Defining Communism: Politics or Economics?

The word ‘communism’ is frequently used, and most people who use it have at least a vague idea of what they mean by it. But when asked to give a precise definition, most cannot. In the absence of a clear definition, it is probable or even certain that people in a conversation might have differing or even contradictory meanings in mind for this word, each assuming that the other shares this definition.

This would explain why many discussions about communism are fruitless.

If ‘communism’ is ambiguous, so is ‘socialism,’ and the relationship between the two.

Surveying the many possible definitions of ‘communism,’ one sees that most of them fall easily into one of three categories: economic, political, or a mixture of the two.

An economic definition of communism usually includes the communal ownership of the means of production and prohibition of inheritance. A political definition often centers around a command economy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A mixture of these two approaches includes the power of the state used to enforce the economic doctrines of communism and state ownership as the practical expression of communal ownership.

Amplifying the ambiguities of communism are the adjectives which often precede the noun ‘communism’ — consider: Marxist communism, Stalinist communism, Leninist communism, Maoist communism, and many others.

So far, this survey has considered only modern political communism, of which Karl Marx is usually considered to be the father. The confusion multiplies if one includes ancient and non-political forms of communism.

Hoping to lend clarity, historian Gary Allen writes:

In keeping with the fact that almost everybody seems to have his own definition of Communism, we are going to give you ours.

In most discussions of communism, the tension between “communism in theory” and “communism in practice” is mentioned. While the tension is real, it may not be as significant as is sometimes alleged. Most concrete situations and conditions were anticipated by communist theorists.

Those who advocate communism are aware that resistance will inevitably arise when a doctrine like the abolition of private property is implemented. They are aware that, in order for communism to have even a chance at succeeding, force will need to be directed against such resistance.

Herein lies the question: If force is a necessity in the implementation of communism, then are those who are tasked with applying such force doing so out of an ideological loyalty to communist doctrine, or are they doing so because they see for themselves a chance to gain some amount of power? Gary Allen proposes:

Communism: an international, conspiratorial drive for power on the part of men in high places willing to use any means to bring about their desired aim — global conquest.

Pointing to both the economic and political mechanisms associated with communism, Gary Allen argues that they are the instruments which communism uses, but that they themselves are not communism. He dismisses attention to the details of communist economics as “Gus Hall communism,” in reference to the American communist leader who spent much of his time and energy working with labor unions.

To understand Allen’s point, it is necessary to conclude that the word ‘communism’ itself is a misleading misnomer.

The origin of the word is ‘common,’ as in ‘to have things in common.’ In words like ‘communal’ the same root is obvious.

If, however, the word is a deception, then the reader will see that the leaders of modern political communism use its ideology and nomenclature as camouflage to hide their purpose. Their goal is to obtain and maintain power. Any ostensible concern for people or for ideology merely serves as the justification for their seizure of power.

While there are sincere and good-hearted people who may follow communism out of a desire to make a better or more just world, those who lead the movement demonstrate their motives by their actions.

At this point it is good to emphasize the distinction between communism and movements which claim to be communist. Isolated individuals who read political and economic texts and are willing to consider that the systems proposed in them might be beneficial to humanity are, if those texts are the texts of Marx and his followers, communists.

But the leaders of political parties, nation-states, and revolutions show their lack of belief in communism, even as they constantly and loudly proclaim that they are the representatives of true communism, as Gary Allen explains:

You will notice that we did not mention Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, bourgeois, proletariat or dialectical materialism. We said nothing of the pseudo-economics or political philosophy of the Communists. These are the techniques of Communism and should not be confused with the Communist conspiracy itself. We did call it an international conspiratorial drive for power. Unless we understand the conspiratorial nature of Communism, we don’t understand it at all. We will be eternally fixated at the Gus Hall level of Communism. And that’s not where it’s at, baby!

To explicate, one might note the historical examples of Lenin and Stalin. In these examples, the tension between “communism in theory” and “communism in practice” shows itself to be a necessary and inevitable conflict. Lenin, whose detailed writings reveal his mastery of communist economics, abandoned those ideals in his “New Economic Policy.”

