalists is just one of the horrific things going on in Ferguson and I hope it gets much more attention than some hirsute people who make duck-related products.