Dr. Forbush Thinks

Free Speech and Privacy

While listening to all the tributes to Hunter Thompson recently an interesting side note came up. During the 1970s Ken Kesey held a meeting in Oregon where he was trying to find common ground between Conservatives, Liberals and Moderates. It seems to me that the results of this meeting should be noted in the light of our national polarization. The results basically found that the only thing they could agree on were the virtues of Free Speech and Privacy.

This may not seem to be very surprising, but we should recall that Free Speech was a major issue in the Vietnam era. Conservatives generally wanted to control where people could exercise Free Speech. Similarly, conservatives in the name of national security compromised privacy as well. The FBI tapped phones and collected information on protest organizers. FBI agents sought information on all the organized protest movements in the hopes of disrupting these movements before they got too powerful.

Now, I don't know what such a conference of this type would produce today. I would guess that American values haven't changed that much in the last thirty years. Perhaps the Liberal vs. Conservative arguments should keep this small bit of common ground in mind if we want these arguments to be productive.