Baloney and Free Speech

Temperamentally, I happen to be a man who in any given situation would always favor letting everybody have his “say.” Not on principle, but out of an essentially selfish wish to satisfy my curiosity about what there is to say on whatever question happens to be up, and also out of some terrible anarchic thing ’way down inside me that always puts me on the side of the pillow-throwers and against the umpire, on the side of the freedom riders (even though I disagree with them) against the Mississippi sheriff, on the side of George Washington against George III—and so: on the side of the let-’em-speak contingent against the censors and silencers.

I am not a very good horrible example of an anti-free-speech man where what is in question is freedom of speech in a certain kind of community, where people have in some sense contracted with one another to conduct their affairs on a freedom-of-speech basis, or to treat each other as equals: the United States or England, for instance, where other things being equal I should say (and no longer just temperamentally, but to some extent, on principle) that the presumption is, for me, always in favor of the let-’em-speak contingent and against the shut-’em-up contingent. Though I would hasten to add: as regards communities-in-general, situations-in-general, there is and can be no such presumption; and to add too: there are other kinds of communities, the Dominican Republic, for instance, or contemporary Spain, for instance, where the presumption for me would be very distinctly against any attempt to conduct affairs on a freedom-of-speech basis.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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Temperamentally, I happen to be a man who in any given situation would always favor letting everybody have his “say.” Not on principle, but out of an essentially selfish wish to satisfy my curiosity about what there is to say on whatever question happens to be up, and also out of some terrible anarchic thing ’way down inside me that always puts me on the side of the pillow-throwers and against the umpire, on the side of the freedom riders (even though I disagree with them) against the Mississippi sheriff, on the side of George Washington against George III—and so: on the side of the let-’em-speak contingent against the censors and silencers.

I am not a very good horrible example of an anti-free-speech man where what is in question is freedom of speech in a certain kind of community, where people have in some sense contracted with one another to conduct their affairs on a freedom-of-speech basis, or to treat each other as equals: the United States or England, for instance, where other things being equal I should say (and no longer just temperamentally, but to some extent, on principle) that the presumption is, for me, always in favor of the let-’em-speak contingent and against the shut-’em-up contingent. Though I would hasten to add: as regards communities-in-general, situations-in-general, there is and can be no such presumption; and to add too: there are other kinds of communities, the Dominican Republic, for instance, or contemporary Spain, for instance, where the presumption for me would be very distinctly against any attempt to conduct affairs on a freedom-of-speech basis.