stoutfellow

My current bus book is Akhil Amar's America's Constitution: A Biography - a fascinating book, and one I hope to review after I'm done reading it. Amar, among many other things, focuses in on specific phrases, illuminating their origin and purpose. One striking example: Article I, Section 6 says (among other things), of Senators and Representatives, that "for any speech or debate in either house they shall not be questioned in any other place." In essence, this is a declaration of freedom of speech for members of Congress, and it was deemed necessary because of the occasional executive habit of prosecuting legislators for treason, for speeches they had made in the legislature. Amar points out that it was quickly recognized that this immunity - for incumbents - had to be balanced by a comparable immunity for possible challengers, and that this was one of the sources of the guarantee of free speech for all in the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, I am also reading Alan Paton's Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful. (I love Paton's prose; he's one of the most lyrical novelists I've ever encountered.) There is a scene, early on, in which a South African white, who is involved in an anti-apartheid movement, is called in by the police in connection with a meeting he had presided over:

- Did one of your speakers say that it was an education designed to prepare black children for slavery?
- Yes.
- Did you call him to order, and ask him to withdraw the expression?
- No.
- Why not?
- It was a student debate. Such things happen frequently in student debate. If you were to examine Hansard, captain, you would find that the same kind of language is used in Parliament.
- Parliament is privileged, Mr. Mainwaring, but NUSAS is not. When you say that the Minister of Education has designed an education which will prepare black children for slavery you are gravely defaming the Minister.

I have nothing more to say, except that it was interesting to encounter those two passages in close order.