A Speech Intro Amongst a sea of chatter - JTA

Let's talk free speech – The concept is that all who seek To speak their mind can talk in peace And not get shot or fined or beat Or worse. The first amendment says That we got free speech, free religion and press So the shit that you wish to get off your chest Can get expressed and not get repressed But on the TikTok and on YouTube too I've been known to get muted and to not get viewed And to not get seen — not because I've gone nude But because Google says what I said's too crude – True But it's open to question And some have opined That there might be times When we gotta draw a line – With the misinformation that's spreading online Speech may be free, but it can cost lives ...Right? It's sure complex — Pure free speech can sure cause a mess And yet we want more free speech not less — That's common sense. – So we need context To see what comes next. ...So are we not free? What must the limits of our free speech be? That's a big question. – Lemme just teach This is a History of Free Speech Ancient, Medieval and Islamic Civilizations So-called free speech In the thought of the West can be traced to Greece The Athenian concept of Speech-Equality For all in the polity: they called it Democracy ...So speak as you want to speak But not if you're not a he, and not if you're Socrates Speaking on unorthodox topics. – We've all agreed To make you drink Hemlock: stop the philosophy! – Ah, gee. ...And in Ancient Rome too There was "Liberty" of speech, but it was freedom for few And this was even more true in the age of the Caesars Depending who you were the Caesar could seize your words Yes sir. ...I guess this is justice... And then there was Jesus, in the age of Augustus He died for His truth. But he vibed with his crew And they made it go viral — the Idea grew They tried for a few Centuries to suppress The little movement till soon With the rest of the West They said, The Word IS Flesh – As history attests Sometimes the oppressor becomes the oppressed And vice versa. — So free speech waned And took a back seat in the European brain Behind the refrain that all there's to see Is The Gospel — so don't hear or say heresy Meanwhile in the ancient Islamic state Free speech thronged in the Abbasid Caliphate Al-Rawandi, Al-Razi and Avicenna could calibrate Classical thought with the Qu'ran and contemplate – And that was all great — But that Shangri-la Of free thought got stopped by the Shari-ah law It's all a see-saw — all in, or Allah – And in between, no free-speech law free of flaw Reformation and Revolutions And so in went in the West – And yet Free Speech didn't rest in the breast And in the 15th century it did spread When Gutenburg hit with the printing press Luther pinned his words Upon the church in Wittenberg And ripped a schism in the church And then within the western world And revolution then emerged With the question getting heard As to which of several versions of religion one should serve Word — Reformation – Your profession of faith Is sure a personal expression But you better be safe For the church and the state Still determined the stakes And it wasn't that rare To get burnt at the stake For Giordano Bruno It sure was brutal – Literally burned For serving his truth; though Galileo had to lie to live He hid a truth 'Sure the earth's static' – Then he added 'yet it moves' From the mid-16th To the mid-17th Many more Europeans Would die for their beliefs – And while some died for science Other Europeans silenced The speech of other people Through conquest and violence Meanwhile on a another continent The colonists were confident Their conscience said Free Speech for all — By 'all' they meant Caucasian men But the concept spread, and Olympe De Gouges Pled the cause of the enslaved and for feminism too In the French Revolution — till she who had reached Far ahead of her time lost her head for free speech The Modern Age But what they could not kill Was a thought from the quill of a John Stuart Mill Though all humankind all minus one are not chill With a thought, that one's got a right to talk still And none is free till Everyone is – You can read it in the narrative of Fredrick Douglas Who freed himself, and freed his own mind By the writing and the reading by which freedom's defined And in time it was news fit to print – When Ida B. Wells tells the truths of the lynched When the leaders out in Selma went and used the bridge When Mandela said he's sooner serve truth than to live When the truth hurts big, then let it be uttered – Free speech one Martin Luther to another – Never let em vet what you're permitted to preach – 'Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.' A century ago A demagogue scoffed At the 'Marxist press' And their 'news that was false' – Does that bring anyone to mind? — *light cough* The guy wrote a book by the name of Mein Kampf Oh my God! The Weimar Republic – Why didn't they prohibit it from ever being published? It was hot off the presses — some bestseller shit — Would Hitler not have hit if it hadn't been a hit? That hits different. — And then when they did Try to censor them is when the Nazis really got big As martyrs for a cause — and a precedent was further Then set for the censorship they met with him as Fuhrer It's enough to make you furious Censorship and murder – Silence all objectors Recondition all deserters – "Perverters of the Workers must be Purged from the State" – That or the reverse: "The Commie perps are at your gate!" And now our language of alert Has been subverted by the urgent Overstatement every side has made against its other version Insurrection, Treason and Sedition by the arch- And utter enemies of Freedom Either way we choose to march And in the Too Much Information on this internet of ours Now the office of the censor is the autocratic powers Of the platforms driven by their profit as they scour While we post our speech and wile away our hours ...If things seem freer than when all were accosted You can still get shot up for drawing Mohammed You can still scroll a phone that was made in a spot that Has a government that doesn't let you scroll where ya wanted Is your own mind free? Can they tell you what to do? There's no vaccine For the fact that ever-new Enemies of what's true Speak louder than you ...Why can't she speak With her nipples out too? Conclusion And so to conclude No freedom of speech has been true absolute All we can do is judiciously choose To whom we will listen when seeking the truth And when fools speak And single out groups The best way to silence them And clip their roots Isn't to refuse their right to speak But critique 'em even louder Than you used Even when the speeches are evil we cope Leaning on the note that if we don't Let the evil be spoken Then when we speak We too will be choked – It's a slippery slope But we roll with hope. – And this sound Whether it's suppressed or spreads around Whether it's viral or never gets found Whether any platform takes it down Is a speech Dedicated to the peeps Who were dedicated each To what must get said – For the many that have bled And as many get bleeped – This has been a history of free speech