Does the First Amendment Make the Lincoln Memorial

[richard duncan]

Jack Balkin writes:
> (1) Rick just to repeat, this would not be an instance of the captive
> audience doctrine in the First Amendment law.  That is a doctrine that
> permits governments to relieve certain types of invasions of privacy that
> would otherwise be constitutionally protected.
> _______________

I understand that the public schools are unrelated to the captive
audience cases involving invasion of privacy. But I think Pierce is a
different kind of captive audience case, one that holds that the
government may not commandeer an audience for
its message. Similarly, under Wooley the government can not require a
citizen to convey the government's message. It seems even *more* of a
burden on 1A values for the government to require citizens (and the
most vulnerable and impressionable citizens at that) to listen to, be
inculcated in, and tested for mastery of *the government's message.*
Indeed, public school children are much more of a "captive" audience
--in the truest sense of that term--than are passengers on
public buses or radio listeners. And the burden on thought
and belief is far greater since the very purpose of education is to
transmit values, beliefs, perspectives, and ideas about what is true,
what is real, what is good, and what is beautiful.

The government is free to speak and celebrate whatever it chooses. But
it suppresses freedom of thought and belief formation when it requires
its citizens to show up and pay attention to its messages and
celebrations. Properly understood, the First Amendment does not permit
government to commandeer messengers or audiences for its ideas and
perspectives.

None of these ideas are new--they go back at least as far as Mill, who
argued they were at the core of freedom of thought.



--
                   ----------
             Rick Duncan (rduncan at unlinfo.unl.edu)

"There's no pleasure on earth that's worth sacrificing for the sake of
an extra five years in the geriatric ward of the Sunset Old People's
Home, Weston-Super-Mare." Horace Rumpole