Freedom of Speech

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What is freedom of speech? A lot of people like to shout about their first amendment right to say whatever they want, but that isn’t entirely correct. Nor should it be. In fact the first amendment is actually a limitation placed upon the government and not one that is applicable to everyone. So what does that mean exactly? It means that the government cannot restrict the content of a citizen’s speech without a very very good reason. It does not mean that a regular citizen can barge into somebody’s business and start shouting obscenities at the employees. Now if you think about that, it should make sense. Would you feel comfortable if anyone at any time could enter your place of employment and start verbally assaulting you with no consequence? That doesn’t seem right, does it? So the first amendment is not designed to afford limitless protection to say anything and everything, it is instead a restriction solely to keep the government from getting out of line.

So what does the first amendment do then? Well it prevents the government from stopping people from speaking about things that the government doesn’t like. For example, say Congress began an unpopular war. It would violate the first amendment if Congress tried to stop people from critiquing its decision to go to war by passing a law that made it illegal to criticize the war effort. The first amendment guarantees that all citizens do not have to live in fear of arbitrary punishment for criticizing the government. In a democracy it is important that citizens are able to freely express their frustration and displeasures with the government. Who wants to live in a society where you can randomly be thrown in jail because you disagreed with something the government had done?

Now the government isn’t entirely unable to restrict speech. It still has the ability to restrict certain types of speech because the value of the restriction outweighs the value of the speech. An example is inciting imminent lawless action. If the speaker is intending to cause imminent lawless action, then the government can stop the speech, in an attempt to prevent the lawless action. If a speaker is telling his followers to start murdering people on the street, it makes sense that the government should be able to stop the speaker from speaking which will hopefully stop the followers from acting on the speaker’s words. Wouldn’t you rather the government have the ability to stop someone from inciting lawless action instead of having to wait for the lawless action to occur before the government/police can step in?

Now the other important factor to remember is that all of this is designed to work within our legal system. This means that if Congress does pass a law restricting speech, then the courts are able to step in and determine if the restriction is constitutional or not. The Supreme Court has designed multiple standards and tests that must be applied to determine if the government has a legitimate interest in the restriction or not. These tests provide guidelines for the general public to know that restrictions are not arbitrarily enforced depending on the speaker or the content. Thus courts are designed to protect the rights of the people from governmental intrusion so that people do not have to physically battle their government at every possible slight. 

Freedom of speech is just one of the fundamental rights that we take for granted in the United States, and it is very important that we understand exactly what that right entails so that we can ensure that it never gets diminished or eliminated.