Juan Williams Larry Flynt and Free Speech

Back in college, last century, a guy in our dorm had a poster in his room with pictures of the four great dictators of the twentieth century, and a slogan on the bottom about how they outlawed free speech, and we better watch out because it's happening again (I went looking for it on the internet, to get the exact quote, but couldn't find it).  When I looked at the fine print I saw that it was put out by one of the major porn producers at the time. I think it was Penthouse Magazine, whose founder Bob Guccione died yesterday, but it was so long ago I can't remember for sure.  My young mind knew instinctively that there was something wrongheaded about the connection being made, but wasn't sure how to express my objection effectively.


Years later, after I made my first profession of vows and was back teaching at Salesian, we had to go up to Stepinac High School for an in service day, and one of the speakers was a priest talking about Christian citizenship. He made the statement that as a priest he believed that pornography was gravely sinful, but as an American and teacher of civics he opposed any censorship, even the banning of pornography, as a violation of the first amendment.  He said this with a straight face and with total sincerity, and the first word that came to my mind was "pinhead."  I think the word was actually a little stronger, and I might have uttered it under my breath, but I've already been accused of being "too graphic" in this space, so I won't push it by writing what I really said.

Yesterday Juan Williams was fired from his gig at NPR for making comments deemed inappropriate about his gut reaction to seeing someone dressed in Muslim garb at an airport (let's just say it doesn't make him feel warm and reassured).  He went to great lengths to say that we shouldn't discriminate against an entire group for the actions of a few.  He was commenting on a visceral response he had to a particular situation in light of world events over the last nine years.  He wasn't advocating public policy based on his feelings, and if anything was urging caution in making rash judgments about people.  But he was also saying that we need to have common sense in how we approach the War on Terror (are we still allowed to use that term?), and those who have publicly stated their intentions to destroy the United States and the West in general.

What do these things have to do with each other?  My personal anecdotes illustrate a mentality, pushed heavily by the purveyors smut, that an attack against one form of "free expression" is an attack against all free speech and thus a danger to our constitutional rights.  So we must tolerate, even celebrate, pornography as being as all American as the Federalist Papers.  This was illustrated by the film The People vs. Larry Flynt, where the titular hero is held up as a poster boy for the first amendment. And, you know, we should all be grateful, really, for Larry's fight, (or so the argument goes) because he's kept free speech free for all of us.  Oh, yeah? Tell that to Juan Williams.

No one can argue with a straight face, like my "pinhead" brother in the clergy tried that day, that the protection of pornography as "speech" in the constitutional sense has led to greater freedom of political expression.  When Juan Williams, a liberal commentator, a champion of civil rights who has written volumes on the topic, a minority himself (and I openly admit, a person I hardly ever agree with) is fired for being a bigot for essentially saying the same thing Jesse Jackson did in a different context years ago, we have reached a dangerous place in the life of our Republic.  Political correctness, a product of Marxist philosophy, a revolutionary philosophy, has gone from being an annoyance to being a danger to our future.  As I wrote to a friend of mine today on Facebook, this is is like the old adage from the Reign of Terror in 1793 that the revolution is devouring her own children.  But now, because our culture has passively accepted these bizarre standards of propriety, it's putting all of us in danger of being swallowed up.

Pornographers cynically use the constitution to protect their ability to make a ton of money in an exploitative, dehumanizing industry.  It is an opiate that distorts the mind and eventually perverts the users vision of reality. Studies are indeed showing that it is as addictive as a narcotic and destructive to relationships.  It is more available now that it has ever been in the history of human civilization.  Yet are we really more free?  Are people really able to express themselves more openly and debate issues without fear of retribution because they can access "adult entertainment" from any laptop?  Or have we become drugged into accepting a standard that will eventually destroy us?