In the spirit of Super Tuesday and Donald Trump’s likelihood
of dominating today, I wanted to hone in on Brettschneider’s discussion of the
rights of addressees to “listen.”
Brettschneider emphasizes that “the right to listen fundamentally concerns
citizens’ entitlement to be given reasons for government coercion” (47). He further explains, “the ability to discuss
and to learn about government policy is essential to the ideal of democratic self-government”
even when “arguments [are] considered ‘wrong’ and ‘subversive’” (48). He further defends this point by referencing the
Supreme Court Cases which “refused to extend First Amendment protection to ‘subversive’
speech that, it was argued, posed a ‘clear and present danger’ to the security
of the nation” have now been judged as “decidedly wrong” (48).
I think on this day, in particular, this ability of citizens
to hear incorrect and even “subversive” arguments is relevant. Even though Politifact has evaluated 79% of
Donald Trump’s statements to be “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants-on-Fire,” Donald
Trump is still the front-runner candidate for the Republican Party. Brettschneider emphasizes Justice Holmes’
ideas that citizens should be given the right to hear false arguments and
should be considered “thinking subjects entitled to make up their own minds and
capable of reasoning about politics” (48). Regardless of whether Donald Trump
(or Drumpf J)
is telling the truth or is even being “subversive,” our Democracy must “treat
citizens as reasonable” and “respect their autonomy as deliberators and
listeners” (49). In doing so, our Democracy respects our autonomy, equality, and reciprocity.
This is on behalf of Cesco:
ReplyDeleteI was also interested by Brettschneider’s definition of the rights of expression, particularly the right to “hear arguments from across the political spectrum” (48). Our designation as rulers, given that in the ideal form of democracy we ought to be self-governing, necessitates that we be treated as “thinking subjects entitled to make up their own minds and capable of reasoning about politics” rather than as “objects impacted by ideas” (48). Were the ideal(s) underpinning our society to be external to democracy, such as truth or utility, it would be justified to limit the Drumpf’s free speech, but since we legitimize rights within democratic values, we must both respect the hairpiece-donning Oompa-Loompa’s right as a speaker and the rest of the country’s right to listen.
Brettschneider’s argument appears quite sound at the moment (and I suspect he does a good job of showing the primacy of core values over “minor” values like security, etc. in later chapters), but I wanted to acknowledge what I thought to be an extremely fascinating example he gives about America’s history with supposedly subversive ideas. On page 48, he notes that in the heyday of the Communist Scare, the Supreme Court negated First Amendment protection to Communist speech it viewed as a “’clear and present danger’ to the security of the nation.” In retrospect this was viewed as a “wrong” judgement, and Brettschneider notes that Justice Holmes believed free speech to be so central to democratic values that “’if in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way’” (48). So participants in a truly democratic democracy could choose to dissolve their democracy and adopt a form of dictatorship instead. And accordingly, since the values of democracy are grounded within democracy itself and not some metaphysical conception of person hood, we would be “jettisoning” our rights to equal interests, political autonomy, and reciprocity along with the democracy. This appears a highly unlikely occurrence as most would believe their desires to be best fulfilled within a democratic society, yet I was intrigued when I noticed this aside.
Ever more tangential, I wonder how well the Drumpf’s inflammatory rhetoric would fare had we engaged in meaningful conversations about communist ideals in the first Red Scare rather than suppressing them. No doubt the insistence on suppression in the first wave had impacts for how the general public responded to the now supposedly protected ideas brought forth by the second Red Scare, as highlighted by the rather undemocratic ventures undertaken as a result of McCarthyism.
Hi Ellen,
ReplyDeleteGreat post, especially with its timing with super Tuesday! :) Your post reminded me of Brettschneider's discussion a few pages earlier where he says, "the ability to decide wrongly is itself a fundamental democratic right. In no sense can citizens be regarded as rulers if restrictions are placed on how they can think about politics, especially when it comes to how they vote" (45). Thus, citizens, like the one's consuming Trump's clearly wrong information, must be regarded as reasonable and entitled to choosing what information guides their decisions. However, I found it interesting that Brettschneider does not hold citizens accountable for consuming any information regarding politics. During his discussion of Meiklejohn's assertion that "each [citizen] has a right and a duty to think his own thoughts, to express them, and listen to the arguments of others," (46) Brettschneider draws a careful distinction from his own understanding of citizenship. He states that citizens do not necessarily have this "duty" which Meiklejohn commands, but instead citizens may safely chose not to express their thoughts and listen to others without fear of losing their sovereignty. While I believe Brettschneider is right to protect citizen's sovereignty even if they are not informed, I wonder if Brettschneider would create any room in his theory for a mandate of civic education. This was something that was very important to the Founders, and was regarded as necessary to creating citizens that could uphold democracy. As Cesco points out, Brettschneider's theory allows for a society to endanger democracy so long as it preserves their right to their own opinions, which would seem to imply that there is no room for a mandate of civic education. However, I wonder if civic education be understood as a mandated form of state-coercion, so long as the reasons for this coercion (such as the assurance that all citizens maintain their status as self-rulers) were clearly demonstrated.
I think it is interesting to consider the other restrictions on free speech that the supreme court has allowed following the rejection of the “clear and present danger test.” As Ellen noted the Donald’s statements are almost 80% false statements. The court has in the past limited speech on the account of “false statements of fact” in the case Gertz v. Welch. The interplay, though, between the notion of ensuring the tight of all citizens to hear views from across the spectrum and the freedom to make a wrong decision is interesting. As Nisha pointed out, Brettschneider considers "the ability to decide wrongly” a fundamental democratic right. But if people are driven to an wrong decision by blatant lies can they really be said to have made that decision of were they coerced by the lies?
ReplyDelete