The Long History of Callowness versus Free Speech

The killing of Charlie Kirk had already put me in the mind of John Milton's famous defense of free speech, Areopagitica, but the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel for making a joke that inaccurately inferred the killer's political affiliation, and speculated on the Right's political exploitation of the assassination, touched on many points Milton addressed directly in his 1644 pamphlet. Areopagitica has been a very influential work on American lawmaking, including the pertinent Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan which interpreted the right to free speech to cover speaking falsehoods if the party claiming libel or slander can't show that the author knowingly and maliciously repeated the falsehood. Personally, I think Kimmel was just recklessly repeating what he'd heard.

Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian and Milton specifically mentions comedians in talking about how ancient Athens judged whether a text was libellous:

Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old comedians were suppressed, though the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly known, and may be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly studied so much the same author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon.

Milton published Areopagitica in response to Parliament forcing books and pamphlets to submit to review and attain a license before publication. He draws comparisons to other countries where speech is more strictly regulated and does so to speak to the motives of rulers who compulsively censor those who openly criticise the authorities instead of constantly praising them:

For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on your proceedings. His highest praising is not flattery, and his plainest advice is a kind of praising. For though I should affirm and hold by argument, that it would fare better with truth, with learning and the Commonwealth, if one of your published Orders, which I should name, were called in; yet at the same time it could not but much redound to the lustre of your mild and equal government, whenas private persons are hereby animated to think ye better pleased with public advice, than other statists have been delighted heretofore with public flattery. And men will then see what difference there is between the magnanimity of a triennial Parliament, and that jealous haughtiness of prelates and cabin counsellors that usurped of late, whenas they shall observe ye in the midst of your victories and successes more gently brooking written exceptions against a voted Order than other courts, which had produced nothing worth memory but the weak ostentation of wealth, would have endured the least signified dislike at any sudden proclamation.

He later talks about visiting Galileo when that great innovator was under house arrest. He mentions how in Italy he found it commonly believed that England was a comparative haven for free thought:

There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness, that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that those worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish.

Something I don't think is generally appreciated about Areopagitica, though, is how much time Milton devotes to encouraging people to seek out challenging material to read. He references a vision Pope Dionysius of Alexandra claims to have had of God who told him, against the advice of those around him, to "read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright and to examine each matter." Milton argues that God intended for humans to exercise their own critical faculties, to determine for themselves whether a book is good or bad. He further argues that much may be learned from "bad" books; "that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate."

The more famous quote (which I'm especially fond of) comes shortly thereafter:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

And this, I think, is the real tragedy in the death of the humanities in college. For a long time, students haven't been exposed to examples of challenging writing. The framework of critical theory was too often narrowly applied, I believe, and more and more reading has been used only to confirm belief than to challenge it. I think about the lack of cultivation to appreciate and recognise exceptional art and literature. You can see evidence in the common criticism that some people believe they are "the main characters in their own stories," a phrase I find grimly amusing. The people who utter it, I have to infer, generally think of main characters as super people, deserving of constant praise and attention. The scope of their exposure to art is shown in how narrowly they define "main character." Perhaps Charlie Kirk's assassin, believing he was the main character of his own story, believed also that main characters are invariably anointed for the purpose of beating a final boss.

Milton also addresses whether or not censorship is an aid to alleviating partisan thinking, an argument he swiftly dispenses with in a short paragraph.

If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so unread or so uncatechized in story, that hath not heard of many sects refusing books as a hindrance, and preserving their doctrine unmixed for many ages, only by unwritten traditions? The Christian faith, for that was once a schism, is not unknown to have spread all over Asia, ere any Gospel or Epistle was seen in writing. If the amendment of manners be aimed at, look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books.

X Sonnet 1961 (by me)

Obsessive wakeful fellows flood the school.
No idle dreams could clog the drains of war.
The moral spray would melt the spider's rule.
Behind the web's a single fateful door.
The rebel girl would weave from webs a dress.
The parakeets denounce perverted use.
The soldiers breathe and watch and cheat at chess.
No day could pass without a cheap abuse.
As spirits once again revive the corn,
They build the maize to trap the killer's glare.
Abusers build a speech of constant scorn.
But quiet ghosts abide beneath the stair.
Some graves are marked and many others not.
Remember this and feed the witch's pot.