My first job in the U.S. in the early 1990’s was in Chicago. In 1994, a good friend from Singapore visited my  home in Oak Park, the first suburb west of the City of Chicago. He noted that many homes he passed driving through Chicago had bars in their windows. He asked why I would want to live in the U.S. when Singapore was so much safer. I said that I would tolerate a few bars in the windows and not on my mind. My friend protested that he believed in free speech as well. However, “There must be some limits, right? What if you say something against the government?” He spoke with such matter-of-fact certainty that the irony of his statement eluded him.

I was a student in Singapore in 1974 when students at the then Singapore University Student’s Union joined a labor dispute and participated in protests and labor organization. The Singapore government arrested the student leaders. The police executed a pre-dawn raid of the campus and started a series of ‘reforms’ that eventually resulted in the controversial merging of the erstwhile two universities in Singapore to form the current National University of Singapore in 1980 under govenment control. Singaporeans were told to not ‘meddle’ in affairs of state. Freedom of speech effectively ended in Singapore.

I was confident in my 1994 conversation that my new home guaranteed me freedom of speech and thought by written Constitution. I am no longer so confident in 2020. On July 22 of this year, the Cato Institute released a report on a study that showed that 62% of Americans have “political views they’re afraid to share”. Seventy-seven percent of conservatives, and 64% of moderates self-censor out of fear. The only group who feels at liberty to express themselves are liberal. Even among this latter group, 52% of moderate liberals feel the need to self-censor out of fear that they were insufficiently liberal. Only among strong liberals does a slim majority of 58% experience the liberty of which I boasted to my friend.

I am writing this article confessionally because I am at odds with myself in experiencing the need to self-censor. The point is not WHAT I might want to say as it is the disappointment that I personally validate the sense of dread found in the Cato survey. The rightness of the position is orthogonal to the value of freedom of speech and thought. Indeed, as with my friend’s valuation of the absolute hegmenony of government over speech, every speech restriction is founded on the restrictors’ sense of rectitude of their position, whether it be about racial equality, social justice, the evils of blasphemy, or the the sanctity of social order. To paraphrase my friend, “There must be some limits, right? What if you say something bad about race?”

In his inimatable way, the late President Reagan recounted a conversation between his friends and a Cuban refugee in his ‘A Time for Choosing’ speech in 1964. On hearing the Cuban’s story, the Americans congratulated themselves that they lived in a land of freedom. The refugee corrected them that he was the lucky one, saying, “How lucky you are? I had some place to escape to.” Reagan continued: “In that sentence, he summed up the entire story. If we lose freedom here there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

I am the Cuban in Reagan’s story. I had a place to escape to, or so I thought. However, in the short twenty-six years since I told my friend that I came to my adopted country for freedom of speech and thought, I find that fear has followed me here.

My son was surprised that I registered my blog to express my thoughts in my ‘real name’. An acquaintance warned me to not express thoughts publicly. I choose to use my real name not because of some sense of courage. I do so out of a fear that I have no place left to run to if we lose Reagan’s last stand on earth.  Free speech is not a commodity of which we have a certain quantity to use wisely. It is the muscle of a free society that strengthens with its exercise and atrophies through unuse.  I saw the soft tyranny of political correctness in the 2000s. I am witnessing the corrosive rise of the cancel culture through the 2010s. I dread that if we become accustomed to self-censorship, and if we keep retreating in the face of illiberal speech and thought policing, it is not long before we see the iron fist of state-regulated speech. I have seen it once before.

Copyright. Francis Quek, August 8, 2020. Rights to disseminate with attribution freely granted to all.