After leading a communist revolution, Lenin implemented communist policies in the Soviet Union. The result was misery and hardship for the lower and middle classes. Lenin saw that communist economic thought, when applied, was driving the Soviet Union into deeper and deeper poverty. The only way to save the country, he wrote, was his New Economic Policy, in which “a free market and capitalism” are “permitted and are developing.” Further, he announced that “socialized state enterprises are being put on what is called a profit basis, i.e., they are being reorganized on commercial lines.”

In sum, Lenin, while still claiming to be the leader of a communist movement, and while still claiming to be an expert on communist ideology, took actions which were clearly and diametrically opposed to any concept of communism.

Likewise, Stalin at first implemented communist thought by closing churches, imprisoning or executing Christians, forbidding study of the New Testament, and using propaganda and indoctrination to work toward the goal of statist atheism. Yet by 1942, it was clear that a general demoralization of the people in the Soviet Union was underway: a loss of confidence and hope. This was seen, e.g., in the early days of the Battle of Stalingrad. Needing to find a source of encouragement for the people, Stalin abruptly reversed his policies and acted directly against communist doctrine by releasing Christians from work camps, reopening churches, and urging the people to find reassurance in spiritual faith.

So Stalin, like Lenin, pragmatically acted against communist theory.

The actions of Lenin and Stalin reveal both that they did not fully trust or believe in communist theory, and that they were driven to act in ways which would secure their hold on power rather than ways which would fulfill communist theory.

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, there are leaders of movements, political parties, and nations who declare themselves to be true representatives of authentic communism. If circumstances arise in which their hold on power is threatened, will they also depart from communist orthodoxy, thereby revealing that they, too, value their own power more than communist ideology?

Communism and those who sincerely embrace it as a way to improve the world may unwittingly provide a facade behind which lies nothing other than a desire for power and control.

Sometimes Teamwork isn’t the Best Way: Luther Alone

There can be no doubt that the ability to publish and distribute Martin Luther’s ideas on paper was a key factor in the Reformation. His pamphlets and leaflets often made their way hundreds of miles in all directions within a few days of their production.

The writings of Luther, an isolated thinker in an isolated town, appeared quickly in Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, Holland, and other nations.

Luther’s predecessors — other would-be reformers — didn’t have this technology, and worked in obscurity.

But there’s more to the Reformation than merely Luther’s access to mass communication. The printing press was a revolutionary invention, no doubt, which changed the world. But many people had access to printing presses. Why did Luther become so prominent? Because he had something to say.

The medium is important, but so is the content. Historian Jonathan Kay writes:

A simplified version of the Reformation that many people hold in their heads typically goes something like this: Disgusted by the corrupt sale of indulgences, Martin Luther rose up against the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. And thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, he was able to get his message out quickly and widely.

“In this way” Luther’s Reformation was “as much about a communications revolution as it is about a phase shift in Christian theology.”

“All that is true,” grants Kay, “but” scholars who “study the process by which Luther developed, refined and published his ideas,” find “another, overlapping truth.”

Luther had more to offer than contempt for a handful of dishonest priests who were exploiting the Roman Catholic system. Luther had a thought-out, systematic, articulated worldview.

While Luther was indeed able to leverage a communications technology unavailable to his reform-minded predecessors, he did the vast bulk of his work in isolation at the friary of the Hermits of St. Augustine. And even once he’d gone public, it took years for religious authorities to fully digest the importance of his ideas.

Luther spent hours, days, weeks, and months reading and reflecting. The Reformation was not a reflexive reaction to a corrupted system. It was the emergence of a new thought system, based on a careful analysis of the old thought system. Luther knew the Roman Catholic system well, and even admired parts of it. He could often explain it better than its defenders.

But he’d also analyzed its faults and flaws. He’d traced the ripple effects of those errors as they affected other parts of the system. He understood that systematic thought has to be rigorously and carefully thought out. Such thinking takes time, isolation, and long periods of silence.

Modern professional culture encourages collaboration through instant communication and globalized networks. But Luther’s legacy as one of history’s most influential thinkers shows us that there are certain epic projects — such as the systematic rethinking of foundational dogmas — that require time to mature and space to germinate before they are safe for universal exposure. Without that window, they die.

