Freedom of Government-Approved Speech

I saw the AP story – maybe you did too – about Brittany McComb. She is the recently-graduated valedictorian of Foothill High School out in Las Vegas who had her microphone cut off while she was delivering her valedictory address on June 15, and is now suing the school officials believed to be held responsible for abridging her First Amendment Rights of Speech and Religion.

It seems that she wanted to include some comments about how she attributed her academic success to her Christian faith and how it could be helpful to others as well. Of course, as so often is the case today, she had to submit the text of her speech to school officials beforehand for it to be vetted. Edited out of the officially-approved text were those very comments just mentioned.

As the story reports, young Miss McComb simply memorized the deleted portions, and included them in her address anyway. Having already warned her about departing from the “approved script,” school officials cut off her microphone even as she spoke, in an attempt to silence those comments. Miss McComb, however, simply continued to talk, while the crowd chanted “Let her speak” and gave her a standing ovation.

Now, it’s not my purpose to get into the merits of the legal case here, nor to even discuss any legislation or policies that may have been implemented in recent years that pertain to an incident like this. I mainly just want to share an image that popped into my mind as I read this story. It was about the time I got to the part about Miss McComb’s being warned about straying from the “approved script,” having already read about the microphone being cut.

Being the nut for all forms and periods of history that I am, one of my most prized volumes at home is my copy of the American Heritage Picture History of World War 2. In that book is a picture taken of American General Jonathan Wainwright sitting before a radio microphone announcing the surrender of his forces to the Japanese early on in the war. He is reading from an "approved script," and sitting right next to him is a Japanese officer – who is ready to switch the microphone off should the general stray from that script.

I expect a totalitarian, imperialistic regime like Japan of the 1930s and 40s to engage in practices such as these. As time goes on, disturbingly, I find that I can expect my own government to do the same, because of incidents like this one in Las Vegas.

And let me be clear on an important point – I am not saying that government should cease engaging in censorship of only conservative thoughts. Both conservatives and liberals are free to speak their mind – keeping in mind that no one is under any obligation to listen to them. But it sure seems to me that incidents like the one cited in this AP story seem to disproportionately affect conservatives sharing thoughts concerning traditional conservative cultural values.