Ending Our Censorship Spiral – Persuasion
Every single student in America should read this speech not just because Douglass rightly decries his lost liberty, but because he explains why the right to free speech is so precious.
No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence.
Slavery cannot tolerate free speech, he declared. And in words that should be burned into our civic hearts, he noted that there exists not just a right to speak but a right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
David French. Yes, David French.