Luther was not obsessively quiet. He delivered insightful lectures and stirring sermons to large groups. He did not hide his thoughts: he published more handbills, fliers, broadside, songs, poems, and flysheets than any other person of his time or earlier.

His voluminous production was, however, the fruit of contemplation: hours spent alone, reading and thinking.

From Isaac Newton to Immanuel Kant to Albert Einstein, this pattern can be seen.

The lesson for the twenty-first century is this: collaboration is good, communication is good, but it is a necessary precondition for individuals to be able to clear their desks and minds, to focus without interruption, and to thoroughly explore their thought and their thought’s objects.

That is one of the many lessons that Luther’s Reformation still offers, five centuries later.

Germany’s Measured Steps Toward a Nation-State: Why Hurry?

The world, in modern times, is organized mostly by nation-states. What is a “nation-state”? A “nation” is an ethnic or cultural group; a “state” is a defined geographical territory with its own government. A “nation-state” is a combination of the two.

In ordinary language, the word “country” usually describes a nation-state. Examples include Japan, Norway, Poland, and Greece.

In previous millennia, however, nation-states were not the primary ordering structure of the world. Dynasties, i.e. royal families, were often the principle defining factor in geopolitics. The authority over inhabitants was not mainly decided by their ethnicities and cultures, nor by defined geographical boundaries and institutional governments, but rather by an inherited right to rule, passed down from one generation to another in the dynasty. Likewise, a citizen’s allegiance was not principally to his people, to his geographical home, or to the political ideals of his government; it was to the dynasty.

An overarching trend in the history of the world is the transition from dynasty to nation-state. The pace at which this change happened varied from place to place. In many cases, this transition included a consolidation and centralization from smaller territories into a larger unit, as historian William Hagen writes:

In 1789 the German-speaking lands were, with few exceptions, encompassed within a sprawling geopolitical entity aniquatedly named the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. They were, strange as it may seem, divided into some three hundred and twenty-five separate principalities.

At first glance, the independence of the many small German states might seem to place the Germans at a disadvantage. Other European nations moved quicker to form nation-states, William Hagen reports:

Comparing Germany with France, England, or Spain, the question arises: why did the medieval and early modern German lands not evolve, as these and many other European countries did, from the condition of a loosely strung together medieval feudal kingdom into a stoutly forged centralized “national monarchy,” such as that of France’s might Louis XIV, the seventeenth-century “Sun King”? Premodern monarchies on the French or British model created unitary frameworks for subsequent political democratization, such as preliminarily began in England with the Purity and Glorious revolutions of the seventeenth century and in France with the revolution of 1789.

But was the race to form nation-states truly an advantage? Perhaps a more measured pace of construction had benefits. France, England, and Spain did not “evolve” as suggested. Their change of political structure was deliberate and conscious. To say that they “evolved” makes the formation of a nation-state seem the inevitable product of unconscious and random processes.

Likewise, the Germans refrained from the formation of a nation-state knowingly and as the result of reflection. The notion of national identity, often packaged with the Romanticism movement, had appeared prior to 1789 in, e.g., the writings of Johann Gottfried von Herder. That notion, however, was challenged by anti-national sentiments. The Congress of Vienna, organized by Klemens von Metternich, resisted the trend toward nation-states.

Rather than ask why the Germans didn’t “evolve” more quickly into a nation-state, one might ask where, among the English, Spanish, and French, were the reflective voices which might moderate the rush into nationalism?

There were advantages to being a “loosely strung together” entity. Retaining a hint of feudalism emphasized the mutuality between governed and governor. In the Middle Ages, the vassal’s oath to the lord was reciprocated by the lord’s oath to the vassal. Each owed the other. By the late 1700s, feudalism was long gone from German-speaking lands, but the distant echo of feudalism shaped societal thinking and reminded rulers that they had obligations to their subjects. The modern nation-state, on the other hand, could subject the individual to the “General Will,” in Rousseau’s phrase.

It is also debatable whether or not the advent of the nation-state was salutary to the process of democratization. It would be odd to regard the reign of Louis XIV as being somehow a forward movement toward democratization. By contrast, Germany without a nation-state was able to maintain and expand participation by means of elected town councils and regional assemblies.

