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Tocqueville on the Freedom of Discussion in America
###################################################
: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 bad
| doing on the honorable officers: Grrr! Woof! Woof!
|
| I have thrown him under the bad
| the imperial code of law,
| that was really a smart idea,
| he haven’t make a sound anymore. —
.. _poem:
https://cs.wikisource.org/wiki/Tyrolsk%C3%A9_elegie
I have asked my Dad (who was a lawyer) what that 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 bad without a reason, luxury which I was certain we were 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 complicated, but I think these rules of
freedom of expression and honor 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 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_ ). 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`_ 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?
|
