Freedom of Speech and Assembly
“Ath. Hear, then:-There was a time when the Persians had more of the state which is a mean between slavery and freedom. In the reign of Cyrus they were freemen and also lords of many others: the rulers gave a share of freedom to the subjects, and being treated as equals, the soldiers were on better terms with their generals, and showed themselves more ready in the hour of danger. And if there was any wise man among them, who was able to give good counsel, he imparted his wisdom to the public; for the king was not jealous, but allowed him full liberty of speech, and gave honour to those who could advise him in any matter. And the nation waxed in all respects, because there was freedom and friendship and communion of mind among them.” Plato’s “Laws” Book III.
These rights can be traced back to institutions common in the Mediterranean and in early Greece. They probably go back further to common tribal gatherings. We could look to the democratic assemblies of Athens, or to the communal meals of Sparta. Aristotle notes in his Politics that such Communal meals were probably adopted from the Constitutions of Crete or Carthage.
“The Cretan institutions resemble the Lacedaemonian. The Helots are the husbandmen of the one, the Perioeci of the other, and both Cretans and Lacedaemonians have common meals, which were anciently called by the Lacedaemonians not 'phiditia' but 'andria'; and the Cretans have the same word, the use of which proves that the common meals originally came from Crete.” Aristotle “Politics” Book II, section X
In Sparta it was not just a right but a duty for all male Citizens to take their meals in common. In this way Aristotle tells us, close friendships and bonds were formed which allowed the Citizens to trust each other enough to engage in conspiracies to kill a dictator if one should rise to power as we can see from his discussion of preserving a tyranny.
“There are firstly the prescriptions mentioned some distance back, for the preservation of a tyranny, in so far as this is possible; viz., that the tyrant should lop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit; he must not allow common meals, clubs, education, and the like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire either courage or confidence among his subjects;” Aristotle, “Politics” Book V, Section XI.
Our modern freedom of speech and assembly allow us to band together to protest government actions we deem unwise or unjust. This is their purpose dating back to times before history was first formally recorded. Aristotle does find significant fault with the manner in which common meals were arranged in Sparta.
“Neither did the first introducer of the common meals, called 'phiditia,' regulate them well. The entertainment ought to have been provided at the public cost, as in Crete; but among the Lacedaemonians every one is expected to contribute, and some of them are too poor to afford the expense; thus the intention of the legislator is frustrated. The common meals were meant to be a popular institution, but the existing manner of regulating them is the reverse of popular. For the very poor can scarcely take part in them; and, according to ancient custom, those who cannot contribute are not allowed to retain their rights of citizenship.” Aristotle, “Politics” Book II, Section IX
Compare this ancient freedom guaranteed to Americans with the guarantee in the Constitution of the USSR where the people were given the ’Right’ to assemble to promote Communism.
Article 50 [Expression]
“(1) In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations.
(2) Exercise of these political freedoms is ensured by putting public buildings, streets, and squares at the disposal of the working people and their organizations, by broad dissemination of information, and by the opportunity to use the press, television, and radio.”
Article 51 [Association]
“(1) In accordance with the aims of building communism, citizens of the USSR have the right to associate in public organizations that promote their political activity and initiative and satisfaction of their various interests.
(2) Public organizations are guaranteed conditions for successfully performing the functions defined in their rules.”
This right worked in Sparta for some centuries, and works today in the US. It enabled meaningful action by an organized public. It did not work in the USSR because it never allowed meaningful action by an organized public. In the USSR it was limited to the right to assemble to agree with the government. No dissent was allowed.
How does it relate to our fundamental principle of human nature, self-interest. It is fair to assume that most such assemblies are made by people interested in the subjects involved and that much of that interest is self-interest. Such organized groups guarantee that citizens can safeguard their right to a fair return of reward for work. This in turn guarantees their productivity, which promotes the general wealth of the society and makes it stronger.
Later political philosophers have found other important benefits from freedom of speech and assembly not enumerated by Aristotle.
Alex de Tocqueville discusses the role of associations in the Democracy of America in his second book chapter 5.
“As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found one another out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve for an example and whose language is listened to. The first time I heard in the United States that a hundred thousand men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious engagement, and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides. I at last understood that these hundred thousand Americans, alarmed by the progress of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to patronize temperance.”
“Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of our attention than the intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and industrial associations of that country strike us forcibly; but the others elude our observation, or if we discover them, we understand them imperfectly because we have hardly ever seen anything of the kind. It must be acknowledged, however, that they are as necessary to the American people as the former, and perhaps more so. In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made.”
“Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.”
He goes on in chapter 6 to discuss the role of newspapers in the US.
“WHEN men are no longer united among themselves by firm and lasting ties, it is impossible to obtain the co-operation of any great number of them unless you can persuade every man whose help you require that his private interest obliges him voluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all the others. This can be habitually and conveniently effected only by means of a newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. A newspaper is an adviser that does not require to be sought, but that comes of its own accord and talks to you briefly every day of the common weal, without distracting you from your private affairs.”
“In democratic countries, on the contrary, it frequently happens that a great number of men who wish or who want to combine cannot accomplish it because as they are very insignificant and lost amid the crowd, they cannot see and do not know where to find one another. A newspaper then takes up the notion or the feeling that had occurred simultaneously, but singly, to each of them. All are then immediately guided towards this beacon; and these wandering minds, which had long sought each other in darkness, at length meet and unite. The newspaper brought them together, and the newspaper is still necessary to keep them united.”