To be sure, England and France enjoyed some advantages by forming nation-states before Germany did. They had more military might and more diplomatic clout. National policies facilitated industrialization. But the hasty formation of nation-states was not unambiguously salutary. Germany’s more measured progress toward a nation-state allowed it to retain a more flexible and responsive regional structure for a longer time. While Germany’s industrialization lagged, its development of mathematics and science excelled, as did its global reputation for academic excellence and artistic achievement.

Threads of Political Thought Converge: Millennia of Civic Philosophy Produce the American Revolution

Over several thousand years, patterns of thought about society emerged, developed, and intermingled with each other in the course of civilization. Many of these strands of thought came together in the creative fusion of the American Revolution.

In a wealth of texts produced during the second half of the 1700s, the significant thinkers of the previous centuries, and previous millennia, contributed concepts about government and civic virtue. The names of those thinkers form a list which looks like a good syllabus for a class in the history of civilization.

Starting with Hammurabi and Moses, the list includes the writers of Greco-Roman classicism, the medievals, and the Renaissance thinkers. A synthesis and distillation of those works was produced by the political thinkers of the Enlightenment, including those in North America.

The work of John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Adam Smith rested upon foundations laid by Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Tacitus, Augustine, Aquinas, Ockham, and dozens of others. All of which led to Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, James Otis, and Patrick Henry.

The courageous authors of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were educated in both ancient and modern history, and among them were those who could read Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Italian, and French.

Having mined the world’s classics for ideas, these authors set about fitting them intricately together. The political tradition of the Enlightenment was based upon abstract reasoning about human nature, and rational reflection about the nature of human intelligence. The result fit together well, sometimes congruing and sometimes complimenting the spiritual treasures of the Judeo-Christian tradition, as scholar Harvey Cox writes:

In the United States, there was a combination of biblical Christianity and of Enlightenment virtue. So you have in the early founding documents the famous phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” (an Enlightenment phrase) “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (a religious phrase). This constituted a wedding of two not completely separate traditions, because some of the founding fathers were mild Calvinists with Enlightenment leanings, some were stricter Calvinists, and others were Episcopalians.

Thus it was that Thomas Paine, who rejected most or all forms of organized religion in favor of a rationalist deistic concept of God, was part of the same movement as the passionately spiritual George Washington.

The phrases and ideas woven together in the founding documents of the United States, as well as in the tracts and pamphlets which surrounded them, appeal to the rationalist and the mystic, the cynic and the idealist, the Jew and the Christian, the deist and the pietist.

Together, the texts which gave birth to the American Revolution, composed during the second half of the eighteenth century, form a catalogue or compendium of civic thought spanning five millennia. To understand the documents of the American Revolution is to survey political philosophy from its earliest moments onward.

Explore the Canon, Don’t Discard It: The Forgotten Treasures of the Deep Canon

It has become fashionable among certain people to pointedly reject the canon of Western Civilization’s various cultures. Some academics are generously paid and build entire careers by libeling, slandering, and defaming the canon.

The canon — with one ‘n’ not two! — is a collection of works, usually artistic works, i.e., paintings, musical compositions, sculpture, architectures, but most commonly literary works. The “canon” is a list of texts considered to be of enduring value, high quality, and worth studying.

One feature of the canon is that its boundaries are indistinct: its edges are not precisely defined. There has never been a precise and exhaustive list of what is in the canon. There is a feel or intuition about what is in the canon: a casual consensus about which types of things belong in the canon.

The Oxford English Dictionary explains this particular use of the word ‘canon’ as follows:

A body of literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant, and worthy of study; those works of esp. Western literature considered to be established as being of the highest quality and most enduring value; the classics.

The OED goes on to note the existence of sub-canons, like a ‘comedy canon’ or a ‘Norwegian canon,’ and the use of canon with other artforms like music or architecture.

This usage of the word ‘canon’ seems to have appeared in the early twentieth century, and become common in the jargon of literary criticism after the middle of the century.

The canon is broad and deep. The genres, centuries, authors, cultures, ethnicities, and spiritual traditions represented in it are numerous. Some who attack the canon imagine it to be narrow, but this is not the case. Even if there is some ambiguity at its margins, it can easily fill vast libraries.

