EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s an installment from Tillamook County’s State Representative Cyrus Javadi’s Substack blog, “A Point of Personal Privilege” Oregon legislator and local dentist. Representing District 32, a focus on practical policies and community well-being. This space offers insights on state issues, reflections on leadership, and stories from the Oregon coast, fostering thoughtful dialogue. Posted on Substack, 9/23/25
A joke, a tragedy, and the kind of power the Constitution was written to restrain.
By State Representative Cyrus Javadi
The desire to silence and shame isn’t some ancient flaw we outgrew with the Enlightenment. It’s alive. It’s growing teeth. And, it’s not going anywhere. Let me explain why.
Take last week, Jimmy Kimmel made a comment that displeased the Trump administration. He made the point that the White House was using the tragic death of Charlie Kirk for political points.
In a different time, the administration would have ignored it. Other media outlets would have responded. And the public would ultimately make a judgment. But that’s not what happened.
“We Will Find Your Pressure Points”
Instead, the FCC Chair (the federal government) began making noises about whether ABC deserved to keep its broadcast license.
Let that sink in.
An offhand comment on a late-night show sparked a conversation inside the federal government about whether an entire network should be punished. Not with debate. Not with a strongly worded press release. But with potential regulatory retaliation.
All because someone said something the people in charge didn’t like.
This wasn’t about decency. It wasn’t about protecting the public from harm. It was about sending a message: We will find your pressure points.
Jimmy Kimmel is scheduled to return to air this week. But let’s not lose the thread: the danger was never just about whether he kept his job. The real problem was that federal officials, acting in the wake of a tragedy, saw fit to suggest that a broadcast license might be fair game for retaliation. That kind of threat doesn’t need to be carried out to be effective. It just needs to be spoken aloud.
And just so we’re clear, this isn’t a uniquely Trump-era impulse. The desire to punish people for saying the wrong thing crosses party lines. From Democrats pressuring tech platforms to deplatform critics, to Republicans threatening media licenses, the pattern is the same: when people in power feel threatened, they start looking for ways to shut someone up. That’s exactly why the First Amendment exists. Not to protect one side, but to restrain both.
What the Founders Actually Feared
We talk about the Constitution like it was written to protect us from kings and bureaucrats. And in part, it was.
But, here’s the point I most want to make: kings and bureaucrats were not the Founders’ biggest fear. Not by a long shot.
Their real concern, the one that shaped the First Amendment, was majority rule without boundaries.
Sure, winning independence was one thing. A huge thing. But, resisting the temptations of power? That was a more serious matter. The Founders knew they hadn’t just escaped a king. No, they’d escaped a system that silenced its critics and used authority to get its way. And now they had to make sure it didn’t return in a new form.
Because they’d seen first hand what happens when popular governments decide some people’s views are too dangerous to be heard. They watched mobs turn on minorities. They saw legislatures jail dissenters and shut down newspapers with full public support. They knew democracy was perfectly capable of producing censorship, cruelty, and control, only with applause from the majority.
And, consider this, they didn’t have a crystal ball to see into the future, but they didn’t need one. They knew what was coming. Not the specifics (not which movements, which wars, which cultural clashes) but the shape of the struggle. They understood that every generation would bring its own battle between liberty and control. They saw that majorities would rise and fall, and with them, the temptation to silence dissent. So they built guardrails. Not just for their time, but for ours.
That’s why the First Amendment doesn’t say “The Crown shall make no law…” or “The President shall not…”
It says: “Congress shall make no law…”
That’s right, congress. The elected branch. The one closest to the people.
Because they knew the biggest threat to liberty wasn’t always the man at the top.
It was the majority. The mob. Us.
Silencing You the Legal Way
And, the Founders had good reason to worry.
I mean, just look at Germany in the 1930s. The Weimar Constitution promised robust civil liberties: freedom of speech, press, and assembly. Article 118 spelled it all out. But there was a catch. Those rights could be “restricted by law” in the interest of public order.
So when the Reichstag burned in 1933, Hitler didn’t have to abolish the Constitution. He used it. Declared an emergency. Passed a decree. Censored the press. Arrested opponents. Silenced dissenters.
All of it legal.
The protections on paper were real, until they weren’t. Because once a government learns it can silence someone for “safety,” it never runs out of emergencies.
It’s Not Just Washington. It’s Here, Too
We’ve grown used to thinking of free speech battles as national spectacles. Supreme Court cases. Cable news talking points. Big city protests.
But the pattern lives here, too.
Someone objects to a book in a school library.
Someone testifies against a zoning change or a shelter or a hospital expansion.
Someone posts something blunt, maybe too blunt, on Facebook.
And suddenly the response isn’t “I disagree.”
It’s “You should lose your job.”
Or “We’re coming after your business license.”
Or “You’ll be hearing from our lawyers.”
And maybe the worst part? It works.
By the time the facts are checked, the damage is done. The person is gone. The apology is buried. And the rumor is the only thing people remember.
This isn’t healthy skepticism. It’s social enforcement with bureaucratic muscle.
And when public officials, those of us in power, treat outrage as a license to threaten permits or funding or regulatory action, we aren’t defending decency. We’re hollowing out the very principle we swore to protect.
When Free Speech Works
Alright, it’s easy to focus on the ugly edge cases, where speech is cruel, offensive, or reckless. But that’s not the whole story. Free speech doesn’t just protect the fringe. It also makes space for the kinds of voices that have moved this country forward.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t have institutional power. He had words. Sermons, letters, marches, protests. His tools were constitutional, not political. He was arrested. Threatened. Dismissed as a radical. But because his speech was protected, it couldn’t be shut down.
And in the end, that speech changed laws.
The same is true for the gay rights movement. For decades, the mainstream response to LGBTQ people was silence or suppression. But slowly, free speech did what it always does when it’s protected: it gave people room to tell the truth. Authors, artists, activists, and neighbors came out publicly, made their case, and persuaded the country to listen. Not because the government mandated it, but because the Constitution guaranteed their right to speak.
That’s the beauty of a system that defends even unpopular voices: sometimes, it turns out those voices were right.
The Discipline of Free Speech
So no, it’s not that I expect human nature to change. The Founders didn’t either. And at some point, we have to stop pretending it will.
That’s the whole point. The Constitution wasn’t written to reflect who we hope to be. It was written to contain who we are.
That’s why they crafted the First Amendment the way they did. Not to flatter us, but to restrain us. Not because we’d naturally protect minority voices, but because we probably wouldn’t, unless the law forced us to.
The guardrails are there because the road gets narrow, especially when emotions run high.
But here’s the good news: the system still works when we choose to honor it. It works when we pause before piling on. When we ask for facts before forwarding a rumor. When we defend someone’s right to speak, even when we wish they wouldn’t.
The First Amendment won’t keep us from being petty, impulsive, or vengeful. But it gives us the structure to be better.
If we let it.
And that’s the choice every generation has to make. Including ours. Especially when the government starts hinting that a late-night joke is grounds for silencing an entire network.