When Will they Come for Milton?

The last time I spent any time thinking about Nimitz Library was the day then Secretary of Defense William Cohen handed me the folder containing my diploma from the Naval Academy. Wedged between the diploma and my commission was a slip notifying me that I still had a book I had never returned, and that the discrepancy would be forwarded to my next chain of command. It was the most Navy ending to the most Navy education one could get.

The reality of any other memories I have of Nimitz is that there were places you could hide and sleep as a plebe, but mostly it was the place you tried never to go. Annapolis is a certain type of education, more crucible than ivory tower, and so discussions about censorship and freedom of expression must be taken within the context of exactly what a service academy is. It’s not Oxford. It’s not a place where people go to challenge authority and disrupt political systems. It is a place where every graduate raises a hand and swears to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign or domestic. We promise to serve, and in service we give up some things. We have to do things we do not want to do, go places we do not want to go. We hand over the agency of our bodies and wellbeing to the cause. It’s why we get the parking spot at Home Depot, and it is why we give up our freedom of expression.

Recently the Naval Academy has come under scrutiny for removing books from Nimitz Library and censoring speaking events in adherence to recent DoD guidance. Books covering DEI have been taken out while Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been allowed to stay, and there is justified outrage. For me, though, it is a call to action of a different sort, because the brass at the Naval Academy is not doing something they are not allowed to do. They can, did, and likely always will censor messages and information circulating within their ranks. The superintendent could turn the library into a shooting range if she wanted to. The key question is not how they could do this; the better question is why they should not.

The alarm that has been going off in my head for a few years now is that the West, since the latter half of the twentieth century, has grown so accustomed to liberal progress that challenges to it are met with incredulous hand wringing and cries of fascism, rather than the strong arguments that won progress in the first place. By simply refusing to believe that anyone elected to office might do things that, frankly, have been done before by our very own government, we weaken our ability to articulate why they should not do them. Simply saying “this is not what we do,” when in the near past it absolutely is what we have done, does not work.

Much of what the executive branch has not done in the past is not because it cannot; it is because it was understood to be counter to the interests of the American experiment. Through that context, the debate about censoring books and speaking events at the Naval Academy gives us an opportunity; an opportunity to make a strong case for freedom of speech in a world where it is not simply a protected right we can depend on in perpatuity.

For that, we turn to Milton, who lived at the bleeding edge of the Enlightenment that bore the governing principles every midshipman swears to defend. In Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England, Milton argues that truth is best known when it is put to the test:

“Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

In a world where censorship was not only allowed but the status quo, Milton bore the burden of showing why censorship hurt, not helped, society. It blocked truth. He contended, at great personal risk, that anything worth knowing could stand up to the test of debate; that our most bountiful truths could survive words written against them. Moreover, they needed the test of open debate as a source of competition. Milton introduced the marketplace of ideas, where the strongest and most truthful ideas won the day. The leap to be made is that what was true of seventeenth‑century England is true today in America, or at least within the educated confines of the Naval Academy.

There are, of course, counterarguments. Hobbes would have us believe that midshipmen cannot be trusted with information powerful enough to make them question their charter, or that we must surrender many freedoms in service to peace and that this is simply one worth the restraint. Plato, too, believed in strict control and censorship of curriculum. In this debate the former assumes a world where the content is not yet created, and the latter focuses on narrowing learning to what is important. Neither disrupts the straight line between Milton and the Constitution. Through that lens, it is hard to ask young men and women to raise their hands and swear to defend written principles while also believing those principles will not survive access to some books. In reality, popular sovereignty, government limited by the rule of law, separation of powers, individual rights, and due process have lived through much worse and endured. The strongest arguments against our governing principles have always centered on their unequal application, and in that shortcoming we still continue to strive to become more perfect. It’s that challenge that I swore to always protect. And now I say what many in uniform rightfully cannot.

When we have asked the very most of our men and women in uniform, we have done it in the name of a free and open society.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Find me a book that challenges those words…

In the end, one must choose whether one believes in the Constitution or believes it is so fragile it cannot stand up to a few DEI books. I suspect leadership does not believe the latter is true…and that this is all politics. I am wary of a future where we begin a tradition of carting books in and out of Nimitz based on who won the last election. When will they come for Milton? Who believes that makes for a stronger officer corps?