It would be good to devote increased attention to what might be called the “deep canon.” There is a small subset within the canon of material which is often studied. The frequent texts occupy too much space, and thereby edge other texts into the shadows of neglect.

Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, but five or ten of them monopolize much of the high school and university reading lists. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is well known, but her The Last Man languishes. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are often assigned, but what about his The Moon is Down?

Given the institutional habit of assigning repeatedly a limited number of works from the canon, a student may be forgiven for gaining the mistaken perception that the canon is shallow and narrow. When that student later becomes a published scholar, she or he may attack the canon based on that impression.

Not only would the exploration of the full canon demonstrate more creative and more rigorous scholarship, but it would also defend the canon from its detractors.

Despite some vagueness about its borders, the canon still serves the valuable purpose of directing students and instructors to significant texts. To be sure, there is some small element of subjectivity in assigning value to texts — perhaps this bit of subjectivity is responsible for the equivocation about the canon’s boundaries — but it is clear that some texts are of more value than others.

There are different ways to measure a text’s value, and that fact that there may be a little subjectivity in that measurement is no reason to abandon or ignore the larger idea that some texts are worthy of inclusion in the canon and others are not. Bluntly stated: some texts are better than others, objectively.

To explore this notion of objective worth, knowing that there is a bit of subjective evaluation of the objective worth, a number of metrics are in play. One of them is the oft-cited notion of ‘critical thinking.’

Ironically, “critical thinking” is frequently mentioned by those who attack the canon. Yet the canon is the continual and continuous source of critical thought. The notion of ‘critical thinking’ arises from, and is fed by, the canon. The creative tension between Plato and Aristotle, between Augustine and Aquinas, and between the Rabbis in the Talmud is the source and essence of critical thought.

Whoever might wish to arouse critical thought in a student does so best by directing the student’s attention to a text which has value in this regard. A student may learn the skill of critical thought better by examining a text by Raymond Chandler than by examining a text by Laurie Halse Anderson: which is to say that The Big Sleep, as a text, has more intrinsic and inherent value than Speak. Simply put, Chandler offers more to think about that Anderson does.

These two propositions are related: (a) The canon is deeper and broader than is commonly supposed, and (b) the attacks on the canon are ill-founded or unfounded.

Many who assault the canon do so with charges of its alleged narrowness, its alleged shallowness, and its alleged homogeneity. A more rigorous exploration of the canon reveals that that such allegations are untrue, and that therefore such attacks on the canon are baseless.

Ironically, many who assail the canon do so with calls for more or better efforts at teaching students how to “think critically.” The irony is two-fold: First, such assaults on the canon dissolve under the scrutiny of the very critical thought demanded by the assailants; second, the practice of critical thinking is best carried out within the context of the canon.

To think critically, one must have something about which to think. There must be an object toward which critical thinking is directed and on which critical thinking operates. Critical thinking is a form which needs content.

A student who wishes to exercise critical thought will find more and better opportunities to do so with the texts of Hildegard of Bingen than with the texts of Toni Morrison.

A student will learn the skill of critical thinking better from Immanuel Kant than from Frantz Fanon — and as an added benefit, Kant’s critique of imperialism and slavery is more rigorous than Fanon’s.

Simply put, some texts are better and more valuable than others. The canon collects those texts. The fact that there is some ambiguity at the perimeter of the canon, and the fact that there is a bit of subjectivity in discerning this perimeter, cannot be used as arguments against the canon. The canon is not purely arbitrary and subjective.

The task, then, is this: to honor the canon by exploring it and allowing it to nurture critical thought, and in the process, to discover the hidden riches of the obscure neglected corners of the canon.

What Voltaire Did Not Write: Does It Matter 250 Years Later?

In a high-profile case of misattribution, the French author Voltaire is often cited as the author of a sentence which he never wrote.

In 1758, Voltaire was informed that a book, written by Claude-Adrien Helvétius, was being publicly denounced. Copies of it were being burned. While Voltaire disagreed with the book and its author, he did not endorse the abuse. While the following sentence captures Voltaire’s sentiment, he never wrote it:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Yet centuries later, this quote is often credited to Voltaire.

