{"id":26,"date":"2015-06-01T17:52:14","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T17:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=26"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:25:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:25:59","slug":"traditions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"3.1 Traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chinese philosopher Confucius (551 \u2013 479 BCE)<\/p><\/div>\n

There is no more important historical question for our era<\/strong> than understanding the long evolution of democratic government and the political theories of liberty.<\/p>\n

To begin with, it is important because we have often heard authoritarians claim that democracy and freedom are weak systems, and that strong leadership is the safer path. If, perhaps, this has been the case in some times and some places, it is clearly not an enduring sort of system, considering the ruins of Nazi Germany, the collapse of Soviet Communism, and the arrogant disdain for individual liberty we find in so many\u00a0 authoritarian governments today.<\/p>\n

Democratic systems are extremely resilient when put to the test, as history has shown time and again. The awakening of America to its responsibilities in the 1940s, and the turn of its industrial might towards the struggle for the liberation of Europe and Asia, could not have been accomplished by a servile people.<\/p>\n

By the same token, diverse systems are both biologically and politically superior. As we know, monolithic cultures are brittle and susceptible to collapse when agility and adaptability are required.<\/p>\n

This is an enormous subject that covers broad reaches of human ambition and\u00a0 civic virtue.\u00a0 We could start with the initial codes of law, which were written on clay tablets in cuneiform. You may have heard of the Code of Hammurabi, established in Babylon between 1800 and 1750 \u00a0BCE\u00a0 “That the strong might not injure the weak<\/strong>,\u00a0 (and) in order to protect the widows and orphans …<\/em>to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries…\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And\u00a0 while justice never ends, we could conclude with the way this long search\u00a0 is reflected in the four-word motto of the US Supreme Court, engraved in stone above its entrance in Washington DC:\u00a0 “Equal Justice Under Law.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Within this search for justice, we find specific support, in the First Amendment, for freedom of religion, press, speech, petition and assembly.<\/strong><\/em><\/span> These are the foundations of civilization as well as the acknowledgements of natural rights. But how did this come about?<\/p>\n

In this brief section, we’ll quickly survey some of the ideas that influenced\u00a0 democratic theory<\/p>\n

In the first place, modern concepts of political freedom and personal liberty are not actually so modern after all. Ideas about tolerance for religious and political ideas have emerged throughout human history in many civilizations. Around 2,500 years ago, great ethical systems emphasizing religious freedom flourished in China, India and Greece. Religious tolerance also emerged in the Roman and\u00a0 Islamic empires.<\/p>\n

“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others,” Chinese philosopher Confucius said around 500 BCE. The idea is found in many other ethical and religious traditions. Confucius also said: \u201cA wise man does not promote a person for what he says, neither does he undervalue what is said because of the person who says it.\u201d As Chinese law professor Gu Chunde<\/a> noted: \u201cFrom this we can see that Confucianism protects freedom of ideology and speech, allowing the independent existence of speech, whether it is right or wrong. It encourages people to criticize the government.”<\/p>\n

There are many other examples. In India, around 256 BCE, King Ashoka promoted religious liberty with the idea that all religions\u00a0 desire self-control and purity of heart.\u00a0 From the US Library of Congress Ancient Manuscripts collection <\/a>we find this statement by Islamic scholar, Miraj al-Suud ila nayl Majlub al-Sudan:\u00a0 “The fundamental and original nature of humanity is that individuals are free.”\u00a0 And in the classical Greek and Roman empires, the struggle for freedom and democracy is well known in western European history.<\/p>\n

Religious freedom was the first freedom\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Printing accelerated religious conflict in Europe, beginning in the 1500s.<\/p><\/div>\n

Religion is the first item in the First Amendment because it expresses our highest values.\u00a0 Religion motivates great good, but the misinterpretation of religion can spur great evil.<\/p>\n

When the America experiment began, Europe’s\u00a0 horrifying\u00a0 religious wars were still alive in human memory. So the idea of freedom of religion was\u00a0 not so much to protect Christianity as to keep people from fighting in the new world as they had in the old world.<\/p>\n

