A Follow-Up Letter on Justice and Open Debate
Your cultural betters are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for morality, honesty, and kindness have intensified a new set of moral attitudes that tend to weaken the ability of famous people to say whatever they want, no matter how harmful or untrue, without suffering any consequences. Most of us have never faced the indignity of being questioned on Twitter in the way that we did after publishing our initial letter in Harper’s, and we do not care for it. The forces of fascism that threaten democracy have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, and the resistance to that must not be allowed to harden into any form that might be effective or make us uncomfortable.
Some people, even those who signed the letter, have criticized it as being vague. So let us be specific: To ensure the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, we have determined the ideal media mix that all free-thinking humans should adopt. To ensure that we listen to a broad cross-spectrum of ideas, we should endeavor to hear 8% truth, 10% half-truth, 9% falsehoods, and 12% opinions that are unconnected to reality. Propaganda should make up 5% of our information diet, while conspiracy theories should compose 3% and generalized shouting another 4%. Religious quotes, memes, American flags, hate speech, and cat videos are all valid for 2% apiece. A well-considered individual must listen to equal amounts of TERFing and Astroturfing (3% each), and make room for bothsidesism (8%), laments about “kids these days” (6%), racist threats that are a bit uncomfortable but not truly disturbing since they’re against groups we don’t belong to (7%), arguments that dismiss valid points by acknowledging how valid they are and then saying “but” and countering with bullshit (8%), and demands for civility (3%). The final 1% should comprise smug declarations that we’re better informed than anyone else, since we listen to all views equally and without judgement.
The restriction of blatant dishonesty in debate invariably hurts those of us who have power and privilege but would like to appear to empathize with you little people. Imagine what a disaster we’d be facing today if we hadn’t listened to those people who were insisting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? The way to defeat a bad idea is by listening to it, considering it deeply, publicizing it repeatedly, analyzing every reasonable interpretation and dozens of ludicrous ones, and allowing it to dominate the news cycle for several weeks before quietly letting it drop because the person who introduced it has moved on to something even more destructive they want us to adopt. We refuse any false choice between free speech and telling liberals to shut up, because if we are not telling liberals to shut up, then we are not practicing free speech at all. And above all, we need to preserve the possibility that known liars who are obviously not behaving in good faith might somehow start if we just incentivize their bad faith strongly enough. If we won’t defend the very people using the aegis of “free speech” to spread misinformation and hate speech, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend them for us.
