First Amendment crisis plagues U.S., but Americans must fight back or else
Not long after Donald Trump donned the mantle of the presidency for his second term of office, I was reminded of something President Franklin D. Roosevelt said during his State of the Union Address in 1939 with war looming in Europe.
“There comes a time in the affairs of men,” he noted, “when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.”
One of the founding tenets of our government, the right to express ourselves freely without fear of retaliation, was until recently fully protected by the First Amendment. But that fundamental right has now been placed in dire jeopardy.
President Donald Trump has made it clear that the only political opposition he will countenance is a silenced one, and he intends to use the power of his office to make that happen one way or another.
Trump’s efforts to silence critics will only continue
It should be obvious to all that if we underestimate the power Trump has decided it is his to wield, we do so at our own peril. He has been uncompromising when it comes to people and institutions, whether the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Harvard University, or a major television network, if they question his authority to exert his control. And having silenced so many of his perceived foes in just a few short months, we must assume this will continue.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general for the United States, recently promised to target people for engaging in hate speech, a term most everyone agrees can only mean different things to different people. She later clarified her comment, saying that “even dissent” is protected by the First Amendment.
I would place more faith in that clarification if I thought Trump agreed with her, but there is precious little evidence that he does. To make matters worse, it is difficult to determine in advance what might anger or unsettle him. The man has repeatedly shown himself to be predictably unpredictable, which means that virtually anything you or I say could possibly have consequences.
For example, would I incur his wrath if I argued that looting the Smithsonian Institution of photographs depicting the horrors of slavery amounts to nothing less than a concerted effort by the Trump administration to whitewash American history?
Would it be hateful of me to argue that discontinuing the government’s monthly report on hunger is an attempt by the Trump administration to deny the fact that well over 45 million Americans face hunger every week?
And might I expect to suffer consequences if I argued that Mr. Trump’s shifting stance on the release of the Epstein files means that he was either lying about them on the campaign trail or that he is lying about them now?
Citizens lose when government tells the press how to operate
FDR reminded Americans that they must be prepared to come to the defense of their churches, their government, and their civilization, and his words were no less true and no more timely then than they are today.
By 1939, Germany’s news and editorial pages as well as film and radio had long been under the strict control and supervision of Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.
As for members of the press, they could expect to be reprimanded, lose their jobs, or face imprisonment if they failed to follow the ministry’s daily directives regarding how they could report the news.
I would only add that if we fail to come to the defense of those “tenets of faith and humanity” upon which our nation was founded, we will have only ourselves to blame.
Rick Diguette taught English in the University System of Georgia for many years before retiring in 2017. He resides in Tucker.
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