Metropolis: The high price of free speech

That rascally wit, Public Service Commissioner Stan Wise — every ounce of his, oh, 300 roly-poly pounds wholly owned by utility companies — was championing the First Amendment last week. Explaining his vote against banning oh-so-secret meetings between utility lobbyists (bearing gifts, of course) and PSC commishes, Wise harrumphed that he was casting “a proud ‘no’ for free speech.”

What Wise really meant is that “money talks.” If you’re a buxom, blond utility lobbyist, or a good ol’ goober from the power, gas or phone company, Wise will defend your right to “free speech” – as long as you pick up the tab at a swank eatery. For the po’ folks, please shut up and don’t bother the commissioner with your prattle.

But Wise has touched on a subject we Americans huff a lot about but don’t take too seriously. If even a sleazed-up politician can claim vindication by virtue of “free speech,” just about anybody else is eligible to do the same.

Say, Sam Dickson.

Let’s get it out about what Dickson is: The Atlanta lawyer is a segregationist, a white nationalist. Dickson wants a white country he can call his own, preferably the rebirth of the Confederacy, look away, look away.

What Dickson isn’t: A crazy man, or an ignorant, inbred, rotted-teeth caricature of a Southerner, à la Deliverance.

What else is he? Next to David Duke, Dickson is probably the most influential member of the far, far, way-far right. Two weeks ago, I wrote the CL cover story about Stormfront.org, the cyber incarnation of the white nationalist movement. Stormfront’s administrator, Jamie Kelso, describes Dickson as “the wisest man” in their ranks.

You can argue about the wisdom of being a racist, but Dickson is certainly intelligent, articulate, logical — and totally shunned by the mainstream media, except for brief mentions when some activity of the right wing gets a smidgen of attention. Frankly, I’d rather have lunch any day of the week with the honest-about-himself Sam Dickson than with the “respectable” right-wingers who screech when called what they are: racists. I’m speaking of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, ex (thankfully) U.S. Sen. George Allen and the rest of the hate crew.

And that brings me to two questions: Is any talk out of bounds in a society whose foundation is “free speech”? And, should “mainstream” media, and society in general, invite those on the fringes of “free speech” to the dialogues about the national and community agendas?

The disturbing answer to both questions is: Political correctness smothers free speech.

Consider the case of Jimmy Carter versus Emory professor Deborah Lipstadt. The former president wrote a book that stated the obvious about the plight of Palestinians living in what he called “apartheid.”

Lipstadt, along with the predictable phalanx of Israel-firsters, denounced Carter. In a column in the AJC, she basically said that any action by Israel – however horrific, violent and at odds with international law – was justified by the Holocaust. And, since Carter hadn’t immediately capitulated to Lipstadt & Co. by rewriting his book and dismissing the Palestinians’ awful plight, he must be an anti-Semite.

The best answer to that came from Carter’s ex-aide, Jody Powell, who parried back: “In a final bow to civil discourse, the distinguished professor charges Carter with ‘giving comfort’ to Holocaust deniers. After all that, Lipstadt can’t fathom why one might conclude that criticism of Israeli policy will be met with vitriol and intimidation rather than reasoned debate.”

Lipstadt is oblivious to the irony of her position. She makes much of the fact that Carter’s critics are “being silenced” (so obviously untrue that it defies any response). She could find only one, a caller who wasn’t allowed to rant on C-SPAN that Carter was an anti-Semite.

Yet Lipstadt herself is an architect of silencing debate. Her famous litigation in England with Holocaust denier David Irving was transformed from his attempt to end her criticism of his awful spin on history into her crusade to extinguish any mention of his views.

As CL reported two years ago, one of Lipstadt’s attorneys urged her to deal with Holocaust deniers “the same way you’d clean shit off your shoes.” “Our job,” Lipstadt said, “is to find a way of fighting them without building them up.”

The CL writer accepted Lipstadt’s argument and avoided any mention of Irving’s arguments in the article, which focused on the professor’s efforts to convince C-SPAN not to air a speech Irving made to a Buckhead audience. “A debate is on two perspectives on an issue,” Lipstadt told CL. “A debate is not between complete truth and complete falsehood.”

Maybe so. But, interpreted, that means free speech is relative and subject to whatever monitors of political correctness decree is “acceptable.” In lumping Carter with Irving, Lipstadt deceptively asserts that the ex-prez gives “comfort to those who deny” the Holocaust. That’s supposed to silence all further debate. It’s a frequently used club that beats the crap out of free speech. Incredibly, the Anti-Defamation League claimed it was a “positive note” that a survey found 50 percent of Americans want to ban hate groups from the Internet. And who decides which outfit is a hate group?

To me, any muzzling of debate is reprehensible and repugnant, even when the arguments expressed are reprehensible and repugnant.

That brings me back to Dickson. Denying he is a Holocaust denier, he muses, “I advocate being skeptical about anything the government says I must believe. If you can’t say something because it’s not politically correct, that’s wrong.”

It’s also why our nation’s founders penned the First Amendment.

When we ban speech, either by official fiat or by political correctness, the thoughts don’t go away. By some polls, 25 percent of Americans harbor racist thinking. They’re more in tune with Dickson and Duke (not to mention Coulter and Savage) than we’d like to believe. Is their voice “mainstream”? If not, how do we explain the multitudes angry over illegal immigration?

The media often ignore those subcultures. Here in Atlanta, we’re one of the bases for a religious movement behind much of the Christian right. It’s called Christian Reconstruction, or dominionism, and it supports reinstituting slavery and segregation of races. Its founder, R.J. Rushdoony, was an honest-to-God Holocaust denier. Yet it’s studiously not covered by the mainstream press, despite holding hegemonic control over several large denominations. It’s too controversial, and too many well-heeled white people might be offended at attacking America’s mullahs.

The banned subcultures create their own media, talk to themselves. They grow. Suppression of speech just recruits new converts. But since we ignore them, we don’t see the metastasizing.

That is the real danger of strangling free speech. Let Sam Dickson and David Irving do their best demagoguery. People will hear them and be appalled at the nonsense.