Jerry Wilson Over Coffee Appearing each Wednesday in the Edinburgh Courier, the weekly newspaper in Edinburgh, Indiana and periodically in Indiana's Daily Journal newspaper.

Drawing Lines

Free speech - it is one of the guarantees we have as Americans given to us by the First Amendment to the Constitution. But the free speech clause, along with the freedom of religion clause, have been the topics of much controversy for many years.

There are those who argue that our freedom of speech has been abridged by laws against obscenity. There are others who believe that the courts have expanded freedom of speech to include freedom of expression in any form, which they say goes beyond what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Freedom of speech should be interpreted very broadly. One’s freedom of speech, or even expression, should not be denied unless that speech or expression interferes with the constitutional rights of others, or if it presents a physical danger. For example, as is often cited, if someone yells “fire” in a crowded theater, when in fact there is no fire, then his right to that particular speech can be denied because it would be endangering the safety of others. Short of that restriction, speech should not be censored or restricted by the government.

Those who desire a more restrictive interpretation of the First Amendment have a tendency to try to second guess the Founding Fathers. “This is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution,” they say. Nobody really knows that for sure, since all the Founding Fathers are dead, and we can’t ask them. It is an irrelevant point anyway. The fact is, the Constitution, or its interpretation at least, is always evolving in order to apply more directly to an evolving society.

The Constitution originally allowed for slavery. But slavery is an appalling notion by today’s standards.

What matters most is not what the Founding Fathers were thinking in 1787, but what they would be thinking if they were writing the Constitution today. Since we cannot know that, we must rely on today’s counterparts of those who wrote the Constitution. Although our Founding Fathers were great and thoughtful men, there are men and women alive today who have just as much insight and are just as thoughtful and prudent as the Founding Fathers were. The difference is that they were starting a new country; we are not.

They built the foundation for our country; we continue work on its structure. And we must remember that the Founding Fathers were forward-looking men. In keeping with their standards, we must look forward as well, instead of looking back at them, wondering what they had in mind, and trying to apply their judgment to our dilemmas.

The values and mores 200 years ago are not the same as those of today, so the interpretation applied to the Constitution must reflect modern standards, not archaic ones.

Today, freedom of speech implies freedom of expression. The courts have rightly determined that it does. Two hundred years ago, the primary means of expression was speech. Today, there are various and vastly disparate ways of communicating through self expression that were not dreamed of in the days of the Founding Fathers. Should forms of expression other than mere speech be suppressed only because they did not exist when the Constitution was written?

Although some forms of expression are patently offensive, they are still constitutionally protected. The government, or other watchdogs of public morality, are constantly trying to usurp our freedom by playing on our fears that our children might somehow be victimized if exposed to indecency. But even though some “indecent” speech may not be suitable for children, adults still have a constitutional right to express it.

The protection of children should rest in the hands of the parents. The government, or moral watchdog groups, should have no right to dictate to parents what programs their kids can and cannot watch on TV, or what Web sites their kids can or cannot visit on the Internet. There are much better means of protecting our children from indecency than by banning the indecency itself. What might be indecent for children, might be perfectly acceptable to adults. What might be deemed indecent in Podunk, Arkansas might be perfectly acceptable in New York or Indianapolis. What we don’t need is for Big Brother to start drawing those lines for us.

The price we must continue to pay for our rights and freedoms is constant vigilance. We must forever be on the lookout for those who would restrict our freedoms in the name of their personal view of morality.

Copyright © 2001 by Jerry Wilson.