Lux Lucet

Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

– The First Amendment to the United States Constitution

It’s fairly easy for Americans, living as we do under the Constitution, to take our freedoms guaranteed under that document for granted. This is certainly the case for me, at any rate.

The whole matter of the importance of the Constitution in securing our liberties was brought to mind just in the past few days with the release of an email cache related to French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.

What drew my attention to the release was not so much the question whether the emails were authentic or not, although that’s an important question, or the similarity of the release to what occurred during the US presidential election last year, but the way the French government dealt with the release: It ordered the news media not to report on the content.

According to the Independent,

France’s electoral commission has ordered media not to publish contents of Emmanuel Macron’s leaked campaign emails to avoid influencing the election.

I warned news outlets in France that journalists could face criminal charges for publishing or republishing the material, under laws that came into effect at midnight forbidding any commentary liable to affect the presidential race.

As lawless as things have gotten in the US, at least there’s still enough respect for free speech that there are no laws prohibiting political campaigning up to election day.

The idea that the federal government would have the right to criminally charge a reporter for commenting on publically available information just wouldn’t cut it in America, at least for the moment.

Mind you, there are plenty of American elitist types, both within and without formal governmental structures, who would like to see that happen. But at least for the moment, they constrained from enforcing their will.

That American deep state, master of the universe types hate free speech can been seen from some of the reporting on the Macron emails.

For example, CNBC carried a story by Reuters with the headline “US far-right activists, Wikileaks and bots help amplify Macron leaks: Researchers.”

The article goes on the darkly warn about, you guessed it, Russian involvement in hacking the emails and the responsibility of “far-right” journalists for spreading the news.

Is Freedom of the Press Biblical?

The short and sweet answer is, yes, by all means. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, is certainly a Christian concept.

The press is free to publish. Likewise, the people are free to judge their words.

We can see this principle at work in the way church services were handled. Paul gave directions to the Corinthians to allow two or three prophets to speak, leaving it to the congregation to judge what they said.

The prophets were free to speak, but the people reserved the right to evaluate what they said.

Open Meetings

Freedom of the press is closely related to the concept of transparency in government. And in order for there to be governmental transparency in the Biblical sense, people must be free to ask questions and debate ideas.

The Bible requires open meetings, as can be seen from the minutes of the Jerusalem Council, some of which are recorded in Acts 15. The apostles and elders spoke, but Luke notes that, “Then all the multitude kept silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul declaring how many miracles and wonders God had worked through them among the Gentiles,” implying that ordinary Christians were there for the meeting.

It is not stretch to say that “the multitude” had the opportunity to ask questions as well. The text relates that “then the multitude dept silent” implying that some had spoken out prior to that point.

Further, asking questions in church was a regular practice of the New Testament church. Jesus took questions when he spoke in public. And as John Robbins notes, Q&A sessions in regular church meetings are implied by Paul’s prohibition of women speaking or asking questions in church (The Church Effeminate, 28).

Biblical Cases of Opposition to Free Speech

The Book of Numbers relates the following account.

But two men had remained in the camp: the name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those listed, but who had not gone out to the tabernacle; yet they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

So Joshua the son of Nun, Moses assistant, one of his choice men, answered and said, Moses my lord, forbid them!”

Then Moses said to him, “Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put His Spirit upon them!” And Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel (Numbers 11:26-30).

Here, an unnamed young man and Joshua sought to prohibit the free speech of Eldad and Medad. But Moses would have none of it. Not only did he not restrain them from speaking, but he wished that all the people would do as these men had done.

Mark and Luke both record an objection by John to someone, who was not numbered among the twelve, casting out demons in the name of Christ. Jesus response to him is in keeping with what Moses said to Joshua, “Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me.”

In both cases, officers in the official church attempted to shut down free speech, but were checked.

And if regenerate men such as Joshua and John could fall into the error of attempting to shut down free speech, how much more can worldly government officials be tempted to do likewise?

Freedom to Preach the Gospel and Debate

The apostle Paul rejoiced to hear that the Gospel was freely preached, even by those whose motives were less than honorable. Writing to the Philippians, he said,

Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill; The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains; but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, ye, and will rejoice (Philippians 1:15-18).

Paul also welcomed debate. The Bible records several times how he reasoned with unbelievers. He didn’t just say, “believe what I tell you because I’m some hot shot apostle,” but he talked to people in both the synagogues and marketplaces.

After Paul and Silas had preached at Berea, Luke notes that the Jews there were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, because they searched out the Scriptures to verify that what was preached to them was in accord with the truth.

