The Free Speech Switcheroo

It used to be conservatives asking, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’

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Ku Klux Klan marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., circa 1926. (Photo by: Hum Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

So yesterday, Sarah Isgur and I argued on The Remnant about whether Nazis should have been allowed to march in Skokie. 

The first thing you should know is that the Nazis never actually marched in Skokie, a point we weren’t sufficiently clear about, eager as we were to debate the finer points of principle and the law. 

The second thing you should know is that the Supreme Court basically said the Nazis could march in Skokie if they wanted. 

The third thing you should know is that the decision had lasting significance for America, not least because the whole episode was the inspiration of Jake Blues’ famous line, “I hate Illinois Nazis.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ Now, I’m not sure I agree with this, entirely (and I’m not sure George Will still does either). But it’s worth contemplating. ”

    I wondered the same thing! Based on my reading of The Conservative Sensibility, Will has become more libertarian than he was. I suspect he may have changed his mind on free speech. If so, he would be the perfect man to shed light on this debate. If you can swing it, please ask him to come on the Remnant again.

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  2. Beriah.Smith

    I think the better case for you and Sarah to have argued about is the Virginia cross-burning case Virginia v. Black. The opinions filed reflect many of the ideas you and Sarah discussed.

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  3. Egal.Fabrice

    Interesting column. I am also on "Sarah's side", but some of the arguments here gave me pause.

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    Christopher Brandow

    Honestly, Sarah is kind of forcing the analogy wrt the Nazis marching in Skokie thing. I get her point, but I just think it's a bit overwrought given the facts.

    This is an interesting perspective about this event that I've not really heard before and am going to think about for a while.

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  5. Mark

    I didn't see the podcast and at the end of the essay I couldn't quite figure out if in the end, you were for the protest or against.

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  6. Val Xavier

    What a complicated subject. Looking at one hair on this elephant...

    Mr. Goldberg quotes Joseph Sobran: "“Of course. So do murderers. But those rights don’t include the right *to murder*, or to use the political process to incite murder, or to use the right ‘peaceably to assemble’ to demand and threaten murder. It has nothing to do with the Nazis’ being a ‘minority’; it has everything to do with what they *say.*”

    I find a key difference as recognized by our Constitutional Order between *doing* something and *saying* something. Will's arguments certainly have a pragmatic value, but Goldberg through Sobran finally notices a very important distinction in our implementation of The Rule of Law: Not everything can be proscribed through legislative means. Not every conflict bears a legal solution. To attempt such is very heavy handed and tantamount to tyranny, and also leads to much worse, conflict driven outcomes. And in this case, massive confusion. "It feels wrong, therefore there ought to be a law..." is a temptation we must always avoid.

    The Law has to draw its boundaries somewhere, and to be blunt, free means free. Certainly we ought not *say* certain things, but whether the government has a right to enforce that social value/more/expectation, is a question on which I side with liberalism. The things we ought and may not *do* is the boundary where government must involve itself. This distinction and its strict focus on process is a primary difference between (actual) conservatives and Progressives. If we're to be a liberal society, then we must be in fact liberal (and not in the "I'm a Democrat therefore I'm a liberal nonsensical sense.) When it involves the sharing of abhorrent ideas, they're just that. They are not deeds. Deeds we can regulate. Words we can not.

    The pragmatism of assuming speech leads to action clouds this discussion immensely, and we do have legal precedent governing obvious cases such as inciting panic by shouting "Fire!" That makes this entire conversation very tricky and complicated, certainly. I don't know where we draw that line. But in this case, as abhorrent as Nazi's shouting epithets within earshot of a Holocaust Survivor, as disgraceful and vulgar as that is, based on our current and I want to add VERY effective, benevolent, and yes liberal legal structure, the government can not and should not do anything about that.

    Ultimately the counterbalance for abhorrent speech is not forcing idiots to shut up. The counterbalance, legally, and morally, is for those of us in society, the overwhelming majority who oppose it, to police this ourselves. Taking Decker's ruling as direction and permission to not judge others for sociological purposes is entirely wrong-headed, and beneath a society that actually deserves the liberal freedom we supposedly enjoy.

    Freedom and its benefits take work, and active community presence. The government can not have anything to say about what people say while at the same time can have something to say, and do, about what people do. So in keeping with my previous points, the solutions are up to Us. WE have to police this problem if we are to remain free and enjoy all of the plentiful benefits derived from such freedom. Difficult task that. I abide in the hope it is not, in fact, too difficult, for if it is, the future will most certainly be dark.

