What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.
~~~Rush Limbaugh
As Americans we cherish free speech. We like to believe that our freedom is limitless. But, in America, we also recognize that free speech can't be used destructively and maliciously to endanger the public. For instance, it doesn't allow shouting "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, just to create mayhem. There are other limits, too. You can test them by having a chat with your boss at work. Tell him that you've been watching the firm's mismanagement and you'd like to know whether he's writing a book about how to destroy a business enterprise. Would your free speech protect you from being fired? No, it doesn’t apply. It only protects Americans from government suppression of dissent.
That’s why Americans are extremely reluctant to curb free speech in the political arena. Can Rush Limbaugh say anything he wants on the radio and claim that he’s a dissenter? Is dissent limitless? How do we test that?
Dissent means that there’s something you’re for and something you’re against. In this case, a dissenter would have spoken about Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act which requires insurance companies that offer health plans to cover preventive care without charging a co-payment. A dissenter would have questioned how the Institute of Medicine decided to recommend birth control for inclusion on the list of preventive care services to be covered without a co-payment. But Limbaugh chose instead to mislead his listeners into believing that they were being asked to pay for the birth control needs of a prostitute wanting to be paid for having sex, even though there’s no provision under the new law for anyone to pay for another’s health insurance plan. There’s no public funding involved in it either. He chose to present a fictional version of the House committee hearing for his own agenda. The hearing transcripts and recorded video clearly would have shown him that there was no testimony asking for public funding for contraception. Limbaugh’s on-air rant isn’t protected as political dissent. It doesn’t meet the definition of dissent. We learned what he’s against but it isn’t pertinent to the public policy that was being considered.
If Limbaugh wasn’t dissenting, what was he doing? Three days of ranting, delivered with conviction, to convince your listeners that they’ll be paying for a prostitute’s contraception, is a little bit like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, when there is no fire. It’s a little bit like creating mayhem in our political process. Who gets hurt? A private citizen who should be able to appear before a House committee to speak as a subject matter expert about reproductive health without being accused of prostitution and anyone who seeks to express their opinion without fear of reprisal from powerful individuals or businesses.
Limbaugh’s malicious mayhem endangers our democracy and free speech itself. The founding fathers didn't intend free speech to be used for repression of opposing opinions. But that’s what Limbaugh tried to do with his bullying.
We get used to the shouting. The President is a dictator. He’s against your religion. He wants to take your guns. Are these the reasoned conclusions of a dissenter or the malicious shouts of an individual creating mayhem and endangering the public? To decide, there has to be imminent danger according to precedent. We don’t have any protection from Limbaugh or any other media talker, whose effect is cumulative, continually delivering bits of misinformation, slowing raising their listeners’ sense of alarm without attracting immediate attention, until one day a threshold is reached.
6:03 PM PT: Thank you to people who indulged me by reading this short piece and commenting. You are certainly all entitled to your own opinions and to express them freely. English is a tricky language and I have to be careful to avoid saying anything that can be interpreted two ways, especially when one of them is the opposite of what I meant.
If you are concerned about protecting freedom, your heart is in the right place. I'm thinking of a piece I read elsewhere recently that pointed out how the definition of freedom has been reduced to freedom from government. No one wants that crushing them and for many Americans government is something that should be reduced and kept out of our lives. It shouldn't interfere with our freedom. But how do we maximize freedom? It isn't only government that interferes. Powerful business interests and even powerful individuals can crush our freedom too. What protection do we have from them? In the past, it was a principle of progressivism that one of government's functions was to provide protection for those who are disadvantaged by the more powerful.
I see the story of Limbaugh and Fluke as one of two vastly unequal powers. Almost like a modern day David and Goliath, we may have the satisfaction of seeing the tables turned against power and influence. But what if that were not the case.
Limbaugh has a right to his own opinions. He has a right to express them too. He has a right to influence public policy. None of that should ever be in question. Sandra Fluke also has a right to her own opinions and to express them and to influence public policy. We all have those same rights. We also have a right to be free of reprisal for expressing our political opinion. Not just reprisal from the government. Reprisal from other powerful interests that are capable of causing us harm, simply because we say what we think.