President Obama has something important in common with Edward I, aka “Longshanks”
What is this about?
It has received far less notice than it deserves, but last week the United States joined with Egypt in sponsoring a resolution appoved by the UN Human Rights Council that could blow a gaping hole in the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech and other civil liberties most of us take for granted.
The resolution encourages member nations to define as criminal “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” Who defines what constitutes “national, racial or religious hatred?” Why, the government, of course. Who decides whether any given statement “constitutes incitement?” You guessed it.
In other words, if you live in a country that adopts this approach to freedom of speech, be very careful what you say about any other nation, racial group or religious faith. And you better not make anybody in power mad because you would be amazed what can be construed by governments as “incitement” to “hatred.”
If you are an American with the notion that the First Amendment will protect your right to say whatever you want whenever you want about whomever you want, be advised that this resolution embodies exactly the conceptual assumptions about law and rights that lead directly to those speech codes that restrict civil liberties on hundreds of U.S. college campuses at this very moment….
In other words, bunky, if you think the First Amendment will protect you from Obama and the UN, you’re still living in the 18th Century when people believed individual rights were theirs simply by virtue of being born under the U.S. Constitution, not as a dispensation of those in power.
So, what’s it have to do with Longshanks?
The UN resolution is quite literally medieval.
I guess this will make the Islamic world feel right at home…back to the 13th Century!
Consider the provision of Westminster I in 1275 under King Edward I in England (If you saw “Braveheart,” you will recognize him as the hated Longshanks. Trust me, he was every bit as bad as Randall Wallace’s wonderful screenplay made him). Westminster I banned the telling of “tales whereby discord or occasion of discord or slander my grow between the King and his people, or the great men of the realm.” And who defined what tales tended to sow discord? Why, the King and great men of the realm, of course.
But Westminster I was no Longshankian exception to the rule in mediavel England. Roll forward several centuries and we find Henry VIII, he of the many wives. Nobody could print a book without Henry’s permission. A law passed in 1542 proclaimed that “nothing shall be taught or mainained contrary to the King’s instructions” concerning the Bible or other religious matters. Violate that law three times and you went to the stake to be burned to death.
A century later, a 1662 statute provided the death penalty for those selling “heretical, schimatical, blasphemous, seditious and trasonable books, pamphlets and papers.” Why? Because such publications allegedly were “endangering the peace of these kingdoms and raising a disaffection to his most excellent Majesty and his government.”
That is the essential legal background from England that helped spark the English Reformation and ultimately led to the adoption of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. Why on earth would anybody want to go back to that barbaric world in which you could lose your head for saying the wrong thing?
If you are interested in learning more about the bloody history that came before the First Amendment, see former University of Texas journalism professor Marvin Olasky’s “Telling the Truth” and the chapter on “a great cloud of witnesses.”
At this rate might it take the 2nd Amendment to preserve the 1st Amendment? One can only hope not.