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    Bono Vox

    To wit, this could be a manufactured memory to preserve my priors…as one who has been for years cognizant that an actual Nazis bullet just missing my old man’s heart…while he and his comrades where residing uncomfortably numb, literally, in the God forsaken Ardennes forest…I exist, as do my mothers six other children and grandchildren…So, not to sound like I am going down on you Jonah, but I thought you have, I mean had, the better half of the argument…because, unwittingly, or not, you didn’t come to the proverbial debate table expecting everything to be kosher. In other words, you are not a puritanical free speech advocate like the lovely as she is full of her own bull shitte Sarah…Not to be deliberately offensive, as I should like to know what your better half of the argument would have to say if some anti dispatchers donning white bed sheets with blood splatters had won the right to protest outside her dwelling, sporting big posters just saying “BAKE BRISKET”…oh, back to a formative memory of an eight up year olds mind, old man I am definitely a lot like you…I can still hear my Holocaust, I mean Apocalypse survivor father yell at the Walter [full of] Grockite boob tube star something to the effect …I didn’t fight for the right of free speech for Nazis, I fought to eliminate Nazis from God green earth. The same pseudo intellectual euro trash who fought for The Nazis right to pillage, I mean March, are the same intellectual idiots today that begot a terrible coward and educated idiot Kentanji Jackson Brown (hat tip Jonah) on the Supreme Court of United States knowingly, deliberately, not having the integrity to answer a simple question about what is a woman…because the same academic Jack booted wads in academia that were sucking in the seventies thinking they were righteous and smart arguing on behalf of Nazis free speech rights, are the same ones that now come to question the meaning of porn because they don’t know it when they see it because everything is relative…No Sarah, just as Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have the free speech rights to have Megan Kelley report the news without her top on (knowing how half the human race feels about that, it would be really good for ratings), it should be common sense that we the people of the United States do not support or defend Nazis trolling victims of the Holocaust, and would have been just fine if they had been literally run off the bridge and drowned…Because there is a difference between a million moron March at the height of a supposed pandemic and klansman…like my old man would say, I mean Perry Farrell, some people should die, that is just unconscious knowledge. Gotta run on. Thanks for taking my Rant Dispatch. Viva Jonah…and Sarah too. Peace through superior mental firepowerExpand full commentExpand full commentShow less

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  8. Rossknode

    If you prevent someone from saying something, then it's because we are scared of something. What are we scared of if Nazis verbalize their beliefs?

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      LiveFromChicago

      Possibly, scared of what happened in Germany in the 1930's?

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    2. MathewA

      I think in the relevant case it wasn't so much scared. As how actually awful it would be to have Jews that survived the holocaust to have to put up with Nazi's marching down their street saying we should finish the job.

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      1. Mark

        A price worth paying, and it would have been a small price at that. Those Nazis would not be glorified by the people after their rally, would not get any awards or go on TV shows. Many may have lost their jobs because of the protest and some would lose their friends. They would have paid a significant price. The people of the town could have ignored them and their life would go on just fine.

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  9. Jfan

    Jonah's quandary stems from his excessive deference to democracy. Actually it's George Will's deference in a quoted passage, but Jonah seems to share it. He would be better off if he embraced the Whig view that democracy is only a legitimate form of government if it is paired with reason and a respect for tradition. Some Whigs would include religious faith. This was the view that drove Abraham Lincoln, particularly when he ridiculed Stephen Douglas's popular sovereignty scheme for voting on the legality of slavery territory by territory. Lincoln argued that the negro is either a man or a thing, so slavery is either morally wrong or morally right, and public opinion cannot change that.

    Jonah is disoriented by the possibility that, if Nazis are allowed to speak, they may persuade a majority to support them. That would indeed be a calamity. However, it would mean that the voters had embraced evil and committed voter misconduct. That voter misconduct exists is the essence of Lincoln's, and the Whigs', view of democracy. Jonah sounds tormented not just at the thought of Nazis winning, but because he equates democracy with virtue and cannot reconcile this with an evil outcome. There is no psychological contradiction for those who understand, as Lincoln did, that democracy's legitimacy is conditional.

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    1. MathewA

      "However, it would mean that the voters had embraced evil and committed voter misconduct"

      Certainly wouldn't be the first time that happened.

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    Golewj

    Provocative article. Although it makes one consider the value of certain 'speech', you're still left with the determination of which speech is of no or negative value. That seems like the definition of the slippery slope.

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