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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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In defense of the legal right to anonymous speech, political lies

By David McElroy · April 9, 2012

Free speech isn’t very popular. It might be enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but that doesn’t mean most people like allowing it. That also doesn’t mean that the courts haven’t found ways to limit speech when they want to.

I heard a snippet of an interview on a TV news show Saturday while I was in a restaurant. The interviewer and a guest were talking about something untrue that one side had said of the other in a political battle between Democrats and Republicans. The interviewer seemed aghast at the blatant dishonesty.

“Shouldn’t it be illegal for them to say this since it’s not true?” he asked.

If you did a poll, I suspect a majority would agree with the interviewer, but that’s because they haven’t thought through the alternative to allowing unfettered free speech. If political dishonesty were declared illegal, who’s to judge what’s true? When two sides see the world in a different way, is one of them lying? And what about unpopular positions? Are those who warn that the mainstream is enslaving them guilty of telling lies?

And this brings us to anonymous speech. It’s come to be accepted today that a person who wants to engage in political speech is required to put his name on the piece. Ironically, using this standard, the collection of articles that successfully advocated for the adoption of the U.S. Constitution — the Federalist Papers — would be illegal today. It was accepted as an obvious right of free speech to hide your identity at the time, but those of the progressive left decided that’s not a good idea. So those who want to express their opinions are required to do it in a way that the money is essentially traceable in some way.

Ironically, it’s easy for big companies and labor unions and wealthy people to get around these requirements and hide their identities if they want to. The state and federal rules for creating campaign committees and reporting spending and contributions are massive. They’re not for the amateur or the faint-hearted. Professional politicians can pay lawyers and specialists to do it. But what about the individual or the neighbors who want to oppose a new tax in their city? They don’t know the laws and regulations. All they know is that they want to exercise their right to speak out against the tax. As it is, they can be fined for daring to engage in First Amendment speech without filing the proper paperwork and putting correct disclaimers onto handouts.

If I have the right to speak, I have a right to speak as I please. To regulate the how and when of free speech makes as little sense as dictating when and how churches can have worship services. Anonymity is an important protection for those who choose to speak out in public, especially those who choose to speak about unpopular ideas.

If laws are to regulate what can be said in political speech, we’ll have to keep records of what people say. And then when someone doesn’t like something that’s said, someone will have to have the power to decide what the truth is — and have the power to punish speech he doesn’t like. Democrats, do you want Republicans to control such power? Republicans, do you want Democrats to control such power? Everybody else — especially those of us in the minority — do you want anyone to have that power over us? I don’t.

I hate political lies. I’ve been a victim of them in the past. (A powerful black political organization in Alabama once attacked me as a “high-powered Republican consulting firm” — while I was working out of my bedroom in my underwear most days.) But the alternative to lies is much worse.

If we get rid of anonymous speech and if you make political dishonesty illegal, we won’t have free speech. We will have a sanitized environment where many people are afraid to say the truth, for fear of someone objecting. Truth is already a rare enough thing in politics. Eliminating the right to lie and the right to be anonymous would actually make real truth even more rare than it is today.

There’s only one solution if you want to get rid of liars in politics. Don’t vote for them.

Note: If you ever believe that today’s politics is nastier than ever before, consider that our history is filled with political nastiness from the beginning. Reason did a great parody a couple of years ago of what TV ads would have been like for the 1800 presidential election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. All the charges in the ads were actual charges made against the men by the other campaigns. Watch it and see if you still think today’s ads are that bad.

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I got a note today from a woman who lives on the other side of the country and has a young son: “[Young son] says that we should meet you sometime. He just said of your profile picture that he likes your face. I have shared photos and videos of Lucy and the cats since he was really little.” This made me profoundly happy. I trust the intuitive judgment of children about people. Little ones tend to read character very well. Adults are easy to fool, but it’s much harder to fool children about who you really are. I hope I do get to meet this young man and his mom one day.

I’m in the McDonald’s near my house, sitting near the play area. There’s one little girl — maybe 5 years old — who’s here with her father. He’s about my age, so he’s older than the typical father of a 5-year-old. Even though she’s the only kid here, the girl is giggling and having fun by herself. She periodically cries out, “Daddy, look!” And then she shows off something she thinks is impressive. Then, just a moment ago, she called out very sweetly, “Daddy?” He patiently said, “Yes, sweetheart.” And then she said, “Daddy, I love you so much!” And then she went back to playing as her father looked on with happiness and love.

When I first discovered the idea of unschooling, it was so radical that I had trouble finding people who even knew what it was. Today, the idea is mainstream enough that major media outlets sometimes cover the topic in a favorable way. The Sunday newspaper supplement called Parade had a strongly favorable article about unschooling a couple of weeks ago which explained what it is and how it’s different from homeschooling. It’s less structured. There’s no curriculum. There’s plenty of flexibility. And there are no tests and grades. (Most people today are shocked to learn that testing and grading didn’t exist in schools through history until the last couple hundred years.) If you want your children to think for themselves instead of following the herd mentality that pervades every school I’ve been part of, you owe it to yourself — and to your kids — to consider taking control of your children’s development back from governments. Just because you and I survived institutional schools doesn’t mean it’s the wisest choice. Start by reading the Parade article. It might open your eyes.

In the Birmingham suburb of Hueytown, the Golden Gophers of Hueytown High School had just defeated the Eufala Tigers in the second round of the state playoffs Friday night. It’s not a game that will mean a lot to anybody outside those two communities, but it meant everything to the players and coaches involved. After the game, Hueytown defensive coordinator Trent Campbell was celebrating with his victorious players when he noticed Eufala offensive lineman Dallas Ingram distraught and alone. Campbell left his players to console the distraught Ingram and photographer Dennis Victory caught photos of the pair together. “My reaction was to go see about him, because I’ll see my guys on Sunday and next week and the rest of their high school careers, but that’s a young man we watched on film for a week and studied and he’s a fantastic player,” Campbell said later. “And it wasn’t too long ago when I played my last high school football game and I know what that feeling is and you sort of never forget that. I went to tell him what a great player I thought he was and what a great game I thought they played and I wish nobody had to lose that night because it was an incredible game.” This is what sports at the high school level should be about. Winning is great and winning is fun. But humanity and decency last longer.

I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

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