Being on the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Some weeks ago I heard about how Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a prominent radio talk show host (who is not, in point of fact, a psychiatrist or a therapist), felt compelled to leave her radio show after she had repeatedly used the word “nigger” on the air and criticized a black woman for feeling offended about it. This caused a number of Laura's sponsors to retract their sponsorship, and Laura then said she was retiring from radio in order to protect her right to free speech.

And yesterday you, student who alternates between talking when I am addressing the class and sleeping in class, who packs up ten minutes before class is to be dismissed, and who has never failed but to address me in a tone more suited to reprimanding a dog than addressing the instructor of your class, told me about how you felt that your own right to freedom of speech was abridged in the classroom environment because you were being evaluated on your adherence to the opinion of the instructor rather than any other factors. I have told you and the rest of the class that this is not how I evaluate your work; that I evaluate the work in my class based upon the strength of the arguments, their clarity and their use of evidence, not if they happen to be in accordance with my own beliefs, outside of my own belief that the best arguments are those based on reason and evidence, that is, and the employment of such is the best way to persuade others of your position. Pursuant to that expressed belief, here is my carefully reasoned counter-argument to show you that your argument that I am abridging your free speech is bullshit:

The text of the First Amendment is as follows:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Nowhere in those lines does it require all instructors to give As to all students for all work.

The right to free speech doesn't give you the right to choose how other people respond to your speech. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from any and all consequences of speech. The First Amendment does not, can not, and should not protect you from other people disagreeing with you if what you say is bullshit. To say that “congress shall pass no law” about something doesn't proscribe the personal reactions of all people all across the country. The federal government won't put you in jail for spewing bullshit, so long as you're not making violent threats against the government; spewing bullshit may still carry social and economic consequences. The First Amendment doesn't pretend to protect you from that. And thank God it doesn't; I'd be very afraid of any law that criminalized the act of thought or the capacity people to respond non-violently to the thoughts of others. Yes, you have the right to burn a Koran, and I have the right to think you are a total asshat for doing so.

I don't accept that you have a right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, inasmuch as doing so infringes upon the rights of the others. Insofar as my limited lights lead me, I don't believe that the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States was ever intended or interpreted by a court to guarantee the right of anybody to say anything, whenever, and that nobody be allowed to voice a dissenting opinion. The disruption of a classroom by means of constant talking, for example, doesn't seem to be protected by the First Amendment insofar as I read it; the First Amendment doesn't seem to guarantee that any one voice always be privileged over others.

The First Amendment does not insist that I hold any and all speech to be equally true, or important, or well-informed. The First Amendment does not demand of me that I not ignore my own personal and professional standards for the evaluation of speech, such that I become incapable of evaluating whether or not any given speech act (i.e., an assignment) measures up to the standards that I and other professionals in my field have established for determining how whether the speech act meets the standards of our profession regarding the well-reasoned, evidence-based, persuasive construction of an argument. I do not claim that a professional writer will always necessarily have more access to knowledge about writing than an incoming student, or that the student's assertions about writing should automatically be discarded in favor of those of the professional writer. I do claim that the First Amendment does not indicate that an uninformed opinion, because it has been the most recently expressed, is automatically allowed to trump an informed one by means of some sort of magical thought law.

In short, your freedom of speech does not extend to your having the freedom to force me to like what you say. My attention to your speech, and my estimation of it as something worthy, are a reflection of my own freedom of speech, which extends to my freedom in choosing what speech I want to listen to. And you must employ discretion in your freedom if you want to gain my attention—you must choose to use your speech in such a way that I choose to listen to you. My attention must be earned, my good will swayed; and what have you done to earn my attention, and what have you done to persuade me of the rightness of your position other than badger me for not accepting what you claim as its inherent rightness? Maybe, student, if you spent more time staying awake and paying attention in my rhetoric classroom and less time sleeping or talking, you'd realize the weakness of your position. Maybe, student, you'd realize that I am trying to give you the tools to make other people pay attention to you and hold your opinion in high esteem, and that arguing from a position of outraged entitlement is not one of these tools.

That I continue to allow you to express your opinions in my classroom, calling on you whenever you raise your hand just as I would any other student, is a reflection of my own belief in free speech that goes above and beyond that defined in the Constitution. I am such a believer in the value of the diversity of opinion that I will not, in point of fact, show you this argument, for fear of quelling your voice in my class entirely. I will instead call you in for an individual conference, and ask that we find some way to reconcile your pre-conceived hatred of me and the school experience in general with the necessity of your participating in the class in a constructive way in order to pass it.

But don't think for a minute that, outside of the context of the classroom, I won't think you're in grave error for misrepresenting and abusing the traditions of democracy in this way, and for absorbing this stupid and wrong idea that freedom of speech means you get to say whatever you want and people aren't allowed to respond to it.