Michael Graham’s First Amendment rights were not violated

Diana West has lately become one of the strongest voices in the mainstream conservative media on the subject of Islam. We need more like her. But in a column about radio host Michael Graham, who was suspended after he made the wonderfully clarifying remark that Islam is a “terrorist organization” (discussed by me here), West seemed to have had a memory lapse about the U.S. Constitution. She writes:

In an outrage against the First Amendment, the ABC affiliate, directed by its parent company, Disney, suspended Graham without pay for exercising not only his freedom of speech, but also his faculties of logic.

Of course, the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” It is a restriction on government, not a restriction on the right of newspapers or radio stations to hire whom they wish to write articles or to speak on the air. By Miss West’s logic, if an editor turned down a column of hers because he didn’t agree with her views, that would be an outrage against the First Amendment.

So let’s be clear about this. The Graham situation is not about rights. It is about whether the powers-that-be in our society, including the owners of media outlets, will allow us to speak frankly about the all-important subject of Islam and what Islam really stands for. Our very survival as a society depends on our ability to discuss this deadly serious problem publicly and without fear. The question of whether the institutions of our society should allow critical speech about Islam is a supremely political question (a matter, as Aristotle said, of free men discussing together the good of their society), not a legal or Constitutional question. The popular outrage over Graham’s suspension that West mentions is precisely the kind of political response that is called for; let’s hope that under the pressure of that protest his radio station puts him back on the air. But let’s please not act like liberals and turn every political issue into a Constitutional one.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 08, 2005 11:29 PM | Send