Your Defense of Freedom of Speech is All Wrong
When defending the freedom of speech, people usually use the “search for truth” argument. We need to hear from everyone, goes the argument, because that’s the only way we can get closer to the truth. Or, in the words of John Stuart Mill, “we can never be sure that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth”.
But this argument has never fully convinced me. You have to admit that it’s pretty weak, when it’s used to defend, say, Neo-Nazis. Do we really believe there is something valuable to be learned from white-supremacist publications? Should we be giving any kind of platform to obvious racists in an Utopian belief that this would take us further as a society? Would anyone submerge himself in a pile of excrement, in order to find a nickel? Well, that’s exactly what we do as a society, when we defend the Neo-Nazis right to parade in the streets.
Turns out there is a far better argument for defending the freedom of speech of hate groups and those campaigning for widely-discredited ideas. And who if not John Stuart Mills himself to provide us with it. In “On Liberty”, probably his most significant contribution to Liberalism, he writes:
Allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas
Wait, that’s not it. While a noble idea about the human potential, we know that people rarely change their minds when presented with rational arguments that disagree with them. In his book “The Righteous Mind” Jonathan Haidt mentions a series of studies in which people who supported the death penalty were presented with well-thought-out article arguing against the death penalty, while those who were against the death penalty were presented with a well-written, factual article arguing for the death penalty. In both cases, reading an article presenting the opposite view not only hasn’t convinced anyone. The exercise made people dig in their heels, making them even more certain they are right. So this argument for freedom of speech looks pretty weak as well, especially in light of our modern understanding of human psychology. But Mill continues:
…second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma.
Bingo.
It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one.
Mill argues that contrarian voices, however hateful and misguided they may be, still have a function in a society. By promoting their damaged goods, they recruit not only followers and supporters, but also vocal opposition, often among people who weren’t politically active before, and whose civil awakening can be directly attributed to those bad actors.
A few years ago, when the march of liberal democracy throughout the world seemed inevitable, some intellectuals were concerned that absent a worthy contender, Liberalism will soon become a stale dogma. Today, the rise of xenophobic voices in the West made those concerns irrelevant. Fair-minded people will have to come out of their slumber to reaffirm once again the liberal values we have come to accept for granted. As a result, Western Liberalism will hopefully evolve to encompass new ideas and new forms of well-being.
