E-Pluribus | Apr. 19, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Oliver Traldi: Let’s Talk About Free Speech
In City Journal, Oliver Traldi warns that when someone says an argument is not about free speech, it’s probably about free speech. More specifically, he takes on the notion that free speech arguments often boil down to where to “draw the line,” but Traldi contends that line of thinking is flawed.
I don’t think that the line-drawing argument holds up. Arguments of this kind are quickly parodied. Say I want to burn down a building, you think I shouldn’t do so, and the reason you give is that arson is bad. Now say that we both agree that if burning down a building could somehow save dozens of lives, it would be right to burn down a building. It would be absurd for me then to say, “This debate isn’t really about arson, but about where to draw the line of socially acceptable arson.” The existence of an exception to the no-arson rule does not mean that I can now wave away the idea of arson as a side issue. Similarly, the existence of exceptions to rules against censorship does not allow its proponents to wave away free speech and censorship as irrelevant or, as Jacobs calls them, “a no-man’s land of rhetorical barbed wire and land mines.”
Even within the realm of free speech, would the advocates of the line-drawing argument accept its clear consequences? If the line-drawing argument is right, then it would not be an affront to free speech to ban, for instance, pornography, criticism of Israel, advocacy of Communism, or negative newspaper articles about certain public figures. Those would just be different ways of drawing the boundaries of free speech; on the terms of the line-drawing argument, they wouldn’t be instances of true censorship. And surely activists in favor of banning such things might at some point become successful, influence institutions, or persuade young people. But such success would tell us nothing about free speech.
In fact, the situation is even worse for the line-drawing argument. If debates about free speech are not actually about free speech, then they must be about something else. But anything else they could be about — harm, racism, social justice, equality — would also be a moral principle that would have exceptions in many cases and that would also be susceptible to the redrawing of boundaries. So, by the logic of the line-drawing argument, these debates could not be about any of those things, either; in fact, no moral or political debate could ever be about anything.
Here’s the whole thing.
Ezra Klein: A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture
While not denying that cancel culture (as he defines it) exists, Ezra Klein at the The New York Times writes that the phenomenon is often more a matter of economics than censorship. On the whole, Klein is more sanguine about the future of free speech than we here at Pluribus, concluding that “we are creating a society in which more people can speak and have some say over how they’re spoken of.”
That suggests a different way of thinking about the amorphous thing we call cancel culture, and a more useful one. Cancellations — defined here as actually losing your job or your livelihood — occur when an employee’s speech infraction generates public attention that threatens an employer’s profits, influence or reputation. This isn’t an issue of “wokeness,” as anyone who has been on the business end of a right-wing mob trying to get them or their employees fired — as I have, multiple times — knows. It’s driven by economics, and the key actors are social media giants and employers who really could change the decisions they make in ways that would lead to a better speech climate for us all.
[…]
Cancellations are sometimes intended, and deserved. Some speech should have consequences. But many of the people who participate in the digital pile-ons that lead to cancellation don’t want to cancel anybody. They’re just joining in that day’s online conversation. They’re criticizing an offensive or even dangerous idea, mocking someone they think deserves it, hunting for retweets, demanding accountability, making a joke. They aren’t trying to get anyone fired. But collectively, they do get someone fired.
In all these cases, the economics of corporations that monetize attention are colliding with the incentives of employers to avoid bad publicity. One structural way social media has changed corporate management is that it has made P.R. problems harder to ignore. Outrage that used to play out relatively quietly, through letters and emails and phone calls, now plays out in public. Hasty meetings get called, senior executives get pulled in, and that’s when people get fired.
Read it all here.
Lora Burnett: There Is Only Culture
Over at Arc Digital, Lora Burnett goes further than Ezra Klein and declares that cancel culture does not even exist, suggesting that any non-governmental effort to interfere with free expression is simply itself a type of free expression. She argues that “cancel culture” is just a recycling of the “political correctness” era of the 1990s and suggests there is no evidence of dire consequences that were feared at the time. However, Burnett does not appear to consider that the pushback against political correctness may at least in part be responsible for reversing the tide. In any case, her perspective is worth reading.
There is no such thing as “cancel culture”; there is only culture, the collective formation of preferences and tastes within the broad framework of free speech, a free press, and freedom of association, as established by the First and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution.
Free speech, a free press, and freedom of association include an editor’s right to refuse to publish a writer, a private corporation’s right to refuse to advertise on a particular program, a social media platform’s right to refuse to host content inconsistent with the public image the platform is trying to maintain.
[…]
Now, writers on this platform and many other platforms are free to continue to insist that “cancel culture” is real. They are free to insist that it is not only real, but also new, or newly powerful. They are free to insist that this real, new, powerful “cancel culture” is the greatest threat to free expression or the thoughtful interchange of ideas we face today. In short, they are free to be wrong.
But I would ask them a simple question: please explain how “cancel culture” is different from “political correctness.”
[…]
I would love for those horrified by “political correctness running amok” to grace us with an explanation of the fine distinctions between “political correctness” and “cancel culture.” Of course, to concede that “cancel culture” is a new name for an old phenomenon would be a fatal blow to the argument that “cancel culture” is both new and different. Thus I anticipate a preciously ornate taxonomy.
As to the old argument that “political correctness” was going to be the ruin of conservative speech or, as some might put it today, “viewpoint diversity” in the public square, how has that panned out? How many media outlets with a national audience consistently published extreme right-wing views or even moderate right-wing views in the 1980s and 1990s? Do you think the opportunities for right-wing thought to enter the mainstream are fewer now than they were in 1988 or 1991?
Read the whole thing here.
Around Twitter
It’s a good thing we have a Constitution then.
We may be biased, but “e pluribus unum” sounds good to us.
Civil asset forfeiture or due process? Pick one.
Did congressional pressure on Apple results in Parler’s restoration to the App store? Rep. Ken Buck seems to think so.
