Free Speech Is Under Attack
It wasn’t long ago that freedom of speech was a universally accepted American principle. Now we find strong opposition to it from both the right and the left. Donald Trump has threatened to revoke his critics’ broadcast licenses. The New York Times ran an article titled “Free Speech Is Killing Us.” Colleges restrict the open expression of ideas to tiny “free speech zones” and sometimes require filing applications even to use those places. People regularly mock “free speech” with scare quotes.
The threat to freedom of expression is broader than any one political position or party. It’s part of a general authoritarian trend, the idea that giving broad power to the “right” people is the solution to our problems. If this goes on, we don’t know which set of censors will end up placing the gags on us. What we do know is that the defenders of free speech have to be more vigorous than ever in their efforts.
The case for free speech
Freedom of speech is a basic human right. We don’t have it because the First Amendment “gives” us the right; we have the First Amendment in recognition of our right. Human society can’t exist without communication of ideas. Whoever claims the authority to silence ideas is claiming the authority to control our lives.
Censorship has always been a tool for those in power to keep their grip on it. Forbidden speech has been called “sedition” and “blasphemy.” America has experienced political censorship in spite of the Bill of Rights. Not long after the American Revolution, the Federalists passed a law to criminalize insults against their government. During World War I, people got long sentences for opposing the war.
John Stuart Mill gave four strong arguments for free speech in his On Liberty.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
And not only this, but fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but encumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Those are important considerations, but there’s a simpler and more basic reason for not outlawing the expression of ideas: It’s a victimless crime. Thomas Jefferson made this point in his Notes on the State of Virginia:
It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
The only cases where free speech isn’t a right are where it leads directly to injury: fraud, threats, libel, direct incitement to violence, and the like.
Speech in the private sphere
Violations of this right generally come from governments. Private parties can also violate it by resorting to force: beating up or shouting down a speaker, threatening violence, vandalizing bookstores, or conducting denial-of-service attacks on the Internet. There’s another aspect of free speech, though, which applies to the private sphere.
We aren’t talking here about a right which may not be violated, but of a principle of conduct which people should observe where they reasonably can. Anyone who operates a private forum can set its rules, including restrictions on the ideas allowed, but there is a benefit to open forums that allow unhindered debate. Mill’s four arguments apply as strongly there as to the sphere of legislation.
Let’s take a look at Randall Munroe’s XKCD cartoon on “Free Speech.” It makes some good points but contains errors. It’s a good jumping-off point for discussing what private forums should allow. Unlike most of his cartoons, this one has just a single character directly addressing the reader.
He starts by saying, “The right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say.” It actually means a lot more than that. The government can’t penalize you in any way for the beliefs that you express. It can’t refuse to employ you, deny you the vote, or withhold benefits.
But the subsequent panels show that’s a secondary issue, so let it go for now. “The 1st Amendment doesn’t shield you from criticism or consequences. If you’re yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an Internet community, your free speech rights aren’t being violated.” That’s entirely correct.
But he refers to the reader’s views as “bullshit” and concludes that “the people listening think you’re an asshole, and they’re showing you the door.” Those words suggest a presumption that the people doing the yelling, boycotting, and banning are in the right by default, and the ones they target offer nothing of value. He’s assuming, in effect, that the unpopular view is the wrong one.
Once the members of a community make that assumption, they find more and more “assholes” to exclude. After Thomas Paine published The Age of Reason, criticizing Biblical literalism, he became a target of derision and lost most of his friends. His role in promoting the American Revolution was written out of the history books for many years. Colleges, which should be foremost in promoting open debate, too often discourage unpopular views in subtle or not so subtle ways.
In Free Speech for Me — but Not for Thee, Nat Hentoff wrote:
On campus after campus, from Brown to Stanford, I have talked to students who say there are some views they hold — or questions they want to ask — that they no longer bring up in class or in most places out of class. It’s not worth the hassle — or being placed in Coventry.
The book was published in 1992, but the situation on many campuses hasn’t improved since then.
Private forums can set limits, and most of them set some. Excluding personal attacks, doxing, advocacy of violence, and deliberate misinformation is reasonable. Providing a forum just for people who hold certain views is fine, as long as it’s clearly represented as such. But as much as possible, open forums should allow all points of view, including unpopular ones. Let the indefensible ones get shot down in public debate.
“Hate speech”: the new blasphemy
Opponents of free speech try to advance their cause with the invented category of “hate speech.” According to a 2014 poll, 51% of Democrats support a ban on such speech. A 2017 survey found that four college students in ten claimed that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “hate speech.”
There is, of course, no such exception in the Constitution. The term doesn’t even have a coherent meaning. Taking the term literally, you might think it meant any utterance which expresses hatred for something or someone. But it’s never used that way. Like “blasphemy,” “heresy,” and “sedition,” it simply means speech which someone hates.
Rants on behalf of politically acceptable positions, no matter how intemperate, are never “hate speech.” Bill Maher said in public, “Yesterday, David Koch, of the zillionaire Koch brothers, died of prostate cancer. I guess I’m going to have to reevaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer.” Did anyone, even among the many people who suffer from the disease or have lost loved ones to it, call that vicious statement “hate speech”? It’s the political acceptability of the statement, not the degree of hatred it expresses, that sets the boundaries.
Who will hold the muzzle?
People who want to cut back or destroy free speech always assume they’re the ones who’ll set the terms. They think that only ideas which they don’t like will be censored. If they’re in positions of governmental power, they might be right in the short term. But unless they’ve eliminated all effective opposition, the power they hold will eventually slip into someone else’s hands. The new regime may decide it’s had enough of censorship and expand freedom, or it might be looking for revenge and eager to exercise its newly acquired power.
But I’m not talking “slippery slope” here. I’m not saying, “It would be great if we could just censor the people who deserve it, but unfortunately it won’t stop there.” If you don’t believe in free speech for people with views you despise, you don’t believe in free speech.
Advocates of censorship like to play the role of victims. They’re “triggered” by hostile statements, or they’re the targets of “fake news.” They just want more fairness in the world. But once they hold the muzzle, they discover lots of opportunities to place it over voices they don’t like.
Which people will be doing the muzzling, and which ones will be muzzled? We don’t know. That should be reason enough to steadfastly oppose any and all attacks on freedom of speech.