The Roman Church-State

As one would imagine, a totalitarian organization such as the Roman Church-State was no friend of freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Martin Luther was told to recant of his writings at the Diet of Worms. As with Cardinal Cajetan a few years earlier, officiela of Rome weren’t interested in debating theology with Luther. They weren’t interested in discussing his idea.

They wanted to shut him up.

“Recant!” Luther was ordered.

To which he famously replied, “Here I stand!”

Freedom of Speech Established by the Reformation

Freedom of speech is a product, not of the hectoring, arrogant, atheistic ACLU, but the result of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Historian Harold Berman noted,

[S]eventeenth century Puritans, including men like [john] Hampden, [John] Lilburne, [Walter] Udall, William Penn, and other, buy their disobedience to English law, laid the foundations for the English and American law of civil rights and civil liberties as expressed in our respective constitutions: freedom of speech and press, free exercise of religion, the privilege against self-incrimination, the independence of the jury from judicial dictation, the right not to be imprisoned without cause, and many other such rights and freedoms (Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion, 66-67, in Robbins, Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 22)

The freedom of ordinary people to speak, to debate, and to question church officers as seen in the Scriptures was extended to the political arena in the centuries following the Reformation.

Noted Constitutional commentator Joseph Storey remarked that that English jurist William Blackstone believed, “To subject the press to the restrictive power of licenser, as was formerly done before…is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man [the king], and to make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion and government.”

“Truthiness” Tests

Leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, and especially following the defeat of the establishment pick Hillary Clinton, there were a number of calls from various corners about the need to restrict free speech.

Some of the calls for restrictions on the freedom of the press sound a lot like the sort of thing Blackstone and Storey warned against.

In October of last year, then president Barak Obama gave a speech in Pittsburgh in which he lamented the “wild-wild-west-of-information flow” and called for “some sort of curating function that people agree to.”

Not content with this, Obama went full Orwell, calling for “some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness [yes, he used the word “truthiness”] tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world.”

How ironic that this supposed Constitutional lawyer seems to have no clue that the First Amendment of the Constitution was put there to prevent the very thing he calls for, what amounts to a federal government “Ministry of Truth.”

And this was just the beginning of the establishments attack on free speech.

Fake New Alert!

In the months leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, the public was subjected to a torrent of mainstream propaganda about so-called “fake news.”

According to the Washington Post, “fake news” means “deliberately constructed lies, in the form of news articles, meant to mislead the public.”

This calls to mind that old saying about those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. In this writer’s opinion, that definition of “fake news” could very easily be applied to a pretty high percentage of the output of the mainstream press.

Prominent conservative writers noticed this as well and flipped the script by using the term to describe the mainstream press.

Unsurprisingly, the legacy media didn’t like this and started whining about how, “Conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself…have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.”

Touché.

Apparently the legacy media folks didn’t much care for the taste of their own medicine, so they began calling for its retirement.

But just because they’ve given up on the term “fake news,” doesn’t mean globalists and master of the universe types have turned over a new leaf, embracing freedom and acknowledging the right of those who disagree with their statist, antichristian, globalist agenda to speak

Just recently, the CIA branded Wikileaks a “hostile intelligence service” and Donald Trump, who praised Wikileaks as a candidate, now says he’s OK with issuing an arrest warrant for Julian Assange.

Then there’s the ongoing war on by YouTube, Facebook, Google and Twitter to shut down dissent by suspending accounts, demonetizing videos, and adjusting search engine protocols to push down websites that don’t meet the “truthiness” standards of the globalists.

Conclusion

Having a written Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and of the press has been one of the great bulwarks against tyranny in the United States for over 200 years.

In committing this guarantee to writing, the framers of the Constitution were following the lead of the Hebrew Republic, which had the Law of Moses as its Constitution, and the Westminster Divines who drafted the Westminster Confession of Faith.

A written constitution is far superior to oral tradition when it comes to defending freedom. It sets forth in plain language the terms under which both governors and the governed are to operate, thus enabling even an unlearned person to appeal to it in the case of any controversy.

And yet it is easy to take the protections of the Constitution for granted.

This past week’s events in France show that freedom of speech and of the press are not necessarily protected in the same way, even in other Western nations. Let alone in areas of the world that do not have a history of respecting the freedom on individuals.

If you’re and American, thank God for the First Amendment. And if you’re not an American, thank God for the First Amendment.

As long as men somewhere are able to write and speak and discuss without fear of legal consequence, freedom, though badly wounded, is not dead.