A win for free speech

Wednesday was a very good day for supporters of free speech and the Bill of Rights.

In an 8-1 decision -- with both the liberals and conservatives uniting -- the U.S. Supreme Court held in a case involving vile protests at the funerals of American soldiers that the First Amendment protects even the most distasteful speech.

The outcome will no doubt upset many people, but the decision is important and sound.

The ruling ends a lawsuit by Albert Snyder, the father of a fallen Marine, who won a $5 million judgment against a small Kansas Baptist church whose followers showed up to picket his son's funeral, holding signs that said, among other things, "Thank God for dead soldiers."

A lower court agreed with Mr. Snyder that the protest by members of the Westboro Baptist Church -- who believe that American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuals -- had crossed the line and caused him emotional pain.

But an appeals court tossed out the judgment, finding the protests were protected under the First Amendment. In backing up the appeals panel on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and -- as it did here -- inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker."

Indeed, if the First Amendment is interpreted to shield only that which we find pleasant or agreeable, it has been rendered worthless. Make no mistake: The Westboro lunatics deserve nothing but our scorn and derision. But if the government may quash speech a majority finds unpleasant or repugnant, we no longer live in a free society; instead, we teeter perilously close to tyranny.

Nor is this hyperbole. We live in a time when defenders of the Bill of Rights must battle the proliferation of speech codes on college campuses across the country; a time when more and more Americans believe they have a right to use the force of law to shield them from offense; a time when this country's solicitor general actually argued last year that the government could ban from publication a book critical of a political candidate.

Had the high court reached the opposite conclusion in this controversial case, our free speech liberties would have been sacrificed at the altar of political correctness in a misguided and dangerous effort to prevent somebody, somewhere from ever having their sensibilities bruised during the sometimes unruly rough and tumble of everyday discourse. We would all be the poorer for it.

Yes, Wednesday was a good day for the First Amendment.