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Date Posted: 07:26:45 06/16/07 Sat
Author: Antônio de Oliveira Sette Câmara
Subject: TASK 4, SECOND VERSION

Antônio de Oliveira Sette Câmara
INGLÊS - PRODUÇÃO DE TEXTOS 2007/01 - PROF. ADRIANA TENUTA
TASK 4, SECOND VERSION - ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
Theme: Language related to culture.

FREE SPEECH?

I grew up during the military dictatorship in Brasil (1964-85), and there was a general climate of fear. You could not express your thoughts freely, artists and the media were censored and one could not freely publish one’s opinions if they diverged from the official line. Today’s heroes are those who dared to resist censorship and repression at that time.

Now we are proud of the fact that we live in a democratic country, governed by a constitution and the rule of law, a democracy with all the freedoms we are used to expect in this regime, such as freedom as speech and opinion, guaranteed in our Constitution’s chapter on Individual Rights.

But is this true?

In the USA, there is a Nazi Party (nazis in the US!) as well as a Communist Party and a White Nationalist Party (racists!), besides all kinds of crazy parties, religions and associations. The US Constitution’s First Amendment says: “Congress SHALL MAKE NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...”. That means lawmakers cannot even consider, examine or discuss, much less vote, any law or proposition dealing with these matters. This is what they call “constitutional protection of free speech”.

In Brasil, we have many well-intentioned laws devised to protect members of minorities from verbal abuse or prejudice. But the problem is that they infringe on freedom of speech and opinion and constrain freedom of the press. An ordinary misunderstanding in a public place could land you in jail without parole for the crime of racism, homophobia or some other kind of discrimination, while a murderer can get parole and await trial in freedom. Doesn’t this contradict the ideas of freedom of thought and expression?

You might say none of us wants to grant anyone the freedom to express, for example, racist opinions or sexual, ethnic, gender or any other kind of prejudice, or to start a Nazi or Fascist Party, or to publish Hitler’s infamous “Mein Kampf”, etc.

Don’t get me wrong! I agree with you! I myself would not like to be even remotely associated with any of these groups. But this is exactly the point: this point of view (that we should restrict “wrong opinions”, “violent thoughts”, etc.) has often been used as the very foundation of censorship. This same rationale has been used in the past, here in Brasil, to forbid the publication of books and articles by Communist, leftist, gay and feminist authors, for example, and to censor films, plays and other artistic manifestations. How can we be sure it won’t happen again?

If we give someone (say, the Government or the justice system) the power to define what is racism or prejudice (note that this definition can be very subjective), we cannot ensure this will not be used AGAINST our freedom to speak our minds. After all, HOW CAN WE MAKE “RIGHT THINKING” MANDATORY without infringing upon the very liberties we must preserve? Who is going to define what is “right thinking”? That seems contradictory.

Why did the American Founding Fathers enshrine freedom of expression in such a inmovable way in the American Constitution?

It looks like freedom has a price, which is tolerance, that most praised (and maybe the least understood) of civic virtues. Tolerance means TOLERATING THOSE WHO ARE INTOLERANT IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM, so as not to restrict freedom. It would be too easy to “tolerate” only those who think like ourselves... bot this is not tolerance at all.

Real democracy has to live with these contradictions. In fact, democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but still not perfectly realized anywhere. We must keep fighting for it, for, as Churchill stated in his famous phrase, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all other forms that have been tried..."

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