BoingBoing reader James Seavey says,
I am a U.S. Federal employee.
According to Congressional Appropriations Bill H.R. 4818, P.L. 108-477, Section 111 all U.S. Federal Employess must be provided with training material on the U.S. Constitution.
While a noble effort by our government, this translates to mandatory training which most employees don’t enjoy. However, I respect our government’s most important document greatly and looked forward to performing this training. Upon reading the “What does it mean” section on the first amendment, I was shocked to find someone’s gross misinterpretation of our freedom of speech, to quote:
“The first ten amendments comprise the Bill of Rights. The first amendment protects religious freedom by prohibiting the establishment of an official or exclusive church or sect. Free speech and free press are protected, although they can be limited for reasons of defamation, obscenity, and certain forms of state censorship, especially during wartime. The freedom of assembly and petition also covers marching, picketing and pamphleteering.”
I know that laws provide for the censorship of free speech and the people in our country allow these laws to continue to exist, but the constitution provides for no such censorship and I am appalled that my training implies that it does.
Is this propaganda, an error of a zealous employee creating the training material, or my nit-picks?
Link.
Reader comment: Seva Batkin says,
I believe that James is actually incorrect in his interpretation. You have to consider that in US, the Bill of Rights is absolute as it provides olny rights/freedoms, but no limitations on them. (This is in contrast to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which provides freedoms in s. 2, but limitations s. 1). As such, the courts in US had been tasked with interpreting what exactly is a scope of each freedom. Afterall, if freedom of speech includes ALL speech, then laws which prohibit hate speech, defamation, etc., would be clearly unconstitutional and thus invalid. Therefore, US courts, following the common law tradition of “revealing” law, ruled that the freedom of speech simply doesn’t INCLUDE hate speech, defamation, etc.
If you compare this to the Charter, the courts here ruled that the freedoms are absolute, but the limitation is justified under s. 1
More readers respond to James’ question after the jump.
Jay Shafer says,
First of all, the section covers the constitutional amendments. Stating that
“Free speech and free press are protected, although they can be
limited for reasons of defamation, obscenity, and certain forms of
state censorship, especially during wartime”. This is correct. While
Mr. Seavey notes, correctly but misleadingly, that the constitution
does not endorse “censorship”, this does not mean that free speech is
unlimited. Obscenity, libel, and dangerous speech (“fire” in a
crowded theater) are all examples of speech not protected by the first
amendment. While this manual is obviously reductionist in its
analysis it does correctly sum the whole of jurisprudence on free
speech. It ignores the application of this amendment to the states
and local governments, the penubra effect, etc. Speech can be limited.
While one could make an argue that it should not be, this argument is
not in line with our legal system.
Rob Franklin says,
If I remember my mass media law classes correctly, what the training manual says is actually correct. The limits on free speech are constitutional. That is exactly how we want them; laws shouldn’t be altering those fundamentals. The Constitution is actually a short document, and the Supreme Court gets to decide what those few words actually mean. The court has interpreted and reinterpreted the Constitution, and continues to do so. For an example of how the court has changed what the Constitution allows us to say publically, check the Wikipedia to compare New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.
Michael Phillips says,
I am fairly certain that Seva is at least partially mistaken. In the United States, hate speech is generally protected so long as it doesn’t cross over into any of the forbidden categories (defamation, insitement to violence, endangerment, etc.) As much as it empowers whack jobs like Phelps to be a nusiance, it is still one of the things we still do right. It would be entirely too easy to silence public discourse by declaring the opposition’s speech as hate speech.