It’s time to feel your Paine
IF YOU WERE ASKED
to bet on whether the Sheboygan County town of Sherman or the legacy of the father of the American Revolution Thomas Paine would be the winner in a contest over freedom of speech and the press, which would you chose?
During an August public hearing Sherman town officials decided to prohibit “handbills” — meaning any printed or written flyers, advertising, shopper, flier, circular, leaflet, pamphlet, paper booklet, or any other printed or otherwise reproduced or original, copies of any matter of literature, but excluding a “newspaper” as defined in s985.03 (1) (a), Wisconsin Statutes.
They took seriously a statement by Jim Schulz, who said his neighborhood had been littered with “flyers and free newspapers” found on lawns, driveways, ditches and alleys.
The Review has a self-interest in this question. We distribute, by mail, a portion of our Tuesday newspaper to non-subscribers as well as subscribers in the township. We pay dearly for the right for our paid newspaper and free segment to be placed in the legally protected monopoly of the United States Postal Service mailboxes. What Schulz is talking about may be our competitors. But we still think the township should revisit this decision.
The most fundamental truth about what makes democracy work is freedom of speech. It is the without which, nothing.
We are not talking about tossed away gum-wrappers, beer cans and cigarette butts.
Whatever printed material may come your way in the town of Sherman or elsewhere is a piece of information which may not mean more to some than an old gum-wrapper, but to someone else could be a way to save their life (how to get a free wheel-chair, special medical treatments, social services for their wayward loved ones, protecting themselves from an incoming alien invasion…it’s a list of possibilities too long to imagine).
As with the famous Thomas Paine (“If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately”) the Sherman attempt to constrain publications also affects political candidates or anybody who wants to pass out information to the community. It leaves no way to do that.
Of course the British would have liked to suppress Paine’s pamphlets as illegal “litter”.
The writers of our Constitution recognized this basic fact. Freedom of the press in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. This clause is generally understood as prohibiting the government from interfering with the printing and distribution of information or opinions, although freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, is subject to some restrictions, such as defamation law and copyright law.
In Lovell v. City of Griffin, Chief Justice Hughes defined the press as, “every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.” This includes everything from newspapers to blogs.
There are two forms of arrogance also involved with this question. Why should the US Postal Service ban others from using their monopoly-mandated mailboxes (making this question of “littering” a non-issue)? And why do so many public representatives, those in the town of Sherman being the current example, think that once elected they are sanctioned to rewrite the law of the land?
At issue: Freedom of speech Bottom line: To be protected
