Introduction

Summary

The government is unique among speakers because of its coercive power as sovereign, its considerable resources, its privileged access to key information, and its wide variety of speaking roles as policymaker, commander-in-chief, employer, educator, health care provider, property owner, and more. The government’s expressive choices—and by this I mean the government’s choices about whether and when to speak, what to say, how to say it, and to whom—are neither inevitably good nor evil, but instead vary widely in their effects as well as their motives. Through its speech, the government informs, challenges, teaches, and inspires. Through its speech, the government also threatens, deceives, distracts, and vilifies. This chapter shines a light on the government’s speech in its many manifestations, with its vast array of audiences, topics, means, motives, and consequences. The more we recognize the volume and variety of the government’s speech in our lives, the more thoughtfully we can puzzle over its constitutional implications. After identifying some of the motivations for and consequences of those choices, this chapter introduces available options for constructively influencing them.