The Importance of Free Expression

 Throughout human history, men and women from all walks of life have had their own methods of expressing themselves, from how they dress to what they say and do. As the centuries passed, the dynamics of expression have changed, such as women being able to more freely express themselves, minorities being able to speak out more easily creating a larger populous for inventions and societal revolutions. The First Amendment protects all peaceful forms of speech and all actions that send a message. With the Age of Enlightenment, however, values of expression were already being conceived. Some of these ideas include the promotion of tolerance, checks on the powers of the government, and the allowance of "venting." However, one value is the most prominent in the world today with cancel culture becoming prominent and, in the eyes of many, a problem that ruins lives. Protection of dissent is, without question, the single most important value of expression in our society today, and no other country has it like America.

Protection of dissent is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle that is a functioning society. It prevents people from entering into a mob mentality that we have seen in the past, such as Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, and most recently Kim Jong Un's North Korea. One of the most useful tactics that all of these dictators have used and continue to use to this day in places like China is censorship. Censorship is an argument many people have used in recent years in America to prevent hate speech. However, hate speech, if not incitement, true threats, or calls to negative action, are protected fully by the First Amendment. Censorship, in every sense, is a violation of the First Amendment. Censorship creates mob mentalities that we have seen in the past, and if censorship does in fact take effect, it ruins the idea of free speech and, subsequently, free expression.

What is intriguing about the whole censorship argument is this: some of the most hated countries in the US and considered the antithesis of what the US stands for (Russia, North Korea, Iran, China) are the most censor-heavy countries on the planet. In spite of this, some Americans feel that censorship will make the country better. While a valid argument, the First Amendment, almost verbatim, protects ALL speech, regardless of the form. No matter how much I may despise your beliefs, I am immediately in the wrong for trying to silence them. Most importantly, censorship is prior restraint. When you prevent people from screaming obscenities, you could also just prevent people from having a differing opinion, even if their opinion is valid, just on the grounds that you don't like it. Not only that, but the fact that people have been punished for racist comments, such as Jon Gruden, proves that society already has subsequent punishment. All prior restraint does is prevent some people from having their egos damaged at the cost of democracy.

One of my favorite news stories that has been making headlines recently is that of Dave Chappelle and his special "The Closer." Dave Chappelle has frequently made jokes at the expense of transgender people (and just about any other group but transgenders are the people that are up in arms), but it seems like "The Closer" crossed the line for them. Watching the entire special, I found 2 things: the special was hilarious, and Dave Chappelle told a very long story about a transgender woman that wanted to be a comedian and that she was one of Chappelle's closest friends. He made a few jokes after the whole story, but what was saddest was the fact that the same people in this LGBT community were, quite possibly, a key cog in this woman Chappelle talked about killing herself. He was getting hounded on Twitter and she defended him. In spite of that story, in spite of the bravery he described, in spite of him stating that the community greatly hurt her and she later killed herself, an effort was made to get him cancelled. Fortunately, the CEOs of Netflix didn't have brains as smooth as some of the people who only looked for a reason to bash Chappelle, and the special has not been removed. Netflix has said that they did not handle in-house dissention very well, but they stood by their decision regarding the state of the special itself. "I was being dragged through Twitter. I don't give a f*** because that's not a real place." -Dave Chappelle, "The Closer."