Machan's Musings: Freedom of Speech - But Not In My Place
by Tibor R. Machan
Needless to stress, if you were to visit my home and got up to make a speech to seriously denounce me, I would, unless in my most masochistic frame of mind, throw you out. Especially at my birthday bash.
A political rally isn’t usually held in the candidate’s home but in most cases the place where it is held is rented by the candidate’s party or campaign team. And while it is probably bad form to eject people from such an event, even if they come wearing signs against the candidate, that is surely the right of those who have rented the place. Who wants to have one’s own parade rained on deliberately, by ill-wishers?
Yet that venerable political publication, 'The New Republic,' was all up in arms about the Bush/Cheney team’s ejection of one Nicole Rank from one of its rallies in Charleston, West Virginia, who went to it to sit right up front wearing the sign, "Love America, Hate Bush." At first she was asked to leave but when she refused, the police were called in to escort her out.
'The New Republic'’s current TRB columnist, Peter Beinhart, found this to be a major infraction of some kind of rule, unclear to me which. The clue may be that he quoted Bush saying at that same rally that "Free thought and free expression, that’s what we believe." So, perhaps Mr. Beinhart means that the Bush team meant "Free thought and free expression" anywhere, anytime.
Well, no. Free thought and free expression apply where people speak and write on their own turf, not on someone else’s. I do not get—and you can believe I have tried—to freely express myself in the pages of 'The New Republic.' I am routinely rejected there, as, of course, the editors have every right to do despite proclaiming themselves champions of free thought and free expression. And so it goes for all the places where the proprietors want to reserve for themselves the authority to determine who gets to speak freely, to freely express oneself.
Sure, the reported follow-up to Ms. Rank’s ejection, her having been "dismissed from her assignment" by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a different matter, the details of which I am not privy to. Did she have a political appointment there? Mr. Beinhart didn’t say in his column, so we cannot tell whether her dismissal was merely of someone who has decided no longer to be on the Bush team or whether she lost some civil service job, which she should not have because of this event.
I am not sure I would have ejected Ms. Rank—but then I do have a masochistic streak and like having folks take issue with me, indeed often go to places to be taken issue with. But there is nothing in this that requires Mr. Bush to do the same.
Mr. Beinhart tells us that many who attempt to do what Ms. Rank did do not heckle the speaker, only sit there with their signs prominently displayed. OK, so perhaps, again, the Bush folks ought to show a bit more self-confidence and not disturb such silent dissidents within their ranks. But this is entirely optional. No one has the right to crash the rally with signs denouncing those doing the celebrating, not unless it is a rally in some public forum where everyone is admitted just for being a citizen in good standing.
All this is so even if Senators Kerry and Edwards make a practice of welcoming people to their own rallies who wear signs saying they hate them. That, too, is their right—you are free to be the host to your enemies as well as friends, as well as not to be such a host. It simply isn’t a matter of some grand principle, and it would be a good thing if a prominent political publication like 'The New Republic' showed some understanding of this fact.
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