We celebrate America’s commitment to free speech – Orlando Sentinel

The United States is an exceptional nation in many respects. This fact cuts both ways. It shouldnt spare us from others criticism or our own soul-searching about any of our peculiar national excesses or injustices. Asserting that we are special isnt the same as saying were perfect.

But as our letters to the editor remind us today, our countrys 241st birthday, there is much to celebrate about being an American.

High on our list is the guarantee of free speech found in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment, adopted in 1791, includes the immortal words that bar Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom of speech. Subsequent court decisions extended that prohibition to all other levels of government. Its the foundation for another First Amendment guarantee, freedom of the press. But free speech is a blessing enjoyed by all Americans, not just by those who buy their ink by the barrel full.

In his 2017 book The Soul of the First Amendment, lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote that while other nations promise free expression, America does so more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is true elsewhere. The U.S. is an outlier when it comes to protecting free speech, according to Abrams. Thats a good thing. It means Americans are at liberty more than just about anyone else in the world to speak their minds. Speech that would invite official harassment, imprisonment or worse in many countries is protected in the United States.

U.S. courts have consistently ruled that Americas constitutional guarantee of free speech doesnt allow the government to exclude views deemed to be erroneous or offensive. This principle was reiterated just last month in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a government decision to withhold trademark protection from a dance-rock band whose name is a racial slur for Asians. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free-speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express 'the thought that we hate' a memorable phrase first used by legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1929 dissent.

Expansive protection for free speech reflects a radical faith, dating back to the Founding Fathers, that Americans can be trusted to sift through ideas for themselves. The primary author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, reaffirmed this faith when he founded the University of Virginia in 1820: For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. Holmes, writing more than a century later, wrote the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.

In the 21st century, this faith in the wisdom of the American people and the free marketplace of ideas is not always shared by partisan media outlets. And its withering at some universities under pressure from students and faculty who object to providing a forum for contrary views a hazard that Jeffersons current successor as head of the University of Virginia, Teresa A. Sullivan, warned about in a speech earlier this year: The danger in shutting out viewpoints that differ from our own is that we create a personal echo chamber in which our deeply held beliefs are continually reinforced by those who share those beliefs.

Beware of that echo chamber. Dont shun the debate join it. Bear in mind the words of another high court justice, John Marshall Harlan, who wrote in a 1971 case, That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is not a sign of weakness but of strength.

Honor the nation and the faith of its founders, today and every day, by embracing free speech yours and your fellow Americans.

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We celebrate America's commitment to free speech - Orlando Sentinel