It became so awful that RFK was compelled to give a short tutorial on the importance of free speech as an essential right, without which all other rights and freedoms are in jeopardy. Even those words he could barely speak given the rancor in the room.
It’s fair to say that free speech, even as a core principle, is in grave trouble. We cannot even get a consensus on the basics.
It seemed to viewers that RFK was the adult in the room. Put other ways, he was the preacher of fidelity in the brothel, the keeper of memory in a room full of amnesiacs, the practitioner of sanity in the sanatorium, or, as H.L. Mencken might have said, the hurler of a dead cat into the temple.
It was oddly strange to hear the voice of wise statesmen in that hothouse culture of infantile corruption: It reminded the public just how far things have fallen. Notably, it was he and not the people who wanted him gagged who was citing scientific papers.
The protests against his statements were shrill and shocking. They moved quickly from “Censorship didn’t happen” to “It was necessary and wonderful” to “We need more of it.”
Reporting on the spectacle, The New York Timessaid these are “thorny questions”: “Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment? When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?”
These are not thorny questions. The real issue concerns who is to be the arbiter of truth?
Attacks on Free Speech Aren’t New
Such attacks on free speech do have precedent in American history. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 led to a complete political upheaval that swept Thomas Jefferson into the White House. There were two additional bouts of censorship folly in the 20th century. Both followed great wars and an explosion in government size and reach.
The first came with the Red Scare (1917-1920) following the Great War (WWI). The Bolshevik Revolution and political instability in Europe led to a wild bout of political paranoia in the U.S. that the communists, anarchists and labor movement were plotting a takeover of the U.S. government. The result was an imposition of censorship along with strict laws concerning political loyalty.