Editor's note
John Krull is director of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
Micah Beckwith wants to own free speech.
It’s not that the incoming Indiana lieutenant governor wants to understand the issue of unfettered expression in all its complexities. Nor does he care to be a champion of human beings speaking their minds without fear of government control or coercion.
No, the censorious man on the make wants to keep free speech all to himself.
He wants not just to be the only person around who gets to speak his mind, but also the guy who gets to decide whether others should speak, what they should read and to whom they should listen. In Micah Beckwith’s world, living in a free country means that people who disagree with him have the freedom to do what he tells them to do.
Beckwith made national news not long ago by using his position as a board member of Hamilton East Public Library.
There, he was the driving force on a rogue board that decided to overrule the library staff, parents and readers themselves to determine where books should be shelved and who should have easy access to them. The notion that ordinary people—or, in the case of children, parents—could be trusted to make up their own minds about which books would be appropriate for them seems not to have occurred to Beckwith and crew.
Again, in his world, the freedom we all should aspire to is not the freedom to think for ourselves but to think exactly the way he does.
In the days since he and his beleaguered running mate, Gov.-elect Mike Braun, won the 2024 gubernatorial race, Beckwith has made a splash in the news twice.
The first time was when he decided to chide the staff of The Indiana Daily Student—Indiana University’s student newspaper—for a front page that featured quotes from former President Donald Trump’s onetime Cabinet members, aides and allies saying he was unfit to hold office.
In a social media post, Beckwith blasted the students for being “woke” and threatened to cut funding to IU if they didn’t mend their ways. He also, in an aside, chided them for asserting that America was a democracy.
Actually, our nation is a democratic republic, a self-governing system in which the government draws its authority from the people it serves. The founding generation opted for this system because, even in the 1700s, pure democracy—having all the people vote on every issue—would have been unwieldy.
The founders’ goal, though, was democratic with a small “d” in spirit—to entrust the people with the power to determine how they lived and to have ultimate authority over their government and their own lives.
Self-important and self-aggrandizing scolds such as Beckwith often resort to the “we’re-not-a-democracy” contention when they want to elevate their judgment over that of the people they’re supposed to represent.
Most recently, Beckwith captured attention by threatening to cut off funding to Westfield Washington Schools because officials there “disinvited” him to speak to agriculture students there.
(Threatening to cut off funding seems to be Beckwith’s go-to move whenever someone disagrees with him.)
It appears that some parents had called the school system saying they didn’t want their children to hear what Beckwith espouses.
Those parents did not understand that, again, in Micah Beckwith’s world he—not their parents—gets to determine what children should see, hear or read. He and he alone gets to decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t, who deserves a hearing and who doesn’t.
After Beckwith threw his temper tantrum, Westfield school officials relented and reinvited him to talk with the students.
That’s actually a good thing.
I’ve never been a fan of preventing people from speaking, even those who seek to shut others up. It’s always seemed to me that the answer to bad speech is more speech.
Better speech.
Wiser speech.
Part of the reason we have the First Amendment is that the founders saw open and often fierce debate and discussion as the best way to get to the truth. They wanted ideas to be tested and points of view to joust because they believed not just that people should be free, but that whatever principles and policies that emerged from such a trial would be tempered, as if by fire.
They had faith in the ultimate judgment of the people.
It’s a faith that, sadly, Micah Beckwith lacks.
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