The sentence was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall. She wrote it while describing Voltaire’s attitude. Her words captured his spirit so well that people quickly confused her words for his.

Hall’s words and Voltaire’s ethic both summarized one aspect of the Enlightenment. The ‘Age of Enlightenment’ is a phrase used by historians, but it is difficult to precisely define when it began or ended. But it is safe to say that there were common threads which connected a series of philosophers, thinkers, and writers who lived during the 1600s and 1700s.

Whatever, and whenever, the Enlightenment was, it included a political philosophy which has since been called ‘classical liberalism’ and includes Voltaire’s ethic of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of belief, and freedom of religion.

The high value which the Enlightenment placed on free speech shaped not only that era, but also subsequent eras. The values of ‘classical liberalism’ were foundational to Western societies during the twentieth century. The phrase ‘Western societies’ can refer to the nations of Europe, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. ‘Western societies’ can also refer to much of Central America and South America.

During the late twentieth century, however, ‘Western’ culture ceased to be limited by lines on maps. All parts of Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world began to absorb distinctively “Western” ideas. These Western concepts that now are felt in all nations include an emphasis on the individual human’s dignity and value, an emphasis on freedom and liberty, and an emphasis on equality across economic classes.

Another Enlightenment concept asserted that all human beings are rational, and that their desires for freedom, peace, justice, and prosperity transcend the superficial differences of race and gender. All people desire peace: in light of that fact, gender and race are irrelevant. All people desire prosperity: that desire is not peculiar to any race or to either gender.

But as the twenty-first century unfolds, a challenge is being posed to humanity: will society continue to value freedom of speech? Will Western Civilization continue to hold Voltaire’s view, expressed in words which Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote? What will become of the ethic which demands that the individual respect the freedom of others to write or say nearly anything?

There are movements afoot in various nations to limit freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of belief, and freedom of religion. There are political trends to label certain beliefs as unacceptable, and to punish those who express such beliefs.

To be sure, the individual has a responsibility to voluntarily self-limit her or his own utterances. This may fall under the simple heading of ‘politeness’ and is a way to show respect for the sensibilities of others. But in no way can this responsibility be externally imposed. One person’s responsibility to refrain from offensive speech does not equal another person’s authority to silence or intimidate the speaker. While the speaker has a responsibility to never say things which are hateful, the audience has a responsibility to allow the speaker to say those very things.

Of course, the audience also has the right to simply stop listening.

If a nation loses the fundamentally human view that each person is primarily a rational being, seeking peace, liberty, prosperity, and justice, and that therefore race and gender are at most secondary to personhood — if a nation loses that view, then it loses its ability to full recognize and acknowledge the humanity of each individual.

One component of this view is the notion that freedom of expression is essential to the human community.

Western Civilization preceded the Enlightenment by many centuries. The Enlightenment is a product of Western Civilization, and reveals some deep essential parts of Western Civilization. At the same time, the Enlightenment exists in a tension with some other aspects and products of Western Civilization.

The Enlightenment, as one arm of Western Civilization, gradually crept into the thinking of every continent. One sees everywhere, then, Western concepts like universal suffrage, legal equality for women, the dignity and value of every individual human, and a desire for freedom. Ironically, when non-Western nations criticize the West, they do so on an intellectual basis composed of Western concepts.

What is at stake, then, if society ceases to value freedom of speech? It would lose one piece of a system which expresses what it means to be human.

By the same token, if society ceases to value an individual’s moral responsibility to limit her or his own speech — a responsibility which may never be external imposed or enforced — it also loses an important aspect of humanity.

The fact that there will always be a small number of individuals who fail to limit themselves -— who say something hateful, hurtful, or offensive — never justifies limiting the freedom of speech.

A limitation placed on free speech is as destructive and dehumanizing as any hateful utterance.

In the new millennium, would a pro-abortion activist give his life in war so that a pro-life activist could publicly speak? Or the reverse?

The challenge to the nations of the world, then, in the twenty-first century is to recommit to words which Voltaire never wrote. The existence of many modern nation-states, the places in which humanity finds a chance to flourish, is due to patriots who were willing to fight — willing to risk their lives — for the rights of people to speak freely. They died fighting for the rights of people with whom they passionately disagreed.