Dear Editor of The Washington Spectator - 

As for what free speech is, and is not, you admiringly quote I.F. Stone, one of the most famous pioneers of political newsletters.  You might also have quoted William Winter, the noted TV commentator and social scientist, and in particular the following verbatim item from his October 1989-1 issue of William Winter Comments: 

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 

Parenthetically, while thinking about freedom we might note that "freedom of speech" is commonly confused with "freedom to speak." They're not synonymous.  As semanticist Louis Worth Jones points out, when the framers of the US Constitution forbade Congress to pass laws "abridging freedom of speech" they meant freedom to exchange ideas, which is essential to a democratic society. 

He reminds us that "the word speech in colonial times meant two way communication, as in the common phrase 'I wish to have speech with you.'  Shakespeare often wrote about people being 'in speech with each other,' as did Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe as recently as 1819, 

The phrase "freedom of speech" seems first to have appeared in the British Bill of Rights where it referred to parliamentary debating.  It means speech-making before willing listeners, two way discourse, communication, discussion. 

(But we do not have freedom to SPEAK. Our Constitution does not give us the right to inflict our views and our opinions  --  and our sales pitches  --  on others.  Nor to slander.  Nor to disturb a church service or shout fire in a crowded theater or harangue an unwilling audience.  One way communication is not "speech" but "speaking."  Quite a difference.) 

So much for William Winter.  Oh.  I am the Louis Worth Jones whom he mentions. 

Winter might have also noted that the act of speaking  --  one way utterance of any kind  -- involves conduct.  There is not a word in our Constitution or Bill of Rights that has to do with conduct or behavior between and among citizens, i.e., lateral relationships.  Professor Jack Rakove of Stanford U makes this plain in his new book Original Meanings.  The Constitution deals exclusively with powers granted to government by the citizenry, and those zealously retained.  It deals with rights we have against government, not as against our fellow citizens. 

Thus invoking the Constitution in dealing with flag burning  --  a most despicable kind of public conduct  --  insulting to onlookers (like spitting in the soup)  --  and provoking them to violence  --   is an error of monstrous dimensions. 

Surely you as editor of an influential newsletter must have some concern as to whether the flag desecration decision was wrong (four of the nine justices thought it was). 

Louis Worth Jones 
 

1999