Friday Civics Microdose No. 6
Friday Civics Microdose No. 6
Just the facts, ma'am
At some point during my early years in New York, which I spent diligently trying to recreate Sex and the City but mostly reaffirming the revolutionary profundity of Lena Dunham, I became obsessed with Tom Wolfe and the writing style he popularized called New Journalism.
New Journalism turned traditional, just-the-facts reportage into literary masterpieces by using writing techniques that made fiction so readable — like scene setting, embellishing details, writing visually. Basically, it was a more exciting way of writing about the news of the day that took off in a big way in New York Magazine in the 1960s.
I felt like I understood my own love affair with New York once I discovered Tom Wolfe. Like me, he was from a small town in Virginia and after a few early stints elsewhere, he landed in Manhattan. New York is a great town for outsiders and Wolfe made it his town while never seeming to lose that wide-eyed sensibility. His writing was revolutionary in a way no one expected from a Southern dandy.
Tom Wolfe quibbled with many things. He skewered the idea of “performative activism”. He argued that all it really takes to elevate someone to the status of “intellectual” is to fully commit to being morally indignant about things they know nothing about. If he was still alive, he’d 1000% be writing essay collections on wokeness and all the other hot button topics that form identity politics.
Which feels like the PERFECT way to introduce the First Amendment, the most well-known, most-quoted of all 27 amendments.
Put simply, the First Amendment protects a person’s right to express ideas, even if they’re provocative or unpopular, without government interference. This latter part matters, because free speech is only guaranteed by the government — something that often gets overlooked. It’s not a thing between people and companies, or from person to person.
Not all speech is protected, however. The First Amendment establishes boundaries for violent activity, or hateful or threatening speech, or incitements to violence. It doesn’t protect pornography that rises to the level of “obscene” (the Supreme Court’s famous “I know it when I see it” standard).
Today, the application of the First Amendment has gotten trickier with social media, with debates on whether companies like X and Facebook should ban misinformation, or speech that could be seen as threatening or encouraging violence. Public figures like Elon Musk, a free speech absolutist, keep the First Amendment in the news.
The First Amendment also protects the right to freely exercise religion and to peaceably assemble and petition the government. This came from the framers wanting to ensure that powerful churches couldn’t influence the government (as the Church of England had), and reflected the desire to support religious diversity in a nation full of immigrants holding different religious and nonreligious beliefs.
In How to Raise A Citizen (and why it’s up to you to do it), Lindsey Cormack offers helpful conversation starters to talk about the First Amendment with kids, which I’ve paraphrased here:
Should insulting speech that falls short of hateful speech be protected?
Are there any instances in which the government should ban the press from covering certain stories?
What are limits to what is considered to be “speech”? For example, is art “speech”? Is donating money “speech”?
I’ll leave you with a relevant piece
published on Tuesday called The Global War Against Free Speech by . I learned so much!Have a great weekend and more soon,
Sarah