Tocqueville on the Freedom of Discussion in America
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:date: 2014-04-03T12:00:00
:category: computer
:tags: culture, faith, politics, privacy
It is a sad day today. … Or let’s start from somewhere else.
I have grown up in the Communist Czechoslovakia. I remember that
moment, I was probably something around seven years old, and
I was sitting on the floor of our living room and thinking where
to hide a tape with anti-Communist protest songs so that it
wouldn’t be found by the secret police if we were blessed with
the house search. Yes, seven years. Yes, it was shortly after the
Charter 77 and there was a lot of hysteria in the air, but yes
couple of years later my father (who was an university professor)
was falsely accused of committing rape on some female students
(fortunately, police was then so sloppy, they made a mistake and
provided him with the best alibi possible … he was interrogated
by them in time when the rape was supposed to happen; or perhaps
it was not mistake at all), so just a house search was not that
improbable.
I remember reading a couple of years later a poem_ by a famous
nineteenth century Czech poet, Karel Havlíček Borovský, written
about the time when he was illegally arrested and deported by the
Austrian police because of his anti-government journalism (yes,
we have a long history of bad regimes here). This particularly
interesting part described the situation when he was drawn out of
the bed by the police early in the morning (the translation is
mine and very very rough):
| Ale Džok, můj černý buldog,
| ten je grobián,
| na habeas corpus tuze zvyklý —
| on je Angličan.
|
| Málem by byl chlap přestoupil
| jeden paragraf,
| již na slavný ouřad zpod postele
| uďál: Vrr! haf! haf!
|
| Hodil jsem mu tam pod postel
| říšský zákoník,
| dobře že jsem měl ten moudrý nápad,
| již ani nekvík. —
|
| //
|
| However, Jock, my black bulldog,
| he is a lout,
| he is too much used to the Habeas Corpus —
| being an English dog.
|
| He would almost step over
| one rule of the law,
| because he started from below the bed
| doing on the honorable officers: Grrr! Woof! Woof!
|
| I have thrown him under the bed
| the imperial code of law,
| that was really a smart idea,
| he haven’t made a sound anymore. —
.. _poem:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/Tyrolsk%C3%A9_elegie
I asked my Dad (who was a lawyer) then what the Habeas Corpus
means, and when he explained it to me, my conclusion from this
poem was that there is something awesome about the rule of law,
and particularly there is something great about the English (and
by association American) law. Apparently it is not possible for
a policemen to draw you out of the bed without a court decision,
luxury which I was certain we were then not blessed with.
Yet later I have learned another standard of the free society
(even more relevant to what I would like to talk about anyway).
I have been told that this standard is fairly displayed in the
famous saying attributed to Voltaire:
Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my
life to make it possible for you to continue to write
Then the so called Velvet Revolution of 1989 happened, and I have
found that the reality is a little bit more complicated, but
I think these rules of freedom of expression and honour to other
peoples’ opinion stayed with me forever. So, I was terribly
surprised and frankly confused later on when I was reading very
excellent de Tocqueville’s book about the democracy in America
which contained a statement
I know of no country in which there is so little independence
of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
Isn’t he talking about the country which gave us the First
Amendment, which gave us whole concept of the freedom of
expression? Isn’t he talking about the country founded by the
dissenters? I thought that there must be something wrong with
this statement, or that I had misunderstood something in what he
was saying. Yet later on I have been blessed with an opportunity
to live and study for couple of years in Boston so I have learned
that the protection against the government attacking somebody for
his expression is very much real, but that there is also present
very high level of pressure to conform to the prevalent opinion
of the community. And although everybody talks all the time about
the value of diversity, there is really a little of it allowed.
So, I read in the last two weeks these two stories.
World Vision, one of the largest Christian charity organization
in the world, decided that `their employee won’t be fired`_
because they were living in the same-sex marriage sanctioned by
their state and their denomination. They were arguing for the
decision because they are non-denominational organization and
they didn’t want to overrule policy of their employees’
denominations, not mentioning they didn’t want to overrule state
laws. I don’t know whether I agree with this argument, but it is
obvious that the situation of non-denominational organizations is
difficult and whichever decision they make it will be attacked by
somebody. Of course, I don’t know what happened thereafter but
couple of days later after the unbelievable firestorm of
criticism from the evangelical circles, the World Vision reversed
their decision.
.. _`their employee won’t be fired`:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march-web-only/world-vision-why-hiring-gay-christians-same-sex-marriage.html
Second story. Shortly after `Brendan Eich`_ was named CEO of the
Mozilla Corporation, somebody picked up an old case of his
financial support for `the Proposition 8`_ (if I understand
correctly, the issue at stake about that proposition was
declaring a marriage to be an union of one man and one woman; if
you don’t know who Brendan Eich is, look at his wikipage_ ; among
other things, he is the author of the JavaScript language, which
now powers most of all web pages in the world). Even couple of
LBGT employees of Mozilla Corp. defended Brendan Eich on their
blogs claiming that there is no discrimination against them in
Mozilla, just to the contrary conditions for LGBT people are way
above the legal level and on the highest level in the industry.
Also, nobody was able to explain questions of `some senior
Mozilla developers`_ (yes, this guy is French, so he is as
confused as I am) what has Brendan’s opinions to do with his
position of CEO of the company developing computer programs. And
whole story again ended the same, most extreme participants in
the Kulturkampf won, and Mozilla lost_ in my opinion one of the
most brilliant leaders in the industry.
.. _`Brendan Eich`:
https://brendaneich.com/
.. _wikipage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
.. _`the Proposition 8`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition_8
.. _`some senior Mozilla developers`:
http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?post/2014/03/25/Welcome-Brendan
.. _lost:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/
What would de Tocqueville and Voltaire say?
