"The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is"
About this Quote
Oliphant is doing a neat rhetorical two-step: praising American free speech while quietly warning that natives get complacent about it. The line starts as civics-class piety - the Constitution as protective shield - then swerves into an immigrant’s-eye rebuke. “You’ve got to come from somewhere else” doesn’t just mean gratitude; it implies a certain blindness among people who have never felt speech policed, punished, or made dangerous. The value of the right is legible only when you’ve lived without it.
Coming from a political cartoonist, the compliment carries extra bite. Cartooning is a profession that thrives on the exact kind of speech most societies try to manage: ridicule, exaggeration, disrespect. Oliphant isn’t merely celebrating a legal permission slip; he’s defending a cultural habitat where dissent can be noisy, vulgar, and unfair - and still protected. There’s subtext here about how free speech gets rebranded as “good speech” when it’s convenient, then treated as suspect when it’s sharp.
The context is also generational. Oliphant’s career spans Vietnam, Watergate, the culture wars, 9/11, and the tightening security state - eras when Americans periodically rediscover the First Amendment right as a slogan and forget it as a practice. His phrasing frames liberty as comparative, not abstract: you understand it by contrast, by memory. The soft patriotism is strategic, disarming. It invites the audience to nod along, then asks them, implicitly, what they’ve done lately to deserve the luxury they’re applauding.
Coming from a political cartoonist, the compliment carries extra bite. Cartooning is a profession that thrives on the exact kind of speech most societies try to manage: ridicule, exaggeration, disrespect. Oliphant isn’t merely celebrating a legal permission slip; he’s defending a cultural habitat where dissent can be noisy, vulgar, and unfair - and still protected. There’s subtext here about how free speech gets rebranded as “good speech” when it’s convenient, then treated as suspect when it’s sharp.
The context is also generational. Oliphant’s career spans Vietnam, Watergate, the culture wars, 9/11, and the tightening security state - eras when Americans periodically rediscover the First Amendment right as a slogan and forget it as a practice. His phrasing frames liberty as comparative, not abstract: you understand it by contrast, by memory. The soft patriotism is strategic, disarming. It invites the audience to nod along, then asks them, implicitly, what they’ve done lately to deserve the luxury they’re applauding.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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