Patterico's Pontifications

11/1/2019

Journalist and Obama Alumnus Makes Case for Tweaking First Amendment

Filed under: General — JVW @ 8:34 am



[guest post by JVW]

The intersection of leftie journalists and Democrat politics is nothing new, and we all know that it was ramped up to the max during the eight years of Barack Obama. While GOP administrations also hire ink-stained wretches (think of the late Tony Snow, a reader and commenter on this site), it’s Democrats who benefit the most from the revolving door where journalists spend a few years collecting a federal paycheck, and administration officials step down from their jobs to accept lucrative media gigs. So has it been at least since the days of 24/7 news channels.

But at the very least, it seems to me that in the past the journalists who took positions in politics remained nominally committed to the First Amendment. However, like with everything else in these stupid times, that is no longer the case. Former Time editor and undersecretary in the Obama State Department, Richard Stengel, took to the opinion pages of the Washington Post to argue that this whole free speech thing perhaps goes too far:

When I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting “free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?

I feel bad that Mr. Stengel’s education (Princeton, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford) and professional background (Time, professorship at Princeton, Obama State Department, MSNBC) have left him so vasty unprepared to defend the First Amendment when confronted by fellow diplomats from religiously intolerant kleptocracies with an ugly history of repression. I think I could have knocked that one out of the park, but that’s probably because I lack the sophistication of a man who is no doubt intimately familiar with the salons of New York, Washington, London, Paris, Cairo, Istanbul, and other exotic destinations. And where some noob like me might see a great deal of slippery-slope and other complications that result in drawing lines on what is acceptable speech and what is decidedly not, the suave and debonair Mr. Stengel has it all worked out:

Yes, the First Amendment protects the “thought that we hate,” but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.

It is important to remember that our First Amendment doesn’t just protect the good guys; our foremost liberty also protects any bad actors who hide behind it to weaken our society. [. . .]

Wait, so people might take advantage of our freedoms in order to undermine it and cause harm? OK, that might not be a particularly original argument, but this could be the first time that it was so forcefully advanced by a Rhodes Scholar turned media editor turned professor turned diplomat. From there, Mr. Stengel launches into a jeremiad against the baneful meddling of — yep, you guessed it — Russia:

In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, Russia’s Internet Research Agency planted false stories hoping they would go viral. They did. Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment.

The Russians understood that our free press and its reflex toward balance and fairness would enable Moscow to slip its destructive ideas into our media ecosystem. When Putin said back in 2014 that there were no Russian troops in Crimea — an outright lie — he knew our media would report it, and we did.

So there you have it: it’s not just the fact that the average American, to Mr. Stengel’s mind, is too stupid not to fall for Russian disinformation, but his own profession (journalism, in this case) is somehow ethically required to provide a respectful outlet for Vladimir Putin’s propaganda by Constutional precepts. If only we all were as perspicacious as Richard Stengel and could see through these bald-faced efforts to brainwash us! If only elaborately-educated and highly-trained public servants like Mr. Stengel could not only curate content for us, but had the ability to block out content that his insightful mind and discerning eye knew was harmful to our republic! OK, maybe it’s not us, the Washington Post opinion page reader, who is the problem, grants the generous author. The real problem is that our darn young ‘uns are getting suckered in:

On the Internet, truth is not optimized. On the Web, it’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth doesn’t always win. In the age of social media, the marketplace model doesn’t work. A 2016 Stanford study showed that 82 percent of middle schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and an actual news story. Only a quarter of high school students could tell the difference between an actual verified news site and one from a deceptive account designed to look like a real one.

In other words, the major news providers in this country spent years giving us news coverage cultivated in order to amplify whatever social crusade was currently in fashion (environmentalism! racial justice! homelessness! nuclear proliferation! immigration!) and now can’t seem to understand why we don’t take The New York Times, Newsweek, and NBC News any more seriously than we take Buzzfeed, The Babylon Bee, or RT.

And so we get to the crux of his argument. This country would be better off, and the First Amendment would be made stronger, if we joined the rest of the world in outlawing — ahem, ahem — “hate speech”:

Since World War II, many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred. These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust. We call them hate speech laws, but there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is. In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.

