Lies the government told you (12 page)

The only chance for a third-party or independent candidate to achieve electoral success is if he or she is a well-known and powerful politician, has a boatload of money, or both. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut was a lifelong Democrat who switched his political affiliation to “Independent” after losing his last Democratic primary. Due to his popularity and influence in Connecticut, Lieberman then defeated his Democratic opponent in the general election.

Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran as an “American Independent” in 1968, on a segregationist platform. Due to the racism then prevalent in the South, Wallace carried five States, won forty-six electoral votes, and received 14 percent of the popular vote, but fell far short of victory.
⁷²

Ross Perot is the most notable independent candidate of the recent past; a wealthy businessman who spent an exorbitant amount of money to make Governor William Jefferson Clinton and President George H. W. Bush nervous during the 1992 presidential election. Perot recorded nearly 19 percent of the popular vote, but won no electoral votes.
⁷³
Clinton won the election with only 43 percent of the popular vote.
⁷⁴
Perot’s minor success relative to the money he spent shows that in the current system, there is little hope for third-party candidates—even fabulously wealthy ones.

The limited success of third parties has produced a feeling in this country that it is foolish to vote for nonmainstream candidates. People are
said to be “wasting” their votes on candidates who cannot win. Voting for third-party candidates is like buying store-brand potato chips when Doritos are staring you right in the face, or like purchasing hybrid cars before they were cool. Voting on the issues needs to become popular again. We must move beyond the emptiness of major party candidates and vote for candidates based on their stances on the issues, and what they are going to accomplish for us while in office.

It is evident that as Americans, we have very little influence on the political process. The federal government and state governments have gone to great lengths to leave the impression that our votes count, but have continuously diluted our power. If exercising the right to vote were truly effective, the government would not be so eager to promote it.

Lie #5
“Congress Shall Make No Law . . .
Abridging the Freedom of Speech”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, enacted on December 15th 1791, states, in part, that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech. . . .” It is the opening line of the Bill of Rights. It is the most famous phrase in the Constitution. It is the historical and moral equivalent of “All Men Are Created Equal.” The right to freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental rights protected in the United States of America, and one that separates us from other nations. It is also a natural right in that we have it by virtue of our existence as humans. We know this because the Founders refer to it as
the
freedom of speech. This language implies that free speech was not a new concept, but a natural right that must be safeguarded.

The
freedom of speech preceded the existence of the United States, and the Constitution recognizes that. The First Amendment is essential to American government because it ensures that “debate on public issues . . . [is] . . . uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”
¹
Differences of opinion and conflict result in informed decisions.

Furthermore, the freedom of speech is invaluable to our personal autonomy because it removes constraints on our ability to think what we want to believe, and say what we want to think; to exchange ideas at will. The freedom of speech is, in a word, liberating.

Taken word-for-word, the First Amendment prohibits only
Congress
from abridging the freedom of speech. However, the First Amendment also applies to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the States from making or enforcing any law that abridges the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

Although the First Amendment applies to all levels of government, it does not apply to all speech. No one would argue that speech involved in a criminal conspiracy should be protected, nor can using a megaphone outside someone’s home at 3:00 a.m. be justified. Nevertheless, our federal and state governments have seriously sought to undermine the value of the First Amendment by smothering dissent, influencing how we act, or censoring the material we can utter, publish, view, or hear. Thankfully, the Supreme Court has kept Congress, the President, and state legislatures in check, but that has not stopped lawmakers from continuing their attack on this natural and sacred freedom.

Thou Shalt Not Frighten the Government

On June 15th 1917, about two months after the United States entered World War I, which President Wilson claimed would be the “war to end all wars,” Congress enacted the Espionage Act of 1917, with the stated purpose of eliminating espionage and protecting military secrets. Title I, Section 3, of the Act makes it a crime for any citizen, during wartime, (1) willfully “to make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies”; (2) willfully to “cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States”; or (3) willfully to “obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States.” Violators of this Section face a fine of up to $10,000, or imprisonment of up to twenty years, or both.
That’s twenty years in jail for the utterance of government-prohibited political speech
.

The Act, on its face, the government maintained, was somewhat legitimate. Especially during a war as complex as World War I, actual physical interference with the American military effort would have posed a grave threat to our country’s safety.
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me
. In his Virginia upper-class youth and at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson probably never heard this nursery rhyme truism. The Wilson Department of Justice exploited the Act’s vague language, using it to prosecute roughly two thousand Americans who engaged in constructive verbal criticism of America’s involvement in the Great War.
²
In the process, the government made a mockery of the First Amendment by suppressing dissent, and seriously undermining the fundamental right to freedom of speech, which it claimed it was fighting the war in order to preserve.

Remarkably, in 1919, the United States Supreme Court
unanimously
upheld Charles T. Schenck’s conviction under Section 4 of the Espionage Act, for conspiring to violate Section 3 of the Act.
³
Schenck, Secretary of the Socialist Party, supervised the distribution of a leaflet that likened the draft to slavery, and called involuntary conscription a crime against humanity. The leaflet urged those subject to the draft not to “submit to intimidation” and to exercise their right to oppose it.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., writing for the Court, declared that the relevant inquiry in cases of this type is “whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” In analyzing the
Schenck
Case under this framework, Holmes reasoned, literature that may be appropriate in peacetime may be an impediment to the military during wartime, and may pose a clear and present danger of obstructing the ultimate military goals. He also held that the evidence permitted the conclusion that Schenck’s goal in distributing the leaflets was to incite potential draftees to obstruct the draft, as obstruction was the only effect that could feasibly be expected. The Court, therefore, concluded that Schenck conspired to violate the Espionage Act.

