The New York Times said recently that America has a free speech problem. Too many Americans are afraid to speak their minds for fear of pushback, of earning a harsh label, of losing old friends or making new enemies. Independent speech is at risk, The Times seemed to be saying.
The Times may be right about free speech, but the problem is also about free thought – ideas lingering, eluding the tongue and evading the keyboard.
An enduring political theory in this country is that our conscience is a private affair, not a public affair, and that only our deeds and words should be open to survey, censure or punishment. It’s a fine idea, and one that has held for a long time. It is an idea that cannot safely be compromised, lest it be destroyed. Nor should it be modified, even under the guise of “security,” national or otherwise.
Today’s tribal structures seem to demand devotion to one kind of faith or in one leader as a precondition of the American way of life. This bothers people who prefer to believe a different way, or who like to keep their beliefs in a sacred place and not on a lapel or bumper sticker. They prefer to avoid the public pledge.
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Loyalty tests, first cousin to the loyalty oath, have gained weight in recent years. In Kansas they were reborn ten years ago in a Republican purge of state legislators branded disloyal for daring to disagree with Gov. Sam Brownback. Among them eight senators, including Lindsborg’s Jay Emler, were condemned; six were defeated in party primary elections. Emler, then Senate majority leader, survived. Senate President Steve Morris, of Hugoton, did not. For other doubters, a lesson learned.
Many legislators, elected to represent their constituents, are now judged for their devotion to something else – a cause, a leader. Litmus tests measure them for lock-step or out-of-step, which leads to a kind of thought control. It promotes the notion that politicians and their people must busy themselves taking others’ temperature to know where they are going.
We enter a dark place when the government – or a political party – begins examining a person’s conscience. People’s acts and words may be open to inspection, but not their thoughts or political affiliation or philosophical bent. Politicians and power brokers long to investigate loyalty, insisting that they would use this power wisely. This is a wistful notion. We only need to watch totalitarians at work to see that once people gain power over others’ minds, such power is never used sparingly or wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.
Today a man may have to declare that he is not a libertarian or a communist. Tomorrow a woman may have to swear that she is not a Methodist. And the day after, they never belonged to the Kiwanis Club.
It is not a crime to believe anything at all in America. Nor is it illegal to belong to the Democratic or Republican parties, or to vote as an Independent. And yet six Kansas senators were convicted not of wrongdoing but of wrong believing and a lot of others have followed since. That’s news in this country, and it is bad news.
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The lock-step politicians say or imply that people who disagree with them are “dangerous”, or belong to one of society’s most dangerous, subversive elements. A difference of opinion suddenly becomes a mark of infamy, of failure to be loyal. Teachers, professors, doctors, legislators, athletes and more come under scrutiny. Demanding, even hinting at political conformity as the price of a job is the principle of hundred percentism, the age-old blood brother of witch burning.
Under the misty premise of restoring certain freedoms, the party that rules the Kansas legislature has ordered a number of constitutional amendments that would restrict them. The measures were created by out-state cause lobbies and sent to legislative troops here and in other states. They are not about our rights. They are about power, a party’s ache to win elections by stirring fantasies of local control while seizing control for themselves.
These are edgy times. It seems obvious that the fuss about loyalty comes from fear of another war or fictive assaults on our “freedoms.” It provokes the inclination that the decks must be cleared of doubtful characters. We can achieve reasonably clear decks if we apply our civil rights and duties to all citizens, even to citizens of opposite beliefs. This may be a dangerous idea but holding it does not necessarily make one a dangerous person. It’s an important distinction, the difference between thinking for ourselves and acting in lock-step.