[. . .]

Let the debate begin. Hate speech has a less violent, but nearly as damaging, impact in another way: It diminishes tolerance. It enables discrimination. Isn’t that, by definition, speech that undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law? Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?

Mr. Stengel might do well to reckon that the same laws which can ban the burning of the Koran can also ban the burning of the United States flag. And bless his heart for making a nod towards Federalism (as the joke goes, the best thing about the Trump Presidency is that it has made leftists into champions for allowing states to set their own course), but can you imagine a scenario where something said in Massachusetts is determined to be punishable by law while the same thing said in Texas is perfectly fine? As Charles Cooke noted, it’s quite audacious for Mr. Stengel to announce “Let the debate begin” at the same time that he is calling for restrictions on speech. How long do you think it would take a state like California to outlaw virtually any argument that runs counter to what woke progressives fervently believe? Imagine the day when public discourse in this great nation of ours resembles public discourse at an Ivy League school or a flagship public university. That seems to be the desired outcome of the anti-hate speech crowd. Richard Stengel is certainly an intelligent and accomplished man, but his understanding of human nature is woefully lacking, and on this batty idea he cannot be taken seriously.

– JVW

46 Responses to “Journalist and Obama Alumnus Makes Case for Tweaking First Amendment”

  1. Hello, November.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  2. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?

    You cannot mock these people, because their own words are the best mockery.

    I mean, we all know that the Arab world is such a bastion of democracy and respect for human rights. We surely need to emulate them in how we formulate U.S. Constitutional law.

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  3. What to do about Russian meddling? Normally, the CIA and FBI could, along with Facebook, Twitter etc., monitor and attempt to block these attacks. Normally.

    Unfortunately, our chosen one has invited this invasion. He, of course, is in charge of the CIA and FBI…. and Republicans in Congress see no evil.

    Now what?

    noel (f22371)

  4. I don’t know why the Washington Post should be allowed to denigrate the First Amendment like that. It is a hateful attack on America’s Founders and on 230 years of American jurisprudence.

    nk (dbc370)

  5. This is nothing new for Stengel. When he was at Time, he suggested putting the Constitution through a shredder.

    https://dailycaller.com/2011/06/23/time-magazine-cover-features-shredded-u-s-constitution-asks-if-it-still-matters/

    Munroe (138863)

  6. these attacks

    Could you please elaborate about what “these attacks” means? So far, all I see is a bunch of weak propaganda and digging up dirt on political opponents. There is so much of that, especially now with the internet, that to me it seems to be drowned out in all the noise.

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  7. And we could tweak others, too.

    That 14th Amendment for starters. I mean “birthright citizenship”, really! If your grandparents weren’t citizens, you shouldn’t be one either!

    And the 4th Amendment. IF police really think you might be guilty of something, why do they need a warrant?! Just a waste of time, and might allow you to hide evidence of a crime. If you aren’t guilty of anything, what do you have to fear from a 4AM no-knock raid? It’s not like the Founders wanted to protect guilty people!

    Also, that 1st Amendment needs other tweaks. Flag burning. Muslims. Ungrateful quarterbacks. More things the Founders didn’t think of!

    Just so long as they don’t touch the 2nd Amendment. Cold dead fingers and all that!

    Kevin M (19357e)

  8. I agree with Mr. Stengel’s assessment, but his prescriptions are terrible, and it speaks to his lack of faith in our Constitution and our freedom to say pretty much anything.

    Paul Montagu (00daa1)

  9. You assume that Stengel is mistaken. He could just be evil.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  10. it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another

    When I first read this clause I couldn’t believe that someone actually wrote that.
    Speech doesn’t cause violence. People cause violence. They simply rationalize their own and others’ violent acts by claiming that “someone said something.”

    ColoComment (a5d387)

  11. What to do about Russian meddling?

    What to do about Washington Post meddling?

    Whose lies do you think have more effect? Putin’s or the MSMs. Do you think the MSM is more above board? More honest?