Bitter fighting between millions of people broke out when the Catholic Church punished dissenters and heretics.\u00a0 These included\u00a0Czech leaders <\/span>Jan Huss<\/a> (1371-1415) and\u00a0 John Prazsky (1379 \u2013 1416), who were captured and executed by the church, and <\/span>Martin Luther (1483-1546), who was never captured.\u00a0 Luther used the printing press to criticize the church by publishing his <\/span>95 Theses <\/a>on Oct. 31, 1517, and everyone in Europe heard about it.\u00a0 Luther’s use of the<\/span> new system of mass communication contributed to the massive revolt that we now call the Protestant Reformation.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Reformation took shape across Europe<\/span>, especially Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden and parts of Germany, all of which broke away from the Catholic Church of Rome and adopted Lutheranism or Calvinism.\u00a0 \u00a0 The church fought back with the Counter Reformation.<\/a>\u00a0Today these massive conflicts are collectively known as the European Wars of Religion.<\/a> An estimated\u00a0 four to twelve million people, or sixty percent of the population in some areas, died in the early to mid 1600s.<\/p>\n

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Protestant Thomas Cranmer burned at the stake at Oxford, England, on March 21, 1556, by the short-lived counter-reformation government of “bloody” Mary. These gruesome executions were on the minds of the American founders when they wrote freedom of religion into the Constitution.<\/p><\/div>\n

England also broke away<\/strong> from the Roman Catholic Church around 1535,\u00a0 as Henry VIII created the Church of England. Rather than tolerance, the new church of England executed people who remained true to the Catholic religion as well as\u00a0 dissenters from both Anglican and Catholic traditions. The king also\u00a0 seized church lands and took over a church-run system of censorship, licensing printers through the Stationers Company<\/a>.\u00a0 and punishing any\u00a0 religious or political dissent through the Star Chamber <\/a>and the lower courts.<\/p>\n

After Henry VIII’s death, Catholic Queen Mary (also known as ‘Bloody Mary’) turned the tables and executed the top Protestant clergy.\u00a0 Mary’s reign (1553 – 1558) was short lived, and Elizabeth I, a Protestant queen, worked toward religious tolerance while protecting the country from invasions (from Spain in 1588) and assassination attempts from Catholics.\u00a0 These continued after her death. On Nov. 5, 1605, a small group of Catholic revolutionaries attempt to blow up the Protestant King James I while Parliament was in session — an event sill remembered on Guy Fawkes Day.<\/p>\n

English Civil War<\/h3>\n

By the\u00a0 1640s, an ongoing struggle between king and Parliament led to the <\/span>\u00a0English Civil War of <\/strong>1641-1660.\u00a0 During this time, censorship was applied to the rapidly expanding printing business and e<\/span>nforced through <\/span>the <\/span>Licensing Order of 1643<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This period was time of religiously inspired revolution and civil war in England. Parliament broke with the king, and in 1649, political disputes led to the execution of King Charles I.\u00a0 In many cases, people who rebelled at intolerance of the Catholic Church were themselves intolerant. Milton, for example, did not want to let Catholics publish freely.\u00a0 But some Puritans, such as the more radical Levellers, were in favor of complete religious freedom. They said religious censorship kept people ignorant and that ignorance \u201cfitted only to serve the unjust ends of tyrants and oppressors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parliament won the war in 1645, and\u00a0 executed King Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell and then his son Richard ruled. But Richard was unfit and in 1660, Britons welcomed Charles II back from exile. Soon Parliament and the king were at odds again. Charles II didn\u2019t oppose Parliament openly but worked behind the scenes. As a result, Charles II ensured that English kings were firmly in power again, although a king would never rule without Parliament again.<\/p>\n

John Milton, who argued for a free marketplace of ideas in his pamphlet called the Areopagitica.<\/p><\/div>\n

One reason this is more than just ancient history is the eloquent dissent written by <\/span>John Milton in his pamphlet <\/span>Areopagitica<\/a> of\u00a0<\/span>1641, arguing for an open competition of ideas in the marketplace (the Areopagus of Athens was an open courtroom and marketplace).\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>Perhaps the most famous line is this:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Though all the\u00a0 winds<\/span>\u00a0of\u00a0doctrine<\/span> were let loose to play upon the earth, so (long as) Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and <\/span>Falsehoo<\/span>d<\/span>\u00a0grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the\u00a0<\/span>worse<\/span>, in a free and open encounter.\u00a0 (See <\/span>Dartmouth text of Areopagitica<\/a>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One lesson here is that dissent can be very significant in history, far outliving the laws that sparked the dissent in the first place. We’ll see this in the Whitney v California decision of 1927 and of course we’ve also seen it in the American civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0lesson is\u00a0that generations fought for freedom, and it was a long, hard process.\u00a0 \u00a0As late as 1692, in Britain, a printer was hung, drawn (disemboweled), quartered (cut into pieces) for\u00a0 sedition and \u201ccompassing\u201d (discussing) the death of the king.\u00a0 <\/span>Executions for these offenses ended in 1694 with the lapse of the Licensing Act, due to the Glorious Revolution and the efforts of Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke, although courts would sentence printers to jail time or transportation for sedition or libel throughout the 1700s.\u00a0 Prior restraint censorship ended with the Statute of Anne in 1710<\/a>, which was considered a hallmark of British freedom in the mid- to late-1700s.\u00a0 But printers and editors were still persecuted after the fact for dissent against the government.<\/p>\n

