The mob assault on free speech

Using organized groups to prevent discussion is an affront to our rights

By MICHAEL KENT CURTIS
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 22, 2009, 8:56PM
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Organized mobs recently have disrupted public meetings. The mobs have shouted down congressmen, government officials and others who sought to discuss insurance reform and delivery of health care. Silencing speakers by mob action virtually eliminated discussion of these topics at meetings between citizens and congressmen and other officials. News reports cite evidence that lobbyists and partisan groups have suggested the tactics. If true, that is bad enough. But more basic issues are at stake.

Mob tactics have had two alarming effects. Mob rule and intimidation make it practically impossible for elected representatives and government officials to speak to their constituents. They also make it impossible for the citizen to hear and discuss what members of Congress have to say. The mobs obstruct the free speech right of the people to receive information and to discuss it. They obstruct the free speech right of the officials to engage in democratic dialogue. Mobs have also shouted down citizens who support stronger health care reform such as a single-payer system.

These mobs are attacking democratic free speech values. The news media and government officials have failed to point out clearly what is going on. Using organized mobs to prevent public discussion is not free speech. It is an attack on democracy and free speech. Democratic discussion of issues requires that all sides have a chance to speak and be heard. It absolutely requires that democratically elected officials be allowed to present their views to their constituents in an orderly way and to hear from citizens with a wide range of views.

Mob action to permit only one rather inarticulate view to be expressed attacks the civility at the heart of healthy democracy. It is a step short of physical violence to silence speech, but the effect is the same. It also suggests that the members of the mob fear that they cannot prevail in an open, civil discussion.

These attacks on democracy and free speech revive ugly anti-free speech tactics from the past. In the 1830s, abolitionists urged the immediate abolition of slavery. In response, mobs broke up abolitionist meetings, destroyed the printing presses of anti-slavery newspaper editors, and determined to silence the opponents of slavery. Eventually, a mob killed Elijah Lovejoy, an anti-slavery editor. In the 1850s, the mobs turned on supporters of Lincoln's Republican Party. Republican congressmen, senators and potential presidential candidates could not speak in the South. Mobs broke up Republican meetings and drove Republican supporters from their states. After it nominated John C. Fremont for president in 1854, the slogan of the Republican Party was Free Speech, Free Press, Free Territory, Free Men and Fremont.

Mob tactics produced a struggle to protect free speech and the right of opponents of slavery to speak free of mob interference. Newspaper editors, ministers, writers and others who disagreed with the abolitionists nevertheless criticized mob tactics and defended their right to free speech. They emphasized a basic truth: we all have a stake in free speech and in not having it destroyed by mobs. The struggle for free speech helped to create a stronger free speech tradition. That precious tradition is under attack today. It should be invoked by writers, ministers, commentators, journalists, and ordinary citizens, in addition to politicians, the president and thoughtful Republicans and Democrats.

Curtis is the Donald Smith Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at Wake Forest University. He is the author of “Free Speech, ‘The People's Darling Privilege': Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History.â€