Free Speech is not Moral Relativism
One of the most irrational debates that is transpiring in much of social media centers around free speech. To start with, I want to distinguish between the Constitutional protection of free speech and the debates on social media. The first serves a function that is definitonal to self-governance. If government is to be driven by reflection and choice, not accident and force, freedom of speech from government suppression is essential for such public reflection and choice. What’s debated on social media, while being defended under the logic of “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” is far closer to value relativism. This actually undermines the function of free speech, corrupting the virtue of public dialogue aimed at serving a higher purpose (legislative compromise, questioning of values, progressing the human mind toward Truth) with the debasing idea that expression itself is the highest value. It isn’t.
Milo Yiannapoulos has become something of a darling for people on social media to lament the death of free speech on college campuses. Before anyone reads any implications here, there is a problem of free speech on campuses without question. And it has a chilling effect on the development and distribution of knowledge. But protesters who turn violent do not represent the only, or even worst, danger to free speech. The true danger lies in merely protecting expression itself, only excepting calls for violence. This reduces free speech down to being only a form of toleration, which it is not. Doing this is what has allowed the development of the ‘language police’ and the rise of anti-liberal, authoritarian thinking on both the left and right. Words have consequences, including free speech.
Free speech, as a right, protects people from state censorship on the expression of ideas. The Court has shifted from understanding free speech as purposeful dialogue aimed at furthering the public discourse to inclusive protections for pornography and all speech short of calls to violence. In essence, speech has no intrinsic value. Plato labels this sophistry — the disconnection of thought and speech. Our word logic is derived from the Greek λογος which means speech, thought, or word. By disconnecting speech from thought, it allows for the development of more complicated thought experiments and the development of philosophical inquiries. But it also allows for the construction of meaningless phrases, intellectual dishonesty, and a fundamental decay in intellectual integrity. Careers are made from this deprecation, many in the academy, so the fundamental sheering of thought from speech, of conviction from expression, has been inculcated into our collective collegiate consciousness. But it is disastrous to construct the arena of free speech this way. In doing such a thing, it neuters free speech from being able to make value judgments which, fundamentally, is the purpose of making free speech a right.
This isn’t to say that the state should censor things it finds morally odious. It does mean the public dialogue does not have to include every expression which exists. Those who advocate for such a position claim a kind of moral superiority when, in fact, it is actually a form of moral vacuousness which they are promoting. The purpose of free speech is to facilitate the purpose of government, namely to provide an answer to “what is the best way to live?” Free speech is intended to protect the expression of the variety of theories pertaining to this question and give an open space for questioning authority. In this sense, freedom of speech is the bedrock of the modern project and not just one derived from liberalism; Bacon’s novum organum is rooted in this same intellectual principle as is the entire scientific enterprise. It’s why so many who are scientists, or who think through the lens of the modem scientific method, are such strong advocates for free speech.
But what is lost in this relativistic frenzy is the fact that no value can withstand the onslaught of relativism, not even the value system which propogates relativism. Thus, by reducing free speech to being expression sans value, we have created merely the illusion of free speech. Free speech is fundamentally aimed at catalyzing the search for Truth and faciliating a dialogue on how we know Truth, how Truth is manifest in our lives and institutions, and the best way to inculcate Truth in the human experience. It is not about undermining the very idea that there is a Truth, only an infinity of truths relative to one’s experience, which is then codified in one’s expression. The system, understood in this absolute way, is a vacuum of moral relativism masquerading as free speech.
Now returning to the subject Milo, briefly, I want to point out that those who cry their crocodile tears for him fail to appreciate that the very systems of thought he hates so much (intersectionality, progressivism) have the same intellectual foundation as that for which he advocates. He is someone who has wrapped himself in a pseudo-intellectual blanket of soft hedonism and stunted libertarianism. The systems he despises are fundamentally moral relativist (all things are socially constructed including truth) who are driven by soft hedonism (denying desires is oppression; freedom is the ability to acquire one’s desires) and stunted libertarianism (you do you). They are flip sides of the same coin. Those who preach free speech as value relativism will not recognize this because, for them, the value lies in the expression instead of the expression indicating the values.
The battle for free speech is a real one but too frequently it’s advocates on social media fail to understand that what they are calling for is laced with the same intellectual framework that precipitated and perpetuates the war they are waging. Free speech is not cultural relativism and reducing it to such is how a shallow, pseudo-intellectual nihilist has become a darling to those advocating for free speech. He’s not a hero; he’s not a martyr. He’s the embodiment of what is antithetical to the purposes of free speech wrapped in the language of dissent, provocation, and victimization. He must be tolerated but he must never be embraced or celebrated. And he, and those of his ilk, should never be the standardbearers for free speech.
