Source: http://www2.netcom.com/~owensva/separatist.html


Socrates, Freedom of Speech and Hate Crime
by James Owens, Ph.D. (December 1998)
In 399 BC an Athenian jury convicted Socrates, then age 70, on two counts: rejecting the gods of the city and corrupting the young. Both of these charges involved solely things he said, not any physical actions. In history's first democracy renowned for freedom of speech, Socrates was convicted and executed for exercising it.

Specifically, Socrates mocked the Greek gods as silly and immoral. He taught that a good life, as a human, must be based not on imaginary gods but instead on inner virtues such as true knowledge, honesty, justice and personal integrity. The real crux of the charge, however, was not his bad-mouthing the gods (many writers for decades had laughed at the Greek gods) but rather his endless attacks against the entire democratic culture as symbolized by the city gods of Athens.

He mocked also the democratic politics of Athens and taught the young aristocrats who followed him around the streets that rule by a wise monarch (such as in Sparta) was the ideal form of government. The serious business of governing a city must be entrusted to "the one who knows," not to uneducated, arguing mobs. It was basic in Nature that, in the best interests of all, the wise rule and the ignorant obey, just as parents guide and children follow.

Socrates was the town "character," ever surrounded as exciting entertainment and education on the streets. He roamed the marketplace and centers of political debate, luring into arguments powerful leaders who flaunted their superb knowledge. Socrates' systematic ("Socratic") questioning exposed them as ignorant and phony fools to the delight of his young rebels. He was indeed, as the short and pesky Socrates boasted at his trial, the "stinging gadfly of Athens." His questioning, dramatically reconstructed in Plato's Dialogues, laid bare the ignorance of the multitudes dangerously entrusted with ruling a chaotic democracy.

Athens and Revolutionary Turmoil Many followers of Socrates were ambitious sons of property-rich aristocrats. These young mavericks scorned tradition and their elders in favor of their upstart guru philosopher. Along with a few veteran revolutionaries, they grew into powerful forces determined to overthrow Athenian democracy. And they did. In the decade preceding Socrates' trial, three violent seizures of government enthroned small totalitarian groups (oligarchies) in iron-handed rule over the Athenians.

During the decade before Socrates' death in 399 BC, Athens was explosive wartime tension and ever-present insurrection. Democratic Athens had been defending against totalitarian Sparta for 30 years in the Peloponnesian war. (Socrates himself, clearly the loyal Athenian in his deeds, had served bravely in many early battles against Sparta.) In 411 and 404 BC, conspiring with agents and soldiers of Sparta, Athenian revolutionaries seized power, launched a reign of terror and mass executions to enforce citizens' submission. Athens fell into the grip of a police state like Sparta's. Thousands of Freedom Fighters fled the city to organize counter attacks and restore democracy.

The first dictatorship (the "Four Hundred" of 411 BC) survived only four months but the second (the "Thirty"

of 404) endured for almost a year before the Athenians won back their fragile democracy. A third totalitarian coup d'etat was attempted but aborted in 401 BC.

A vicious enemy of democracy and ringleader of the "Thirty" was Critias who, in 401 BC, massacred the entire male population of an Athenian suburb (about 300 men) before this coup was defeated. Every Athenian knew also that Critias was a longtime star student of Socrates (as were others of the conspirators such as the savage Alcibiades), that Socrates openly taught the evils of "mob-rule" democracy "by dunces" and the superiority of orderly monarchies like Sparta's.

Socrates Convicted and Executed Inevitably, a group of irate citizens indicted Socrates to stand trial. A jury of 500, selected by lot in the Athenian judicial system, assembled for the trial of Socrates. The jurymen judging Socrates were the same patriotic Athenians who had witnessed the massacres of Critias and the "Thirty." Many surely had lost loved ones in both the long Peloponnesian war against totalitarian Sparta and, vivid in immediate memory, the bloody atrocities by the "Four Hundred" and the "Thirty," especially by Socrates' disciple Critias Seething with the painful and angry emotions of 500 aggrieved jurymen, the trial of Socrates would test Athenian traditions of law and liberty to the limit.

