Please Be Careful

            On January 18th, 2011, only short time ago, a massive internet protest ensued.  Some of the largest and most used internet sites went dark for 24 hours, including Wikipedia and Reddit, to bring attention to the movement against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), two acts designed to protect owners of copyrights from the possibility of intellectual robbery.  Wikipedia, Google, and many others feel that while they understand the need to stop piracy of intellectual property, these bills go too far and begin to censor ideas and knowledge.  I stand with these groups that oppose these controversial laws because I fear that while these laws are designed to protect creativity and expression from so-called “pirates”, the laws themselves give the government powers that could be used to restrict our freedom of speech.  As a citizen of the United States, freedom of speech should always be held as one of this country’s highest virtues and any censorship should never be considered, let alone allowed.  Our responsibility as citizens is to always stand up against those who would seek to take away our rights.   Limiting the expression of others inadvertently limits our own right to speak.  Without the right to express ourselves the rule of the people is hijacked and given to the rule of the few.  Our ability to express ourselves directly reflects our ability to think and our ability to think directly affects our personal and societal progression.  Our own “enlightenment”, as the founders of our country often described it, is what makes this country the splendid and grand experiment of freedom it is today.

Supreme court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated, “[Censorship] is an almost irresistible impulse when you know you are right.”  But being right has never given anyone the power to restrict others ideas.  In fact when a society engages in the restriction of another party’s freedoms in any way, there is often a rebounding restriction of their own rights.  This rebound does not always follow in the same generation; it took centuries for the Catholic Church to truly feel the backlash of the Inquisition. And in modern history, while many of the suppressions of the African American people began in the late 1800s, the real revolution didn’t take place until the 1960s.  The white race in America definitely has experienced a backlash in their ability to express themselves when it comes to other races.  Due to suppression and bigotry and the language that surrounded it, modern language has self-censored for the better.  In fact most of the terms and expressions used in regards to other races have found themselves drummed out of modern speech.  It is definitely ironic that a society that fought against this type of authority would inflict the same restriction on other human societies.

“It is, Sir, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law.” (Daniel Webster, 1782-1852)  The Revolutionary War was fought for many reasons.  Underlying all of them was the ability of the colonists to have a say in their own government.  Mother England had long been imposing its will on the American Colonies.  However the colonists had little to nothing to say about it.  The revolution didn’t just happen overnight.  The ideas behind the revolution were debated, shared, and written down in street corners, in pubs and through print. Through the sharing of ideas, the revolutionaries crafted their ideas and principles written down and given to the King of England.  They declared, “… Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” (Declaration of Independence.)  Had the founders of our country not taken the right to their freedom of speech, the ideas and events that created this country would never have taken place.

Our framers, as they are often called, believed they had reached a state of enlightenment.  They believed that they had progressed above other societies schools of thought.  Whether they had or hadn’t is probably debatable.  Yet the US Constitution that was a direct result of their work has created an environment for some of the greatest advances in thought as well as technological advances that history has ever seen.  Through the suppression of speech and ideas of the Catholic Church and other entities, science only gimped along until the 1800s.  Yes, some of the most formative ideas were created back in the time of Galileo, and later with Newton and all of their colleagues throughout history.  Yet it wasn’t until the great minds of science had unfettered freedom of expression that science and technology could explode the way it has over the past 150 years. 

Even though we have come this far, we have not gone the distance when it comes to protecting our freedom of speech.  Because of the open society we live in and because we have set up a government “by the people”, if we are not careful, we could vote away our own freedoms.  Through fear and through greed, we may just decide that protecting our right to own property or right to not hear what others are saying is more important than our right to say it.  SOPA and PIPA are not the first bills or laws that have the potential consequence of restricting our freedom of speech, nor will they be the last.   It is sometimes a necessary part of our existence to look at two things that we hold dear that seem in conflict and choose between them.  However, please be cautious about choosing to restrict our rights, among them our rights of expression, in exchange for a little security.  If we ever find ourselves in the minority with a desire to invoke our freedom of speech, we could just find ourselves stripped of that very right.