There may not be any free speech at least in the ideal sense of the idea of free speech. It may primarily only be available to those who have money, influence and power to control.
For example, just try and buy an advertisement on network TV or in some mainstream magazine that is anti-commercial culture, anti-capitalism, anti-fur, anti-meat or for anything that may upset the media’s biggest advertisers or the media management’s consumer oriented value structure.
Your idea for an anti-establishment advertisement may likely never see the light of day. Today, free speech, in essence, may only be for the privileged few! Is this what our forefathers had in mind when they concocted Freedom Of Speech in the U.S. Constitution?
Free speech thrives today while discourse which seeks the truth seems to be dying. The tyranny of the 18th Century censorship fears, which led to freedom of speech and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, has now given way to a new tyranny going into the 21st Century. It plays to the public’s appetite for pleasure, amusement, entertainment and triviality over substance.
The purpose of this new found happiness, with all its non-stop distractions, is to keep us from paying attention to what is really important! For example, reality and entertainment TV acts to numb the public’s senses as well as suppress critical thought and spirit. Critical thought and spirit were the strengths passed down from our forefathers that have successfully been replaced with consumer commercialism and a tyranny of pleasure.
The new tyranny now menaces true freedom of speech. The development of mass media is not as concerned with true or false, right or wrong. The lines separating each have been blurred with information overload confusing us all. Toss in the critics, cynics and skeptics with their attorney legalese, logic and mentality to keep everyone confused as to what the real issues are and we end up in a perpetual confused standstill making us not really sure what to believe anymore, what is right or wrong, true or false.
The early advocates of a free press and mass media did not anticipate our endless appetite for distractions over critical thought and discourse as well as our disinterest in self-government, freedom of thought and the right to dissent.
Our mainstream news and information medium, TV, has for decades now become our favorite plaything. Today, lofty ideals and principles are out while selfishness and self-gratification are in.
Living with lies and deception may, after all, be necessary to organize, shape, resolve, cope, achieve, survive and flourish as a species. We deceive so we do not perish of the truth.
We used to say the unexamined life may not be worth living yet what we may find is that the well-examined life may prove to be unlivable. Our evolved system of free speech may just need lies to live and survive.
Society’s most regulating force is its governing lie. Without it we lose unity and purpose then fall prey to diffused, confused meanings leading to social chaos. Forget seeking naked truth because we are, basically, forced to lie to preserve a sense of purpose and destiny.
Eighteenth Century ideals, like seeking truth through discourse, will not fit into the 21st Century environment of pleasure seeking practices. Gone will be harmony, wholesomeness, romance and traditional free speech values to be replaced by technology and materialism. Society has no more than one chance in one thousand to survive it. However, instinct dictates that we must operate on that one chance!
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: ACTION LINE MAGAZINE WINTER 1995 and ADBUSTERS MAGAZINE WINTER 1996