Report on the Edwin Meese and Nadine Strossen debate February 11, 1998 at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus

Report by Jeffrey Stueber, your man on the scene Copyright 1998 by Jeffrey Stueber, all rights reserved

I was privileged to be part of the audience for this debate between Mr. Meese and Nadine Strossen. Meese is a former member of the Reagan cabinet. He was once Reagan's top domestic advisor and in 1985 became Attorney General. Strossen was elected President of the ACLU and is the first woman to hold the top position in this oldest professional organization.

The debate started out with both Meese and Strossen making introductory remarks. Meese said that the basic issue is "what is free speech." Child pornography or obscenity is not protected free speech as is speech used in the commission of a crime. The famous line, "You can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater," was cited as a reference to speech that is not protected. Meese said that the supreme court has, time and time again, found that local communities can legislate free speech on their basis of what they consider obscenity.

Strossen, in her opening statements, said she found few disagreements with Meese. Strossen agreed with much of what Meese said in his description of speech that could not be protected and speech that MUST be protected. One vivid example of protected speech was the speech "radical feminists" were attempting to suppress because supposedly everything seems like hate speech directed against them. The phrase "radical feminists" is Meese's phrase, not mine.

Strossen did then find a disagreement with Meese in that Meese proposes methods to censor the internet while Strossen opposes virtually any methods to censor it. She said the Communications Decency Act would make any indecent expression online a crime. To her, it would terribly inhibit free speech on the net. She said any other methods to inhibit the internet would be unconstitutional.

Strossen backed up her statements by citing the censorship produced by one of those "porn-suppressing" pieces of computer software. Some of the web sites suppressed were done so for unusual reasons because the sites had nothing pornographic on them. She said that one was probably suppressed because the words "hot" and "babes" (or some word that infers "women") were in close proximity to one another. Of course, the web site could have said "this site is hot. Babes in toyland" or something like that. But the software might be programmed to assume anything that has "hot babes" together means naked women and is thus a link to a pornographic site.

Meese later stated that a commission on pornography found evidence that some form of porn is harmful when taken to the extreme. In areas where porn is more prevalent, crime was much higher. I assume this commission on pornography was the one he started during the Reagan years, a commission that came under severe criticism when a member of the audience said something about the faulty scientific methods of a Judy Reisman (I assume it's the same Judith Reisman) who coauthored the book Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud. Meese said he stood behind the findings of the commission and apparently cited the findings, so I have no idea whether the findings are faulty or not.

Strossen later said that the definition of porn is too wide. We cannot give government too wide a power to decide what is porn or what is not. She cited the lyrics of the band 2 Live Crew as an example of speech that has been considered harmful free speech. She said that government must create a tighter definition of imminent harm from any free speech they want to censor. She worried about people who are afraid somebody might get some weird ideas from some potentially pornographic material or some potentially harmful free speech. In other words, she suggested we can't suppress free speech or porn that we are not sure is porn just because we ASSUME that somebody might get the wrong ideas. The harm must be "proved" or at least substantially argued to exist before it can be censored.

Leaving the debate, I found my opinions had not changed. Before the debate I felt that there was a need to censor some material, a feeling I still have. I have known and still know that the concept of "porn" is slippery like a melting ice cube, much like flexible terms such as "fundamentalism" and "evolution." You can't quite get your hand on the true meaning of the term and so it changes with each person's bias. The saying, "I don't know what porn is but I know it when I see it (my paraphrase)," is an example of this.

On ACLU ideology

Strossen's philosophy can be supported by quotations from several ACLU briefing papers distributed at the debate. The following quotations are taken from ACLU Briefing Paper #14 distributed at the debate.

"Once you allow the government to censor someone else, you cede to it the the [sic] power to censor you, or something you like. Censorship is like poison gas: a powerful weapon that can harm you when the wind shifts."

