Understanding the Paradox

The paratroopers' paradox has survived the classical, modern, and reformist scenarios. Because the paradox remains, each scenario will continue to perplex its respective audience­­and well it should. As long as each scenario fails to capture the larger play of forces among them all, its adherents will not understand the fullness of the dizzying paradox.

Understanding the paradox, we must admit, creates a profound conflict in our first­amendment jurisprudence. The fundamental tenets of the traditional first amendment­­its anticensorial command and its public discourse rationale­­ suggest two different directions for governmental action. With regard to abridging speech, its operative principle is both hands­off and hands­on.

Indeed, Huxley understood the magnitude of the paradox and its constitutional significance:

The best of constitutions and preventive laws will be powerless against the steadily increasing pressures of . . . advancing technology. The constitutions will not be abrogated and the good laws will remain on the statute book; but these liberal forms will merely serve to mask and adorn a profoundly illiberal substance. ¹⁵⁸

Huxley and the paradox challenge us to consider: How do we empower the first amendment? Must we­­and can we­­recast the first amendment to reconcile old­ world Orwellian principles with new­world Huxleyan predicaments? Do we really wish to act upon the knowledge of the paradox?