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A wealthy Iowa businessman is interested in establishing an endowment at the University of Iowa to support a continuing lecture series. An aim of his is to expose the university community to a diversity of views, especially controversial ones. One of his initial requests is that former Ku Klux Klan member, David Duke of Louisiana, be invited to speak on campus.
The university administration rejects his suggestion as an attempt to "control" the content of the lecture series. Charges of censorship soon fly in both directions. The level of debate degenerates into ad hominem attacks.
A scheduled television program is canceled after potential sponsors withdraw their advertising. They fear having their products identified with an unpopular topic. The threat of consumer boycotts from religious groups further influences their decisions. The producers of the program claim they have suffered from an obvious example of censorship.
In Dubuque, Iowa, the Ku Klux Klan obtains a permit to hold a rally downtown. They defend their action as an example of their "right to free speech" in a public arena. Opposition forces mobilize a counter-demonstration. Attempts to block the KKK rally by court order fail.
Before the evening is over, name-calling escalates into random acts of violence perpetrated -- oddly enough -- primarily by those against the KKK. The Klan members claim the protesters attempted to censor their views.
A writer attacks the environmental policies of a large corporation whose ads help sustain the magazine for which he works. The editor decides the author has gone overboard in his analyses and decides to kill the story. The writer screams, "Censorship!" and quits.
A foreign author who espouses ideas unpopular with our government is denied entrance to the United States. His supporters claim he is being censored.
Many people would hold up these five instances as clear-cut cases revolving around our constitutional right to free speech. Yet the only unambiguous example of true censorship is the last one. "Free speech" is one of those catch phrases that few people would openly oppose. Yet what it really means as well as what constitutes actual censorship is widely misunderstood.
In looking at constitutional rights of any kind, we should first ask from whom are such enumerated rights designed to protect us? Whether considering freedom of assembly or religion or the press, the violator our Founding Fathers had in mind was one entity only: our own government.
Since government in its many roles is invested with a monopoly on the lawful use of force, it is that very government which stands in the best position to initiate unlawful and widespread uses of force against the very citizens whose rights it is supposed to protect.
The only valid function of a moral government is to protect us against those who initiate direct or indirect violence against us, i.e., primarily criminals and foreign aggressors. Thus anyone who smashed your printing presses or threatened to murder you if you published an expose of his activities would be guilty of a criminal offense...but would not be guilty of censorship. That particular crime can -- in the sense used here -- be committed only by an act of government.
People with little money who want to advance unpopular ideas often cry, "Censorship!" because they cannot afford to purchase air time on radio or television or space in newspapers or magazines. Minor politicians from fringe parties demand "equal time" or "equal access" in the name of fairness lest their ideas be "censored" due to their lack of money.
Unfortunately, the common understanding of the meaning of "censorship" has degraded along with the concept upon which it depends, "freedom." The latter has shifted from being "an ability to choose and act in a noncoercive manner" to a virtual identification with the ideas of "fairness" or "equality," i.e., you are not free unless you can do whatever someone else can do. So, too, has the popular meaning of "censorship" shifted from "freedom from governmental intrusion" in areas of personal expression to the notion that the government should intervene in order to ensure that people are not "censored" because they lack the opportunity to speak in arenas they cannot afford or do not own.
Yet the very concept of a free society depends on the principle of voluntary, freely chosen actions. That idea stands not only at the base of a free market economy but forms the foundations for any worthwhile human interaction.
A government cannot support one "freedom" by violating another. It cannot create a "freedom to speak" for one person that violates someone else's property rights, whether that property consists of money, printing presses, or a soapbox upon which to stand.
Only in the confused philosophical state in which our country limps along could someone accuse a business owner of censorship for refusing to promote ideas with which he disagrees or to engage in actions that might destroy his very livelihood.
Only in a society that accepts the hazy "concept" of "public ownership" could such mental, emotional, and physical energy be expended wrestling with boondoggles like Nazis marching in Illinois, KKK'ers rallying in Dubuque, or a man in Tucson symbolically crucifying his children on the campus of the University of Arizona.
The problems inherent in trying to decide whom to allow access to public areas lies not with any ambiguities in the principle of free expression but in the idea that there should even be an alternative to private property.
Recognizing two of the bedrock principles of a free society -- 1) allowing only voluntary, noncoercive relationships among citizens, and 2) recognizing the sanctity of private property -- would remove any possible confusion as to what constitutes freedom of expression and what defines censorship.
It is not an example of censorship for owners of a mall to refuse admittance to those who would disrupt their businesses, e.g., religious solicitors, even though malls are now considered "public spaces."
It is not censorship for those who own the technologies of modern communications to deny access to those who cannot afford those technologies or to those who espouse causes with which the owners disagree.
It is censorship for the government to exercise its coercive monopoly to prevent someone from utilizing his property to help spread unpopular ideas he wants to advance...or to force him to hand over his property to spread those ideas he does not.
The basic distinction between voluntary and involuntary interactions has been forgotten or never fully understood by people of virtually all political stripes. It is a distinction which they continue to ignore at their own risk.
