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Comments on Shootings and Nazis

by Jacob G. Hornberger:

In case you were wondering where they stood on the issue, the U.S. House of Representatives has issued a formal condemnation of the shooting at Santana High School near San Diego. The vote was unanimous. (Whew!) The House proclamation also "encourages the people of the United States to engage in a national dialogue on preventing violence." Well, why didn't they think of that before now? Since someone has to start our dialogue, here goes: (1) How about ending school compulsory-attendance laws so that wacko killer types are not required to be there? (2) For that matter, how about ending government schooling entirely so that defenseless victims are not forced to be there? (3) How about a totally free market in education so that young people, with the guidance of their families, will be free to seek their own particular hopes and dreams in the manner that best suits them rather than being forced into an artificial, government-concocted pressure cooker? By separating school and state, coercion-caused tensions would diminish, leaving everyone better off. And then we could talk about privatizing the postal service.

FFF HOT NEWS

We've recently advised you that Knight-Ridder and Scripps-Howard wire
services have picked up some of our op-eds. Well, Knight-Ridder just picked
up another
one--"Yahoo! We Have Free Speech" by Jacob G. Hornberger. It appears below.

FFF OP-ED

Distributed by Knight-Ridder Wire Service:

Yahoo! We Have Free Speech
by Jacob G. Hornberger

A recent ruling by a French court in a lawsuit brought against Yahoo.com
reflects the dramatically different way in which Americans and Europeans
view the importance of individual liberty.

The case involved Yahoo's online auctions of Nazi memorabilia. In France, as in Germany, such sales constitute a severe criminal offense. While Yahoo was not permitting the auctions on its French website, there was nothing to prevent Frenchmen from accessing Yahoo's U.S. site and purchasing items there.

The French court ordered Yahoo to block French users from accessing online auctions of Nazi materials on its U.S. site, a process that is not technologically possible. While Yahoo continues to contest the court's order, it recently removed thousands of hate items from its online auctions.

The true test of a free society is not whether people are free to publish
respected, popular, and approved materials. The true test of freedom is
whether people are free to publish vile, despicable, and contemptible items.

A good example of an unfree society was Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. In Nazi Germany, the state had the power to determine which items could be published and to criminalize the publication of unacceptable materials. If a person published prohibited items, punishment was often severe.

Consider the story of "The White Rose," a series of essays surreptitiously
published by two German college students, Hans and Sophie Scholl, in 1942. The essays severely denounced Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime and even called for the overthrow of the government.

The essays were illegal under German law because criticism of the Nazi
regime was considered vile, despicable, and contemptible. What was
significant, of course, was that the German government had the power to
determine which utterances were unacceptable and to make their publication illegal.

Hans and Sophie were ultimately caught and put on trial by the German
authorities. The judge castigated them for their illegal and unpatriotic
conduct. Sophie shocked everyone in the courtroom when she said to the
judge, "Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is
also believed by many others. They just don't dare to express themselves as we did." The judge sentenced both of them to death. As Hans followed his sister to the guillotine, he paused and yelled, "Long live freedom!"

Of course, the Nazi authorities could kill them only once for uttering such
"despicable" ideas.

The problem is that French and German authorities today assume and exercise the same power that Hitler and the Nazis exercised -- the power to determine what is acceptable speech and to criminalize the publication of what is considered to be unacceptable. Under the Nazis, criticism of Nazism was considered unacceptable. Today, glorification of Nazism is considered unacceptable. But make no mistake about it: The mindset that government should have the power to make this determination and to punish people for violating it is no different today than it was 60 years ago under Hitler and his henchmen.

Compare this to the United States. No one would dispute that some U.S.
officials would love to assume and exercise the same power over speech that Hitler exercised 60 years ago and that Germans and French authorities
exercise today. And it's true that U.S. officials have made significant
inroads in the area of pornography and "commercial" speech.

But by and large, people in the United States are free to publish anything
they want, including pro-Nazi material. And the reason for this is the
higher law that our ancestors imposed on our government officials more than 200 years ago when our government was established. I'm referring, of course, to the U.S. Constitution, and more specifically, to its First Amendment. Under the First Amendment, the members of Congress, albeit democratically elected, are absolutely prohibited from abridging freedom of speech, even if 99 percent of the citizenry consider some of it vile, despicable, and contemptible.

So, the next time you see Nazi memorabilia being advertised and sold in the United States, count your lucky stars that you live in a society in which
the Founders rejected the old European mindset of control and chose liberty instead.

Mr. Hornberger is president of The Future of Freedom Foundation
(www.fff.org) in Fairfax, Va.