Shouting down speakers and disrupting meetings on public issues is profoundly
anti-American because such behavior violates two fundamental First Amendment rights. The first is the iconic right to free speech, a right of all Americans to robustly express their ideas, opinions and criticisms. Indeed, the sweep of the First Amendment even protects speech that is hyperbolic, highly emotional, provocative, foolish, false, and even worse. Free speech is at the heart of our democratic way of life and underpins many other rights. President Eisenhower elegantly expressed it — "...in a democracy debate is the breath of life."
Shouting down speakers currently prevents us, for example, from learning the vital details about how the various Congressional health care proposals deal, for example, with the 46 million Americans not covered by Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, the Child Health Insurance Program, and other programs. Shouting down speakers also undermines discussion about the tens of millions of people with health insurance that is inadequate on its face or that almost routinely results in initial refusal to pay for needed care (called “medical losses” by the companies), that cancel care after someone has had expensive care or refuses to pay because of a dubious claim of a “prior existing condition,” and that has a few million workers trained to give priority to rejecting claims and shifting costs to other providers or the claimant.
The right and ideal of free speech is beautifully portrayed in the New England artist Norman Rockwell’s painting that portrays a middle-aged man in workmen’s clothes speaking with much feeling and seriousness at what appears to be a crowded town meeting. Those sitting around him in suits are listening with respect. They may not agree with him — but they listen attentively.
Shouting down speakers and disrupting meetings on public issues also violates the First Amendment right of assembly, another iconic right. Such behavior is also profoundly anti-American since it undermines the right of Americans to meet, discuss, plan and organize about all sorts of issues. Imagine, for example, what these two fundamental rights have meant in the struggles by women, Latinos, the disabled, workers, gay people, and so many others of all political persuasions. Imagine what they meant to Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists
and supporters who partly through free speech and endless meetings and protests enabled America to end the racist caste system that systematically violated our ideals, debased us as an honorable people, and weakened us in the world.
If we want others to respect our exercise of these rights, there is a duty on all of us to respect the exercise of these rights by others, especially those with whom we strongly disagree.
John Delaney |
