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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
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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.
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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 strictlyconstrued “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 selfassured, 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
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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 (450430 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
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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
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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.
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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 Governmentaided 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
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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 thirdworld 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:
[email protected]
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