‘Free Speech Follies’ writer, Stanley Fish, is a literal theorist who mainly focuses on the evils of free speech in this article. He argues that free speech cannot be termed as an independent trait but rather, it can only be rightfully termed as a political award. As such, to Fish, any lines drawn by the courts to differentiate between both protected and unprotected views from various individuals are easily alterable. Thus, to him, the analogy revolving around the principles governing free speech amongst people is essentially of no importance. As a result, he has brought controversy into the debate that discusses ways on how to understand various forms of legal theory. This is so because Fish maintains his stand in his opinion that objective legal texts are non-existent and as such, the concept of objective legal texts is not applicable to any forms of law. As such, this paper brings out a critical analysis of Fish’s ideologies on free speech drawn from his famous article on the follies of free speech.
In support of his argument on free speech, Fish first writes about the first amendment which he refers to as a great excuse amongst modern Americans. He terms it as being an excuse because people tend to use it to escape punishment for any offense resulting from misuse of their rights of free speech. In addition, a scholar specialized in the first amendment, Fredrick Schauer, describes this corny behavior as being overly opportunistic. “Political, social, cultural, ideological, economic and moral claims that appear to have no special philosophical or historical affinity with the First Amendment, find themselves transmogrified into First Amendment arguments” (Fish 16).
To prove his point right, he gives an example of college newspaper editors who always blame First Amendment when any of their articles end up being either outrageous or controversial. According to him, an independent student newspaper had also printed an incriminating letter on how Jews were manipulating America, earlier on in January. “The president should separate Jews from all government advisory positions otherwise the Jews might face another Holocaust” (Fish 22). Evidently, that statement made by the letter’s writer was extremely defamatory to the Jews and generally to anyone against racism. As a result, it was not surprising that many people became enraged with that person and direct confrontations were inevitable.
However, to their utter shock, the newspaper’s editor who should not have allowed such obscene statements to be printed remained unperturbed by all the commotion. In his defense, he claimed that their crew was set to provide equal chances to everyone to voice out their ideas. In addition, he claimed that they printed ideas from other people even though they may not fully agree with everything they put across. Furthermore, he said that failure to print that controversial statement would compromise their principles on not silencing and censoring other people’s ideas. Finally, he pointed out that whatever one person would deem as hate speech would not appear to be hate speech to another individual.
From such a response, Fish comes out strongly in the condemnation of free speech since according to him, editors in daily papers hardly give equal chances for people to raise their voices. Instead, they inculcate judgment in their so called principles which is very far from silencing or censorship. This is so because, all human beings exercise censorship when they decide to leave a statement incomplete or choose to leave a certain article unprinted in order to avoid controversy. As a result, Fish claims that such editors cry wolf when they claim that the First Amendment led them into making the decision of allowing similar defamatory statements to be printed. From such controversies, editors try to show themselves as heroes who boldly face negative criticism from the liberal minded people, all for the maintenance of treasured values in America. On the contrary, Fish terms them as being simply confused and incompetent individuals as opposed to their self-declared heroism.
Moreover, he also focuses on the people in charge of the English department in Harvard who proved to be equally incompetent. This was so because they made an invite to a poet, Tom Paulin, to lecture in their department but later revoked it and then finally renewed their invitation for a second time. Again, the main reason for all the drama was because in Tom’s poetry, he had made some obscene remarks that vouched for the destruction of all Israelites and that their policemen were similar to the Nazis. As fate would have it, these and various statements of that kind surfaced before Tom could give his lecture and as a result, the department revoked his earlier invitation. However, some people raised an issue on censorship and the department re-considered their previous decision and thus re-invited Tom. As such, Fish concludes that this was a clear indicator that the department worshipped the cries of the First Amendment (Fish 39).
In a different case, Fish points out that the director of the University of California who is responsible for the Goldman projects always mailed out items that included some of Goldman’s articles. However, a colleague, who was a vice chancellor, for some reason edited those items and removed two of Goldman’s quotes from her articles. In his defense, the vice chancellor said that those quotations criticized the president’s execution plans for a revolution in Iran. “The quotations were not randomly chosen and were clearly intended to make a political point, and that is inappropriate in an official university situation” (Fish 46). As a result, the director who had always acknowledged all of Goldman’s quotations strongly came out to object the vice chancellor’s move and thus she accused him of censoring Goldman. She claimed that Goldman had a right to express herself since she also advocated free expression of people as well.
Finally, Fish also writes about Toni Smith who was a basketball player in her college. The said woman refused to acknowledge the serenity of the flag as the national anthem played for the reason that she did not endorse her government’s policies. As such, Fish claims that by maintaining a firm stand on her principles, Toni was a real hero as opposed to members of Harvard’s English Department, the newspaper editors, and ultimately Goldman’s project director.
Indeed, even though Fish was not entirely right to argue that free speech only exists more as a political gift rather than a reality legally, it is evident from the essay that statements in support of the exemption of free speech are also questionable. The main reason behind that is the fact that such statements bring out speech as being more of an action, which is entirely misguided. As such, if only people would stop being cynical and accept that injuries caused by defamatory words are just as hurtful as those caused physically, then everyone would join Fish in advocating for people to limit their speech.
Work Cited
Fish, Stanley E. There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing Too. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print.