What makes the
Schenck
decision so disturbingly fascinating is that it admits that the First Amendment is toothless in times of war and at other times when the context in which speech is uttered causes an impact on society that the government dislikes, hates, or fears. The opinion also states that a court can find that a defendant willfully violated the Act based on the speech’s
potential
to cause a clear and present danger, not on whether the speaker actually intended to obstruct the military; much less whether he even succeeded in doing so. On the other hand, a speaker who blatantly attempts to obstruct the military can sidestep the Act if his statements do not present a clear and present danger. What sense does that make?

On the same day as the Court rendered its decision in
Schenck
, it also decided two other cases,
Frohwerk v. United States
and
Debs v.
United States
.
⁴
The Court made no mention of “clear and present danger” in those opinions, but echoed the theme from
Schenck
that speech can be restricted based on its potentially inflammatory effect. In
Frohwerk
, Jacob Frohwerk and Carl Gleeser were convicted under the Espionage Act of conspiring to cause “disloyalty, mutiny, and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States.”

Frohwerk and Gleeser had made the foolish mistake of publishing in the
Missouri Staats Zeitung
, a German periodical, articles condemning World War I and exposing the hardships faced by draftees. Justice Holmes, again writing for a unanimous Court, upheld the convictions, stating that the articles had been circulated “in quarters where a little breath would be enough to kindle a flame.”

In
Debs
, the famous Eugene Victor Debs, national leader of the Socialist Party and 1912 presidential candidate, was convicted of disrupting the recruitment service with a speech he gave criticizing the war and the draft, and telling his audience that it was “fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.” The Court, again via Justice Holmes, unanimously upheld the conviction.

Holmes was the ultimate legal positivist, believing that law is solely man-made. He argued that rights not written down do not exist. Remarkably, he did not believe that Natural Law established, protected, and mandated
the
freedom of speech, nor did he believe that Natural Law existed in the first place.

Believe it or not, prosecutions under the Espionage Act got more ridiculous. The Reverend Clarence H. Waldron was sentenced to
fifteen years
in jail for distributing literature stating, “If Christians [are] forbidden to fight to preserve the Person of their Lord and Master, they may not fight to preserve themselves, or any city they should happen to dwell in.”
⁵
The government, in this case, argued that Waldron’s statements had obstructed the recruitment service, and the Court agreed.

The case of Robert Goldstein is perhaps the most shocking, however. Goldstein produced a film entitled
The Spirit of ’76
, a historical film that happened to have portrayed the Wyoming Valley Massacre, in which British soldiers abused and killed women and children. Goldstein was sentenced to
ten years
in prison because the government satisfied a federal judge and jury that his factual account could promote mutiny in the military because it “negatively” portrayed Great Britain, an American ally in World War I.
⁶
So, the government saw fit to prosecute someone who accurately reported on a 150-year-old event in which the British committed atrocities against
American
women and children, because it believed that Goldstein’s film would somehow jeopardize the American war effort almost 150 years later.

Unfortunately, the many horror stories of this time period are not made up, nor would it be possible to fabricate credibly such absurdity. During this era of fear, the government simply sought to smother dissent, and cleverly used the Espionage Act to shield itself.

Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States during this period, was a racist who openly supported segregation and did everything in his power to preserve it.
⁷
When he took office, one of his associates stated that “Negroes should expect to be treated as a servile race.”
⁸
He also worked to prevent women’s suffrage, even though his efforts ultimately failed. He opposed even legal immigration.
⁹
It is not at all shocking that someone with such a track record on human rights would sign a bill limiting the freedom of speech, and prosecute those who challenged him.

Getting Smarter

Over time, the Supreme Court of the United States came to its senses, ultimately rejecting federal and state government efforts to quash the freedom of speech. In
Abrams v. United States
(1919), the Supreme Court, in typical fashion, upheld the convictions of Russian, socialist immigrants prosecuted under the Sedition Act of 1918, a law similar to the Espionage Act of 1917.
¹⁰
Justice Holmes, however, in an impressive about-face, wrote an inspired dissenting opinion in which he introduced into First Amendment discourse the element of the “free trade” or “marketplace” of ideas.

According to Holmes’s new theory of free speech (he must have been searching for new theories), the search for truth, knowledge, and wisdom is more likely to end successfully if the government refrains from trying to control the debate. Holmes also instructed that Americans “should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death.” Holmes believed that speech should be punishable
only if
it creates, and is intended to create, immediate harm before there is time or opportunity for counter-speech to avert such harm. Therefore, Holmes would have reversed his earlier opinions that upheld convictions of those denouncing the war, because the literature and speeches at issue had no chance of causing immediate harm. Stated differently, only if the speech being prosecuted
failed in its purpose
could it be entitled to constitutional protection.