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The Uninformed PublicFreedom of speech should never be inhibited. The public should always be informed honestly by its representatives. In reality, these ideals tend to conflict. In the absence of an informed public, democracy becomes a de facto dictatorship. Not dictated by one man, necessarily, but by a dominant class like the one described by C.W. Mills as the “power elite”. A government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed; in a democracy, that means the public. When the public is misinformed, it cannot make decisions regarding its governance. The First Amendment protects speech not because the Founding Fathers valued words in themselves, but because they valued truth. The spirit of the First Amendment is to allow dissenting opinion in order to engender a culture which values truth; not merely to protect the public’s words, but the significance of those words. With little evidence to invade Iraq, much of the educated population was unable to understand why there was so much support for the war. Of course, polls later showed that a majority of the public believed there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. There wasn’t. But the power elite used think tanks, the mainstream media, and refined politico-speak to confuse the public. Perhaps this was unintentional, with conflicting sources. However, if it were intentional, those propagating the connection misled the public into consenting government action that was immoral and illegal. And without true consent, a democratic government lacks legitimacy. The Washington state Supreme Court recently ruled that it is legal for a candidate to lie about his or her opponent, so long as the lie is not malicious. In a democracy, deceiving the public to consent is equal to removing the public from the decision-making process and is therefore a threat to democracy itself. With permissible lying in a campaign, the candidates will be subjected to a “candidates’ dilemma” in which each camp will be unaware of the strategy of the other and lie in order to preemptively counteract any lies that could be propagated by its opposition. As such, lying will become even more common in elections and the outcome will be more public mistrust of the government and/or falsely elected candidates. By threatening democracy as such, Washington’s Supreme Court has justified a threat to the very foundation on which our country is based. In devaluing truth, its ruling is a threat to the spirit of the First Amendment; it is an impediment to fostering a culture of truth. Thomas Jefferson stated that the information given to the public should be “restrained to true facts and sound principles”. When those with the power to change public opinion choose to do so in a way that affects the democratic process, they must forfeit their First Amendment rights. Humans are fallible, and thus mistakes are forgivable; but to purposely misinform the public about its representation is a threat to America. Oliver Wendell Holmes established that free speech must be forfeited when that speech leads to a “clear and present danger” and causes “substantive evils”. The freedom of a candidate to lie to the public may not lead to physical harm to anyone, but it presents a clear and present danger to public knowledge and, by extension, to democracy. Thus, it may not be speech that threatens the lives of Americans, but it is a “substantive evil” in its threat to the ideals of America. And although the law should avoid at all costs hindrances to speech, it also must protect the public from certain tyranny.
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