He then continues to discuss what may be called the behavioral conditioning, or educational role of freedom of association, especially total freedom of political association on the population in chapter 7.
“Political associations may therefore be considered as large free schools, where all the members of the community go to learn the general theory of association. But even if political association did not directly contribute to the progress of civil association, to destroy the former would be to impair the latter. When citizens can meet in public only for certain purposes, they regard such meetings as a strange proceeding of rare occurrence, and they rarely think at all about it. When they are allowed to meet freely for all purposes, they ultimately look upon public association as the universal, or in a manner the sole, means that men can employ to accomplish the different purposes they may have in view. Every new want instantly revives the notion. The art of association then becomes, as I have said before, the mother of action, studied and applied by all.”
Communist planners ignored his wisdom when they ‘included’ freedom of association in their bill or rights but limited it to freedom to promote their political agenda. They should have heeded Tocqueville’s words;
“When some kinds of associations are prohibited and others allowed, it is difficult to distinguish the former from the latter beforehand. In this state of doubt men abstain from them altogether, and a sort of public opinion passes current which tends to cause any association whatsoever to be regarded as a bold and almost an illicit enterprise.”
“It is therefore chimerical to suppose that the spirit of association, when it is repressed on some one point, will nevertheless display the same vigor on all others; and that if men be allowed to prosecute certain undertakings in common, that is quite enough for them eagerly to set about them. When the members of a community are allowed and accustomed to combine for all purposes, they will combine as readily for the lesser as for the more important ones; but if they are allowed to combine only for small affairs, they will be neither inclined nor able to effect it. It is in vain that you will leave them entirely free to prosecute their business on joint-stock account: they will hardly care to avail themselves of the rights you have granted to them; and after having exhausted your strength in vain efforts to put down prohibited associations, you will be surprised that you cannot persuade men to form the associations you encourage.”
He continues, tying the freedom of political association to economic vitality.
“When you see the Americans freely and constantly forming associations for the purpose of promoting some political principle, of raising one man to the head of affairs, or of wresting power from another, you have some difficulty in understanding how men so independent do not constantly fall into the abuse of freedom. If, on the other hand, you survey the infinite number of trading companies in operation in the United States, and perceive that the Americans are on every side unceasingly engaged in the execution of important and difficult plans, which the slightest revolution would throw into confusion, you will readily comprehend why people so well employed are by no means tempted to perturb the state or to destroy that public tranquillity by which they all profit. Is it enough to observe these things separately, or should we not discover the hidden tie that connects them? In their political associations the Americans, of all conditions, minds, and ages, daily acquire a general taste for association and grow accustomed to the use of it. There they meet together in large numbers, they converse, they listen to one another, and they are mutually stimulated to all sorts of undertakings. They afterwards transfer to civil life the notions they have thus acquired and make them subservient to a thousand purposes. Thus it is by the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that the Americans learn the art of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable.”
Note those key words, by the enjoyment of dangerous freedoms Americans learn the art of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable. Here is a powerful lesson to all who believe that safety comes from limiting various freedoms.
Mr. Mill in his book, “On Liberty” emphasizes the role of public associations again in the education or behavioral conditioning of the Citizens;
“The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education—a mode of strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (in cases not political); of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These are not questions of liberty, and are connected with that subject only by remote tendencies; but they are questions of development. It belongs to a different occasion from the present to dwell on these things as parts of national education; as being, in truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint concerns—habituating them to act from public or semipublic motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free constitution can neither be worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by the too-often transitory nature of political freedom in countries where it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The management of purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action.” “On Liberty” Chapter 5.
While Aristotle emphasized the role of free association in building trust and the ability to politically resist tyranny, later students of Political Philosophy have seen in it a key method of educating and training the Citizen to actively participate in his own government by teaching him to govern himself in cooperation with others in local matters. Thus freedom of assembly for any reason teaches the basic behaviors associated with self-government and enables Citizens to be Citizens.
Tocqueville makes the point that Citizens will not actively participate in meaningless assemblies. Unless the assemblies have some real power Citizens will not participate in them. Such participation is a necessary school for an able Democracy. Citizens who do not have such experience will not be able to fulfill their role in a Democracy.
Even if a centralized management were more efficient as Mr. Mill suggests, it would still be inferior to local control of daily affairs and issues for the purposes of a Democratic Government. The idea that such centralized management is superior is highly questionable. It is contrary to the principle underlying Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” and basically antithetical to the principles on which the US is founded. The recent example of the USSR makes the concept appear to be false on the face of it. Yet even if it were true, and there is no reason to believe it is, it would still be a wrong approach to handling affairs in a Democratic system. In a Democratic system, local political assemblies with real power to regulate local or community standards are a fundamental element in the education of the Citizens to make Democracy work.
Government management of the personal affairs of Citizens conditions them to be subjects. Personal management, even occasionally mismanagement of these affairs teaches Citizens to be Citizens. Violation of these freedoms represents a violation of the principle that laws which condition Citizens to feel and act more like Subjects are violations of the intent and penumbra against laws which condition Citizens to think like subjects based on that intent, of the Bill of Rights, as developed in the section of this book on the Third Amendment, Behavioral Conditioning and the Law.