Socrates' defense would need masterful strategy and crafting to avoid conviction. Ironically, it emerged as neither.

Since it was well known that Socrates had never supported the "Thirty" in any overt actions (nor, as ever aloof from political offices or activity, had he opposed them), the trial was about the things he said publicly.

The jury of 500 (actually 501 to avoid ties) voted to convict Socrates and sentence him to death by a close 30-vote margin. But Athenian courts recognized what we call today "equity" law (judging by fairness and basic justice) as complimentary to strictly-construed "common law." Socrates could easily have escaped death by merely agreeing to leave Athens and relocate elsewhere.

The jury wished not his death but only his exile from Athens. His closest friends begged him to leave and would provide the money to do so. Socrates, however, throughout his speeches to the jury, seems obnoxiously self-assured, stubborn, even arrogant and self-righteous, almost suicidal, preferring death to the humiliation of exile or abandonment of any of his principles. He scolds the jury for the immoralities of their democratic culture and their "loose ways of living," justifies his life of teaching virtue and exalts in his soon-to-be talkative reunion with the great souls of Athenian history (or merely painless "sleep" if there is no afterlife). Even facing death, he ends with lengthy "Socratic method," dissecting definitions, questioning and teaching the jury, analyzing each fork of hypotheticals (if or if not the soul is immortal, if or if not you teach virtues to your young, etc.).

Having already convicted Socrates who now scorned all sanctions such as exile, the jury had no options but to confirm in its separate second vote the death sentence by hemlock poison. The final speech of Socrates to the jury, as reconstructed by the master-writer Plato in Apology, enshrined Socrates forever as an heroic martyr for the cause of intellectual honesty and freedom of speech. His memorable declaration that "the unexamined life is not worth living" rings triumphantly through the ages, distinguishing intellectual elites and free minds from superstitious masses. His jury is remembered as the beginning of the end of free speech in Athens - and worldwide - for two thousand years.

The Athenian Tradition of Free Speech Did Socrates get a fair trial? Was the Athenian free-speech tradition abandoned by a jury enraged at atrocities they had suffered just months ago, all linked directly to the ideas Socrates had taught for years?

These questions have been argued by scholars for centuries. Was Socrates a victimized martyr for freedom of speech? Or a seditious traitor, aiding and abetting the Spartan enemy in the overthrow of the Athenian government? The classic irony endures that, in the latter scenario, Socrates would be creating a totalitarian system outlawing his own prized freedom of speech. The available sources are ancient and probably redacted. Moreover, we have no actual writings of Socrates, only the Socrates of his devoted student Plato (Dialogues), reports from contemporary historians (Thucydides and Xenophon, both friends and admirers of Socrates) and a few mentions in the comedies of Aristophanes. We know, especially from the Republic, that Plato had only contempt for Athens' democratic, raucous law-making assembly and idealized the social order and stability of Sparta. So did Socrates, according to Plato. Socrates is characterized in Aristophanes' 414-BC hit comedy play, The Birds, as the "idol of pro-Spartan malcontents and `socratified' aristocratic bullies."

While the true character of "Socrates" remains an historical mystery, democracy in ancient Athens is not.

The abundant literature of Athens verifies its wide-open democratic assemblies and its virtually unlimited freedom of speech. This bursting forth of human freedom was an unprecedented phenomenon unique to Athens and its allied city-states north of Sparta. No organized state or empire in human history had ever dared risk such freedom among its subjects. Throughout recorded history dictators and religious authorities violently silenced any dissent from their edicts, laws and doctrines. Any opposing voice was the capital crime of treason or heresy, punished severely, usually by a painful death.