    Frankly, given the effect that the Imperial President has on the world, I haven’t a great deal of difficulty with the rest of the world trying to influence the vote. God knows we do our level best influencing everyone else’s.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  12. Shorter: When you point your finger at Russia, 4 fingers are pointing back at you.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  13. Speech doesn’t cause violence. People cause violence.

    Speech causes guns to shoot. Ban both.

    Kevin M (19357e)

  14. Asking citizens to be able to think for themselves instead of following the policies of countries where women are basically slaves and it’s legal to throw homosexuals off of buildings (or hang them at halftime of soccer games)……..

    And remember, these same lefties think “all lives matter” and “the most qualified person should get the job” are examples of hate speech.
    _

    harkin (337580)

  15. “In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.”

    In practice, hate speech means black pumpkins at Bed Bath and Beyond.

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/bed-bath-pulls-pumpkins-blackface-complaints-66497116

    Munroe (138863)

  16. Mr. Stengel might do well to reckon that the same laws which can ban the burning of the Koran can also ban the burning of the United States flag.

    Is it gauche to quote oneself in the comments? Well, no matter. Some folks on Twitter have pointed out that Mr. Stengel was staunchly supportive of Colin Kaepernick and the Anthem Kneelers (appearing nightly in the Ramada Room at the Burlingame Holiday Inn), believing that their employers had no right to dictate their on-field behavior during pregame ceremonies, so it seems his devotion to free speech depends entirely upon whether or not it fits into his particular ideological groove.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  17. “You assume that Stengel is mistaken. He could just be evil.”

    – Kevin M

    What a healthy and productive alternative assumption – the discourse protected by the First Amendment will clearly be optimized and worth preserving with this assumption at its foundation.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  18. “Some folks on Twitter have pointed out that Mr. Stengel was staunchly supportive of Colin Kaepernick and the Anthem Kneelers (appearing nightly in the Ramada Room at the Burlingame Holiday Inn), believing that their employers had no right to dictate their on-field behavior during pregame ceremonies, so it seems his devotion to free speech depends entirely upon whether or not it fits into his particular ideological groove.”

    – JVW

    Unless you think kneeling during the anthem could be non-laughably described as “hate speech,” I don’t see that this demonstrates any particular inconsistency on Mr. Stengel’s part.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  19. I’m seeing a pattern lately that I find disturbing. The thought that the 1st Amendment grants free speech (among other freedoms) is wrong-headed. But that seems to be what journalists today believe.

    Instead, the 1st Amendment recognizes that the right to free speech is inherent to man’s existence — endowed by one’s creator — and that government may not take it away.

    If Mr. Stengel would come to that realization, he’d be able to defend the 1st Amendment much better. Instead, he seems to think that rights come from government, which can be tweaked at any time.

    Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71)

  20. Instead, the 1st Amendment recognizes that the right to free speech is inherent to man’s existence — endowed by one’s creator — and that government may not take it away.“

    Too few people understand this. So many think that it’s something the government allows us to do (which also means that the govt can forbid it if necessary).
    _

    harkin (337580)

  21. Unless you think kneeling during the anthem could be non-laughably described as “hate speech,” I don’t see that this demonstrates any particular inconsistency on Mr. Stengel’s part”

    Considering that so many consider anything that offends them as hateful, it’s very reasonable to view that as an inconsistency.
    _

    harkin (337580)

  22. Unless you think kneeling during the anthem could be non-laughably described as “hate speech,” I don’t see that this demonstrates any particular inconsistency on Mr. Stengel’s part.

    Why not? Don’t you think that if Donald Trump and some of his supporters had their way that kneeling would be so designated? Just as in the same way that the wokedy-wokest of the crybullies would define any criticism of their sacred cows to be hate speech. Like Stengel, you seem to think that these lines can be firmly and fairly set. I simply can’t agree.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  23. 10. Sometimes lies can cause (or appear to cause) a lot of violence, but never without planning, and that planning, including the lies, is criminal under any law.

    He’d ban a bunch of things, including people defending themselves against lies, because you cannot dispute lies without saying something hateful against somebody, or engaging in conspiracy theories. Especially after they’ve gone on for some time.