That's a pretty powerful analogy. During the debate, Strossen at one point rambled on about how allowing censorship during one step of the censorship process leads to the government even censoring your thoughts. She argued against the "totalitarian" (her word) idea of child porn which may lead to censoring even the thought of it. Strossen very often argued using the slippery-slope analogy. In summary, granting the government the least little ability to censor will create a slope which will descend into full blown censorship by the government.

I am suspicious of such reasoning. Let's look at the paragraph above. Is it true that once we cede to the government the ability to censor someone, the slippery slope is begun? Even the slightest knowledge of society, at least American society, will be enough to refute that hypothesis. We regularly live with censorship. Often words said on many cable stations cannot be spoken on network television (NBC, CBS, etc.). Words are bleeped out. However, we do not reach the slippery slope because of this small amount of censorship. The words from the paragraph above are literally true: if the government can censor someone else, it can censor you. However, the "poison gas" analogy and the slippery-slope analogy alluded to by Strossen don't seem to be plausible analogies.

In another paragraph there's more fearmongering:

"Nevertheless, even the relatively narrow obscenity exception serves as a vehicle for abuse by government authorities as well as pressure groups who want to impose their personal moral views on other people."

I was dying to ask Strossen what her conception of the word "moral" was. As I take it, the word "moral" refers to (adjective) some common body of correct behavior we abide by and believe in (as in "I am a moral person"). In this case, the ACLU is in a contradiction with this statement because they are forcing their own moral views on the rest of us who wish to prohibit certain kinds of porn. Strossen and the rest of the ACLU certainly believe it is wrong (morally wrong) to prohibit certain free speech and do impose their moral views on those of us who may think we can censor some porn, at least what we consider porn.

Here the humanist nature of the ACLU shows. Many will be reminded of the saying, "You can't impose morality," a saying that is ridiculous since morality is the only thing we do impose. People don't make laws for any dumb reason. They do so because certain actions are believed to be right or wrong (moral judgements). We impose morality every time we make a law. The humanist nature of the ACLU is noted by authors F. LaGard Smith (ACLU - the Devil's Advocate) and George Grant (Trial and Error: The American Civil Liberties Union and It's Impact on Your Family). Smith, in particular, notes the anti-Christian bias of the ACLU.

The paper says that our culture has the best free-speech protection in the world, but sexual free speech is considered a second-class citizen. No clear link between explicit material and violence has been shown, yet we treat sexual talk as often dangerous. The paper says, "Rather, the Supreme Court has allowed censorship of sexual speech on moral grounds - a remnant of our nation's Puritan heritage." The word "Puritan" would probably be interposed with "Christian" or "fundamentalist."

ACLU Briefing Paper #1 lists, as one of many "rights" accomplishments, the Roe vs. Wade decision. The paper says that the ACLU is still working to protect the rights of women. The ACLU is for abortion, of course, and therefore worries not about any rights due the baby or fetus. I have seen that many, perhaps maybe all, of the abortionist arguments are faulty. Rather than rest on proper philosophical grounds, the pro-abortion movement rests on egalitarian desires. The ACLU seems to be very much for extreme egalitarianism, something not uncommon in humanist circles.

This concluded the summary of this debate and the philosophical positions of the ACLU. To me, the issue of what to censor will forever loom large in our society. Certainly we can never allow every form of free expression because we can never pin down what is going on in the mind of those that witness it. For example, can we allow a pedophile to display his wares in store fronts because to censor him would be to attempt to read the minds of those who see his wares and worry that somebody might get "some wrong ideas?" Probably not. Surely every act and every expression has consequences. That's why advertising garners so many dollars. However, can we confiscate a movie that has a pedophilic reference when no pedophilia is present - when the reference to it was only done to emphasis part of the plot (such a happening was alluded to in the debate)? Clearly not. The issue runs deep and personal and will not go away. The solution requires clear thinking and boldness at times and the ability to admit that sometimes we can make mistakes. Neither liberals or conservatives, as they are currently labeled, have all the answers. But both must attempt to meet somewhere in the middle.