The “censorship industrial complex” operates like other thought-terminating cliches such as “the woke mind virus” or “cancel culture”: as a way for powerful people to invert reality as well as First Amendment doctrine. This victim-claiming tactic seeks not only to distract the American people from the efforts of the government to engage in actual censorship, but to disguise these censorship efforts as free speech.
But the American people can see what is happening. The current President of the United States is ordering lawful residents to be kidnapped and expelled from the country because of their speech. He is dictating what words people are allowed to use, what educational institutions are allowed to teach, what values businesses are allowed to promote. He is declaring any person he disagrees with to be a criminal. He is calling for critics and dissenters to be imprisoned and assaulted. He is threatening journalists, students, judges, lawyers, religious leaders, governors—anyone he deems insufficiently loyal and insufficiently obedient. Trump’s message could not be clearer: you either bbow down to him, or you will be punished. This is what censorship looks like.
You are members of the United States Senate, government officials tasked with the sacred duty of serving the American public—not a self-professed king and not his wealthy jester—and honoring their constitutional rights. This is a president who has declared himself above the law, including the First Amendment. Those who truly wish to fight censorship should start with him.
Dr Franks' conclusion of her opening statement during this weeks' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Following up on a prior review post.
Fundamentalism is as alive and well in law as it is in religion. I have seen firsthand how often people use the Constitution the way religious fundamentalists use the Bible—selectively, self-servingly, and in bad faith.
Much as the evangelical community I was raised in focused on verses about homosexuality or women’s inferiority while ignoring the Golden Rule, constitutional fundamentalists focus on individual rights of speech and bearing arms while disregarding the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. This is not just a tactic of conservatives, whose affinity for Christian fundamentalism is no secret, but also of self-identified liberals. I was not particularly surprised when National Rifle Association supporters and Breitbart readers denounced my work on gun violence as an attack on the Constitution; I was more taken aback when American Civil Liberties Union representatives and self-identified liberals made similar claims about my efforts to protect intimate privacy rights.
As I have fielded e-mails, phone messages, and social media posts threatening me with job loss, rape, and death, I have been struck by another parallel between religious and constitutional fundamentalism: the tendency to engage in a tactic I call victim-claiming. Often used in conjunction with victim-blaming, which attempts to deprive victims of sympathy, victim-claiming attempts to generate sympathy for perpetrators. Victim-claiming is a reversal technique that puts the powerful in the the space of the vulnerable, the abuser in the space of the abused. It is the theme that disturbed me as a young reader of the Bible, which often portrays powerful men as suffering at the hands of their supposed inferiors. The point of such passages seemed to be the justification of the use of violence by the powerful against the vulnerable.
The fundamentalist reading of the Constitution, especially of the First and Second Amendments, produces the same effect. The most powerful and privileged people in America—white men—cast themselves as an underclass engaged in a protracted struggle against the women and minorities seeking to censor and disarm them.
I was moved to write this book because I believe that good faith can conquer bad. I believe that good faith in the Constitution, in particular, is both possible and necessary. I wrote this book to make the case against fundamentalism and for the principle of reciprocity expressed in Christianity’s Golden Rule, Kant’s categorical imperative, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. I wrote this book to advocate for the position that the only rights any of us should have are the rights that all of us should have. If only some of us are saved, all of us are lost…
Franks, Mary Anne. The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (loc. 108-133). Kindle Edition.
Her March 25th Senate Judiciary Committee Testimony was riveting
GOP senators picked on the wrong woman. David Newhoff nails it:
If [Louisiana GOP] Sen. Kennedy had an ounce of guts or a modicum integrity, he would argue either that Franks misstates the law or, perhaps, that she correctly states the law, but misstates the facts alleged about the “censorship industrial complex.” Instead, the senator and the cyber-mob he incited could not have more ably proven Franks’s critique of First Amendment history if they had read her book and tried intentionally to do so.Read all of it. David is spot-on.
Like many examples in the book, this powerful office holder, while whining that he’s being “censored,” whips up a hate-storm of violent threats designed to silence a citizen whose only power is her voice. Also, the optics are hard to ignore. If Kennedy’s five minutes were a movie scene, the Southern White male throwing his weight around while acting offended that anyone would suggest that white male privilege exists, would be panned by critics as too on the nose. The only things missing were a fan and a Mint Julep…
Below, more Franks:
_____
Hmmm... ring any bells?
My irascible take:
I would pay good money to attend a live discussion featuring Mary Anne Franks, Danielle Citron, Katherine Stewart, and Matthew Taylor.
Much more shortly...
No comments:
Post a Comment