The contrast in the ancient Athenian world is remarkable and defies explanation about its origins in human behavior. Even in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, written about 750 BC, the limits of one-man judgment and the knowledge-power of open debate by citizens are presaged. Agamemnon, king and commander in chief of the Athenians in the Trojan war, is depicted by Homer as much less than all-knowing or all-powerful. Having offended his champion warrior, Achilles, who then refuses to fight, a citizen assembly forces the king to redress the offense, thus restoring Achilles to the field of battle. After ten years in the futile siege of Troy, it is Odysseus the subordinate, not Agamemnon the king, who invents the "Trojan horse" strategy which finally defeats Troy. The firm beginnings of democracy and freedom of speech are clearly etched in the earliest literature of Athens. Serious philosophical questioning appears as early as Thales (circa 600 BC), followed by schools of philosophy and unrestricted debate common to all.

After glorious victories against the Persian Empire's invasions, the Athens-led Delian League of city-states joined in national defense. As the age of Pericles emerged (450-430 BC) Athenian democracy reached its heights, freedom of speech and creative thinking boundless. Unparalleled giants of literature, philosophy, science, the arts, architecture and engineering burst forth into the life of Athens.

Pericles was king, but elected by citizens. The democratic assembly (akin to the U.S. Congress) made the laws, juries judged by law, not by the dictate of any autocrat.

Nowhere was free-speech more open and hearty than on the Athenian stage. The classic plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus brim with candid public talk before the Athenian audiences as do the later plays of Euripides.

The satirist, Aristophanes, in his play Clouds (423 BC), delights the Athenians by poking fun freely at the gods, local politicians, foibles and follies of Athenian daily morals - and at town-atheist Socrates as a Sophist egghead (Athenians knew Socrates was no Sophist, but certainly a funny egg). There can be no doubt that freedom of speech and "press" was prized and uninhibited in ancient Athens. Indeed, while we need three words ("freedom of speech") to express the concept, the Athenians had coined a single word for it:

"isegoria."

The Death of Democracy and Free Speech Whether or not the Athenians abandoned isegoria in their trial of Socrates, within fifty years of his death all genuine democracy was ended in Athens and throughout Greece. The city states retained sham assemblies but real rule was by Macedon's puppet oligarchies. Free speech, isegoria, as in all past history, was silenced for the next 2,000 years. Philip of Macedon conquered and ruled as tyrant over all the Greek city states. The orator, Demosthenes, made a desperate attempt to rally Athenians against Macedonian invasion and preserve freedoms. He failed and, intimidated by Macedonian threats, the Athenian jury condemned him to death (he escaped long enough to commit a dignified suicide). Philip's son, Alexander, expanded the Macedonian empire throughout Greece, the mid-east and Egypt. Later, Roman might replaced Macedon's, converted Macedon's empire into Roman provinces and absorbed the western world in despotic rule. Any semblance of free speech in Rome of the Ceasars was rare and risky. Cicero risked it in his speeches but was finally forced to flee for his life, was caught as he fled and executed.

The Roman Empire collapsed about 400 AD and was replaced by the Holy Roman Empire of autocratic popes sharing totalitarian power with the kings of Europe.

Genuine freedom of speech throughout these many centuries (from 300 BC to the late Renaissance period in the 1600s) was ruthlessly suppressed as heresy or treason. "Heretics" and "traitors" were executed routinely by the many thousands. All writings which veered from approved Church doctrine were banned or burned. Galileo, as late as the 17th century, although spared execution, died imprisoned (1642) for the "heresy" of proving with his telescope that Church dogma was wrong, that Earth rotated around the Sun and was not God's chosen center of the universe.

