In his column from last week, “Where is true freedom of speech?” Danny Schnathorst criticizes three different double standards that apply to the exercise of speech. The second two are understandable; the first is shortsighted at best. Opening with the grand phrases of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, he ends up arguing: “We the people, need to come together to abolish double standards. We need to treat everyone the same. We need to not ridicule others’ beliefs. Rather, we should respect them and move on, always staying true to our own values, despite what the public says we should think.”

That “double standard,” however, is nonexistent. The Constitution only applies to the government. It defines its powers and limits them; it does not apply to individual members of society who do not act as agents of the government. It is not a code of laws, and the ways in which citizens interact with one another are not subject to the Constitution’s rules. Unless acting in my capacity as an officer of the federal government, I am not prohibited from saying or writing anything I want about you or your beliefs, as long as it is neither slanderous nor libelous.

More importantly than this misunderstanding of the First Amendment, however, is Schnathorst’s misunderstanding of the role that discourse — the exercise of speech and press — plays and should play in a political system like ours. 

Countering insults received from pro-choice individuals, Schnathorst writes: “My beliefs are my beliefs. I don’t tell you that your beliefs are wrong.” Take it from one who knows: There really is nothing quite like distributing literature on the subject and being told that you should have been aborted yourself. As unpleasant as that might be, such a comment is an entry point into a conversation.

However, we cushion the ways in which we tell other people they are wrong, that is what public discourse is: an argument between two or more opposing (or at least unique) viewpoints. Even when two conversationalists agree, they each bring a different perspective to the discussion, and add things that the other might not.

Discourse, in turn, is essential to the kind of political system that the Constitution establishes. We Americans have made the great mistake of doing politics not on the basis of conversation but on the basis of elections and their results. 

This is more like the British parliamentary system, in which the House of Commons can wait out the House of Lords’ disagreement, in which the monarchy has traditionally assented to every law passed, and in which the executive branch of government is drawn from the Commons. 

By contrast, the United States was designed to be dysfunctional if it tried to become a democracy based on majoritarianism rather than a republic based on consensus and compromise. 

The House of Representatives and the Senate must agree on bills. The president can veto them. His veto can be overridden. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional if it believes them so.

As we are beginning to find out from the empty rhetoric of the Obama administration, in which he has held himself aloof from congressional interaction and in which an ideological wing of the Republican Party has held itself aloof from engagement with their peers, Schnathorst’s solution — to “stay true to our own values, despite what the public says we should think” — has paralyzing implications. 

Naturally, one always hopes that speech of a certain quality comes with speech from the dregs of human intelligence, but bad speech is better than none at all. Discussion requires dissention and, to be productive, dissention requires discussion. Holding out for a “last man standing” approach denies our political system of the politics it requires to function.