    It is the hatreds and the slanders that are well established that are the most dangerous, and it arguing against them that is most likely to be censored, especially after a system like this has been in place for some time.

    Sammy Finkelman (b4516d)

  24. “crybullies”

    “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” – Umberto Eco

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  25. Davethulhu, we have a long and noble history in our country of deriding, but at the same time being wary of, our opponents. Have you ever seen World War II era Warner Brothers cartoons, or Marx Brothers and Three Stooges movies made during that era?

    JVW (54fd0b)

  26. Pete Williams. Republican. Cheney staffer; DoD spokesperson;- a NBC News journalist covering DoJ & SCOTUS since ’93. And gay.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  27. (environmentalism! racial injustice! homelessness! nuclear proliferation! immigration!)

    You skipped one fairly important one: war! The press went quite rah-rah over tht expensive, life and death matter, espcially in ’03.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  28. @17. He is Jewish so it’s understandable his ‘radar is on’ given the effective use of hate speech in Germany and recent flare-ups in Charlottesville but he wouldn’t be a good ‘go to’ guy on this. Plus he worked for Time [literally called and cancelled my sub 30 years ago when they incorrectly labelled images in a JPL/NASA story the rest of the world got right. A pub with multiple layers of editors and a week before press to get it right should not get it wrong.]

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  29. Talk about Germany. Where’s the most dangerous hate speech coming from now? Islamic sources. But to say that could itself be considered hate speech by the censors.

    another thing: It could be hate speech to falsely claim a hate event too place. But how many people can be sure of their facts?

    Sammy Finkelman (976d9e)

  30. Whether it’s Islamists or neofascists, Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Once upon a time liberals knew that. hope we can fight and keep our 1A rights. They are perhaps our single greatest asset imo.

    JRH (52aed3)

  31. @18

    non-laughably described as “hate speech”

    If you accept any of the potential hate speech limitations on the 1st that keep getting floated there isn’t any workable definition of laughable. Inconsistent is a small word to describe the problems with Stengel’s views.

    frosty (f27e97)

  32. “Like Stengel, you seem to think that these lines can be firmly and fairly set. I simply can’t agree.”

    – JVW

    The law interpreting the First Amendment already draws some lines. Whether they are “firmly and fairly set” is open to discussion, but they are there. Stengel is not proposing anything new, conceptually – just talking of shifting the lines. It’s a line-drawing problem. I don’t agree with Stengel’s position, but I am not particularly troubled by him holding it.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  33. I am burning a koran right now! ( if I had one )

    asset (24f10c)

  34. happyfeet and freedom of speech

    mg (8cbc69)

  35. Kevin M writes: “What to do about Russian meddling? What to do about Washington Post meddling? Whose lies do you think have more effect? Putin’s or the MSMs. Do you think the MSM is more above board? More honest?”

    Are the Washington Post and the other US media more above board and honest than Russia/Putin? This equating liberals with murderous, lying, world dominating thugs like Putin needs no response. If you don’t know the difference, you aren’t going to listen to me…. or reason.

    noel (f22371)

  36. And what about Trump wanting to have a televised reading of his call to Ukraine? So he can demonstrate what we all know happened, didn’t happen.

    Brazen stunts. He has perfected this over the decades. It works on a good percentage of folks too.

    Tragic.

    noel (f22371)

  37. Did you see this one also? (I the NYT today)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/opinion/aaron-sorkin-mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html

    It was hard not to feel the irony while I was reading excerpts from your recent speech at Georgetown University, in which you defended — on free speech grounds — Facebook’s practice of posting demonstrably false ads from political candidates. I admire your deep belief in free speech. I get a lot of use out of the First Amendment. Most important, it’s a bedrock of our democracy and it needs to be kept strong.

    But this can’t possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together. Lies that have a very real and incredibly dangerous effect on our elections and our lives and our children’s lives…

    ..And right now, on your website, is an ad claiming that Joe Biden gave the Ukrainian attorney general a billion dollars not to investigate his son. Every square inch of that is a lie and it’s under your logo. That’s not defending free speech, Mark, that’s assaulting truth.