The Rebirth of Democracy and Free Speech Fifteen hundred years after Socrates, we find in English history the embryonic renewal of freedom from absolute royal tyranny. The Magna Carta of 1215 forced the king to yield some rights and powers to lords of the great estates (Luther, circa 1500, made a similar break from Church tyranny). Only later, however, does the common man gain any partial voice in a legislative Parliament. But even this was not real freedom of speech. Many who spoke too freely in Parliament ended up in prison - or worse. The courage of 17th-century English writers such as John Locke and John Milton, pushing and risking the limits of freedom of the press, launched a free-speech crusade. Locke's works on democracy and freedoms, written in exile, became a major source of the American Constitution. Milton's Areopagitica (1644) is considered by many the noblest defense of free speech ever written (the title refers to the Areopagus, the ancient Greek assembly of free debate).

By century's end, a proliferation of "freedom"

literature was deluging England, especially the voluminous issues of Trenchard-Gordon's Cato's Letters on Liberty and Addison's dramatic play Cato in 1713.

(Cato's Letters and the play Cato circulated widely in the American colonies and provided inspiration for the American Revolution. Cato, a patriot of liberty against the dictator Julius Caesar, lost his life for it in 46 BC.)

The struggle for freedom of speech culminated in the British Bill of Rights of 1689. This bill established the right to speak freely in Parliament and protected the speaker from kings' retaliation. A century later this free-speech clause appears in the American Constitution (Article 1, Section 6), explicitly protecting members of Congress from prosecution or lawsuits for statements made in congressional debates.

The later First Amendment confirmed and expanded the free-speech principle.

Freedom of Speech Most Fragile After a 2000-years hiatus, a tradition of free speech was resurrected in America equalling that of ancient Athens. Despite the chilling precedent of the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798 (making it a crime to "attack the government with false or malicious statements or writings") and despite Lincoln's abolition of habeas corpus and free speech during the Civil War, genuine freedom of the press and speech still survives as a bedrock American principle.

But freedom of speech is historically rare and short-lived. Throughout history it has lurked as the most feared threat to those in political, religious and administrative power positions. Kings, popes, presidents, monopolistic "robber barons" and legislators are most at risk when their secret actions can be openly scrutinized or thwarted by free speech and press. The basic instinct of any dictatorship is to crush free speech, its first act to seize control of the public media, silence dissent and mold the minds of the masses with its own propaganda.

Freedom of speech is also uniquely fragile. There are seldom degrees of free speech - and they don't survive for long. The "slippery-slope" phenomena governs. Any censoring of free speech on public issues is the first and fatal step onto a slippery slope falling from freedom to repression. Workers in our national security agencies, by voluntary acceptance of top-secret jobs, must by silence protect us from foreign enemies.

Shouting "Fire" as a joke in a crowded theater is patent abuse of free speech. But, outlawing of pornography or "racial slurs," for example, no matter how despicable, soon mushrooms into more and more restrictions by Government's subjective "interpretations" of proper speech and press.

Generally, "degrees" of free speech constitute an unstable chemical mixture; it reverts naturally to totalitarian stability and the historical norm of guarded and gagged speech.

America and "Political Correctness"

Today, parts of free Europe (England, France, etc.)

already limit free speech about sensitive racial and ethnic issues. By German law, a wrongful statement about the Holocaust is subject to a five-year jail term. Canada's criminal code outlaws communications that "promote hatred" (Government "interpretations" of such ambiguous language appear limitless, especially as applied to opposition political associations). As in the case of Socrates, one is punished, not for what he did, but what he said.

Is America a half-step or more onto the slippery slope?

For several decades our liberal government and national media have mandated a new national imperative dubbed "political correctness" ("PC"). "PC" enforces and normalizes the major agenda of liberals for a reconstructed egalitarian America of racial diversity, multiculturalism, forced integration of all races in schools, neighborhoods and workplaces. Multi-day courses in "racial sensitivity training," mandated for all Government employees and Government-aided corporations, mimic Red China's indoctrination programming of the good-citizen mind. Our universities remove or downgrade the traditional courses in Western Civilization and the writings of those "dead white men"

who created it. Third-world writings replace Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and Shakespeare. "Black studies,"

multicultural courses and the like govern curricula in colleges as well as most K-12 public schools. For two generations, in Government schools and the multibillion-dollar TV industry, American children have been propagandized into disdain for their country's history and shame for their white ancestors as oppressors and evil racists.