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William III & Mary II, 1689 – 1702, the first constitutional monarchs of Britain.<\/p><\/div>\n

England’s Glorious Revolution 1688<\/h3>\n

In 1688 James II tried to undermine Parliament, and he was deposed in what is called\u00a0 the Glorious Revolution because there was a major change of government effected without bloodshed. James fled England without a fight. Parliament called in <\/span>William and Mary<\/a>, the rulers of Holland, and made them king and queen. Parliament was now firmly in command of English politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

William and Mary agreed to religious toleration and to Parliament\u2019s claims to authority in a formal Declaration of Rights<\/a> in 1688. \u00a0 The Declaration recognized basic freedom for British subjects to petition the king and to bear arms. It also prohibited excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. While the British Bill of Rights protected fewer individual rights than the American Bill of Rights adopted a century later, it was an acknowledgement that Britons were due a large measure of freedom.<\/p>\n

Also, in 1689,\u00a0 the Act of Toleration acknowledged civil rights for Roman Catholics and Dissenters.\u00a0 In 1693, a college named for William and Mary was founded in Virginia.<\/p>\n

Shift in public opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Crowds pelt Daniel DeFoe with flowers after his conviction for seditious libel in 1703.<\/p><\/div>\n

Public opinion began to change in favor of freedom of expression during this time, and one of the best\u00a0 examples of that change was the way that the crowds threw flowers — instead of rotten tomatoes — when British writer Daniel DeFoe was sentenced to three hours in the pillory in 1703. \u00a0DeFoe was convicted of seditious libel after writing a satyrical pamphlet that suggested hanging all religious dissenters in a tone that was so outrageous that he did not think it would be taken seriously. \u00a0It was a turning point in public opinion as well as the British government’s subsequent \u00a0attempts to rein in press freedom, although more than a century would pass in the UK before serious criticism of the government would be tolerated. (Defoe would go on to write some of the best-known journalism and fiction in literature, including The Storm<\/a><\/i>\u00a0(1704), one of the earliest reports of an actual event \u00a0written from interviews with witnesses, along with Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year, and Moll Flanders.)<\/p>\n

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William berkeley and virginia\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Laws in the new Virginia colony were harshly stacked against individual liberty, with 300 items that could be punished by torture or execution.\u00a0 These\u00a0 included the death penalty for for sedition against the governor or for speaking against the articles of the Christian faith.\u00a0 In 1620, the Virginia House of Burgesses<\/a>\u00a0 stripped Capt. Henry Spellman of rank for \u201ctreasonable words.\u201d During this period, thousands of people were brought before the Burgesses and punished for\u00a0 daring to voice criticism.\u00a0 Truth was not a defense in such cases. In fact, truthful criticism is seen as even worse since it further undermines authority.<\/p>\n

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William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1640, Sir William Berkeley<\/strong> (1606 \u2013 1677) was appointed governor of Virginia and immediately banished the Puritans. In 1649 he invited Charles II, son of the king executed in 1648, to come over during this exile and be King of Virginia. Charles II stayed in France, and was restored to power in 1660 after Cromwell\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

It was Berkeley who famously said: “I\u00a0thank God,\u00a0there are\u00a0no free schools nor printing [in\u00a0Virginia]; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy … and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government.\u00a0God keep us from both.”\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>Berkeley was a brutal governor and it is widely held that his approach to government led to the insurrection known as Bacon\u2019s Rebellion<\/a>. Berkeley suppressed the rebellion without mercy<\/a> and hanged so many rebels that even Charles II, restored to the throne in 1660, exclaimed, \u201cThat old fool [Berkeley] has put to death more people in that naked country (Virginia) than I did here (in England) for the death of the father!\u201d<\/p>\n

Berkeley was removed from the governorship and recalled to England, and Virginia celebrated his departure with bonfires. Berkeley sought an interview with the King, who always postponed it. The old man died, still waiting for his audience.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the first newspapers printed in the colonies, such as Publick Occurrences <\/a>in 1690 and the Franklin brothers New England Courant<\/a>, printed in the 1720s,were also suppressed for sedition.<\/p>\n

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