    Well, such an ad would indeed be something of which you could say: There;s no way that that’s teue./

    But it also would be a lie to say that Trump tried to pressur Zelensky in their July 25 2019 call to “dig up dirt” on Joe Biden.

    And the biggest liars by the way in politial ads are the teachers’ unions.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  38. Are the Washington Post and the other US media more above board and honest than Russia/Putin? This equating liberals with murderous, lying, world dominating thugs like Putin needs no response. If you don’t know the difference, you aren’t going to listen to me…. or reason.

    Well, look at it this way: the Russians spent something like $5 million on Facebook ads in the 2016 election, and then whatever costs their paid trolls incurred for their time. How much does the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, etc. spend each year disseminating their pro-Democrat, pro-big government, pro-regulation message? It certainly dwarfs whatever Putin and his cast of thugs are spending, in the same way that Pike’s Peak dwarfs that anthill in your back yard, even if the ants are super mean.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  39. Brazen stunts. He has perfected this over the decades. It works on a good percentage of folks too.

    And this differs from the carefully calculated packaging and choreographed presentation of Barack Obama how? Hey, I agree with you that we have a real self-inflicted problem in this country in electing cult of personality leaders. Just don’t go acting as if Trump isn’t a logical continuation of where his predecessors have brought us, troubling though that may be.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  40. 37. What “we all know happened” didn’t.

    For one thing Ukraine didn’t know until August 28 that the military aid was withheld – in potential violation of the Impoundent Control Act – until August 28) and if an ad was properly fact checked, running an ad stating that would be prohibited. You couldn’t run an ad saying Michael Brown wsas unjustly shot, or Trayvon Martin also pr Eric Garner strangled. They;d maybe let Sandra Bland go through if it was carefully worded. But mqybe she committed suicide because she believed, incorrectly, there was strong racism in Texas.

    Nothing stops a number of people from running fact checking sites.

    Sammy Finkelman (976d9e)

  41. “Did you see this one also? (I the NYT today)”

    I commented on this yesterday:

    SHOT: Aaron Sorkin writes an open letter to Zuckerberg in the NYT accusing Facebook of assaulting the truth by not fact-checking political ads.

    CHASER: Times has already issued three corrections to errors in the open letter which got past their fact-checkers.

    CURBSTOMP: Zuckerberg responds by quoting a speech from An American President (written by Sorkin) about defending, even celebrating freedom of speech which you hate.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1189979403192811521

    It was a pretty nice own-goal by Sorkin

    harkin (337580)

  42. We really need a mirror writing stamp that reads “You don’t get to abridge the First Amendment because you can’t win arguments”. Something with nice, hard wearing ink, that we can whack onto the foreheads of censorious ninnies like this fool, so they’ll see the message every time they look in the mirror.

    C. S. P. Schofield (9eb8bc)

  43. I quickly scanned the comments. So I might have missed the most obvious.

    Hate speech needs to be banned. President Trump runs the govt. President Trump decides what is hate speech.

    Academics are idiots

    iowan2 (cca05f)

  44. “This equating liberals with murderous, lying, world dominating thugs like Putin needs no response. If you don’t know the difference, you aren’t going to listen to me…. or reason.”

    Equating Progressive Lefties (they really aren’t Liberal about much) with murderous, lying, world dominating thugs would be harder if the Progressive Left hadn’t spent so much of the last Century playing cheerleaders to a succession of murderous, lying, world dominating thugs like Stalin and Mao. Yes, I know the Right has had its own pet murderers, but somehow a Franco or a Pinochet tops out at thousands, not millions…much less tens of millions.

    *shrug*

    In any case, the passion the Left has for suppressing ‘Hate Speech’, which somehow never extends to refraining from calling people they disagree with ‘Hitler’, tells me that they are losing a lot of arguments, and don’t have the facts to turn that around.

    C. S. P. Schofield (9eb8bc)

  45. Nope nope nope. Just because someone else lacks self control is no reason to make speech illegal. Anything could cause some person some where to lose control.

    Nic (896fdf)


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