Many Euro-white American traditionalists view the new multiracial trend as the impending extinction of their own race and culture. They see themselves a fading minority in their own land by 2050, theirs the single culture that finally achieved human freedom and prosperity now overwhelmed by third-world cultures still mired worldwide in disease, primitive cults and tribal wars. But, by ever more repressive "PC"

prohibitions, the very creators of the free speech that launched the current liberal orthodoxy are now denied free speech advocating their own Euro-white tradition.

In schools, universities and government workplaces, public or classroom statements in violation of "PC"

norms threaten or end careers. E-mail and telephones are systematically monitored. Saavy whites have learned to keep mouths safely closed on "PC" issues. Even the most obvious truths about race are left discreetly unspoken.

Liberals, especially nonwhites, are free to speak openly and anywhere for the "PC" agenda and against whites' ancient aggressions and western traditions. But Euro-white traditionalists are now denied open freedom of speech. Any defending rebuttals or criticism of multiculturalism are automatically "racist." Or, recently, "hate" crimes.

Laws criminalizing "hate" are proliferating nationwide.

Recent Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics report about 8,000 "hate crimes" annually, lumped together as convictions combined with "suspected hate crime offenders." Congress is writing a law making all hate crimes federal crimes, subject to the full force of the federal Government's investigative power. Since the essence of "hate-crime" prosecution is the probing into what a person thinks or says, apart from his actions, "PC" enforcement slips down the slope toward the chilling atmosphere of "heresy" trials and the Spanish Inquisition of the past or today's police-state suppression of free speech in most third-world countries.

This ominous specter of American free speech on a slippery slope must remind one of Orwell's Big-Brother mind control of 1984 - or of Socrates, convicted for what he said, not for any action he did.

Dr. Owens, professor emeritus and former dean of The American University College of Business, is director of Executive Publications at: owensva@ix.netcom.com.

> In article<3aebf97d.11764015@localhost>, Notreali Wanker
> <notreali@wanker.com> writes:
> >Many Euro-white American traditionalists view the new
> >multiracial trend as the impending extinction of their
> >own race and culture. They see themselves a fading
> >minority in their own land by 2050, theirs the single
> >culture that finally achieved human freedom and
> >prosperity now overwhelmed by third-world cultures
> >still mired worldwide in disease, primitive cults and
> >tribal wars. But, by ever more repressive "PC"
> >prohibitions, the very creators of the free speech that
> >launched the current liberal orthodoxy are now denied
> >free speech advocating their own Euro-white tradition.
> >In schools, universities and government workplaces,
> >public or classroom statements in violation of "PC"
> >norms threaten or end careers. E-mail and telephones
> >are systematically monitored. Saavy whites have learned
> >to keep mouths safely closed on "PC" issues. Even the
> >most obvious truths about race are left discreetly
> >unspoken.
> Indeed.... it is a paradox that Socrates had no truck with all
> individuals having autonomy in their own affairs, nor any respect
> or say in communal affairs. He used his free speech to advocate
> unrepentant fascism; and Dr Owens does the same.
Indeed it was very odd to read Dr. Owens write of "the liberal government and media," when no such things exist in the USA (his venue) or in the massive majority of the rest of the planet. My reason for posting the text was not to air Owens' angst about "liberals" and "political correctness[sic]," but to show how precious free speech is; the Henson conviction is yet one more wound in this nobel, vital precept of human freedom. If one cannot speak out against tyranies such as the Scientology business, such tyranies will flourish. It therefore ultimately doesn't matter that even if a person is advocating an unpopular opinion (such as Socrates did) that might lead to political distress.

It doesn't even matter if people refuse to listen. What matters is that people remain free to speak as they please, baring they do not advocate violence.

Certainly, Henson's actions were in defense of Scientologists and not in violation of the rights and physical well-being of Scientologists.

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