The Case for Unlimited Free Speech in Face of Extremism

As an Irish citizen I am alarmed by America's seemingly unanimous rejection of the most important of negative Human Rights, Free Speech, as almost no other nation on the planet "grants" its citizens such freedom. If America scrubs this negative right out of fear, it will make it near impossible to attain for the rest of the world. So, I will argue in favour of it.

Being a negative right as apposed to a positive right - the right to not have your thoughts and actions interfered with by others as apposed to the entitlement to a service or material objects - the Human right of Free Speech is one of the most natural expectations of an individual and costs society absolutely nothing to allow for and protect. Those who argue for the curtailing of it and the replacement of it with positive rights of the larger society have the burden of proof. They must prove that this natural expectation comes at a greater cost to society than the enforcement of restrictions on Free Speech can benefit it. This negative right has existed to one extent or another in Human societies for thousands of years, helping us shake off the yoke of religious and state oppression, until finally enshrined in philosophical thought during The Enlightenment era. Ever since then it has been invoked by oppressed and marginalized peoples to further expand the franchise across class, sex, and racial boundaries. The people today who call for a curtailing of this negative right in the West are, conveniently, the people who understand least how vital it once was to create the world they now live in.

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

--- Justice Louis D.Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 274US 357, 377, (1927)

The above quote is commentary given by the judge in a pivotal case that guaranteed the Freedom of Speech in the United States of America until this day. The wisdom of these words now appears to be lost on the current generations as political extremism on both ends of the spectrum heats up. Despite their foreparents best efforts to not forget the totalitarian abuses of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, it seems as though history is once-again repeating itself. One political extreme is on the ascendancy, has labeled its opposition as "evil", and is now seeking to suppress the expression of the thoughts and convictions held by that opposition. For the past five years or so the American political establishment and media has turned up the dial on race baiting the citizens, culminating in a breakdown in race relations and the rise of two extremes in the form of Antifa and the Alt Right - loosely organized fringe groups who have adopted racist rhetoric and violence while both claiming to be marginalized in public discourse. President Trump wants to draw our attention to the violent agitation of Antifa (which he has rebranded "the Alt Left") and everyone in the media (from Joe Rogan, to CNN, to Fox News) wants to draw your attention to the racist ideology and speech of the Alt Right. This has created an hysteria in the United States of America and all across the Western world, distracting from the real problem: these are caricatures of two reasonable political positions which have been ignored. The prison industrial complex, environmental racism, police brutality, the rapid disenfranchisement of white Americans, the demonization of men, and the loss of all conservative values - these are all very real concerns which are being ignored and/or caricatured by the media and the political establishment, instead of being discussed in a calm and academic manner with the goal of resolution. Now, both cartoonish sides of this conflict are calling for the limitation of the others speech, either through legislation or social stigma, without realizing this Soviet-style oppression is what brought us to our current condition. If 2017 should have any lessons for Humanity, it should be that Free Speech is not only a negative right allowed to an individual, but a civic duty to be acted upon. Communication, motivated by the desire to co-operate with our fellow citizens - to understand their needs and fears.

“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties: and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary….They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; … that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty and that this should be a fundamental principle of American government.”

--- Justice Louis D.Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 274US 357, 377, (1927)

The proposition of limiting Free Speech is an affront to the individual and society on many levels, but I will focus primarily on the four most pressing:

An affront to me as an individual: I am an intelligent adult Human Being with my own mind. My existence in modern society already comes in an array of limitations upon my freedom and expectations upon my personhood to continually justify my good standing with this society. Just to name a few: I work, I pay taxes, I avoid harming others, I help strangers who are in need, and I perform my civic duty by voting with my best reasoned conscience with both my dollar and in the ballot box. To then further curtail me to the point of climbing into my mind and limiting who I can speak to and on which subjects is an obscenity.

An affront to society: The limitation on Free Speech is fundamentally misanthropic, hateful, and tyrannical. It comes from a cynical vision of "the masses" as mentally incapable of balanced inquiry. It further assumes that "bad ideas" are what causes mass movements, instead of the more scientific view that mass movements are caused by disenfranchisement along class, sex, and racial lines. It's intellectually lazy, as calls for limitation ALWAYS come after the media and/or political establishment drums up hysteria and never explains itself through reasoned debate. What's even more hideous is that the proponents of limitation are almost always playing right into the hands of tyrants who stand to benefit from the social and legislative mechanism of oppression required to impose such limitation. George Bush Jnr. pushed through The Patriot Act, which was then used by his Democrat successor and Barack Obama began the drone strike program which is now used by his Republican successor. You may hand uneven power to the tyrant of your choice, but he/she will inevitably be replaced by a tyrant of greater evil.

An affront to the scientific method and objectivity: We love science these days, for all the great toys it has given us and all the horrible diseases it has cured, but are we willing to apply its rules of logic across the board? As emotional beings we tend to adopt ideas and convictions that aren't necessarily in conformity to reality. We fool ourselves into thinking that we're justified in these convictions if they're popular and/or we surround ourselves with people and media that continuously echos those convictions back to us. We have a variety of opinions today, including: children are born without a gender, race is a social construct, white people are superior, black people are superior, men are inherently inferior, women are inherently inferior, the world is ruled by a conspiracy Jews, the world is ruled by a conspiracy of old white men etc etc etc., and everyone seems to be certain of their convictions and try our best to avoid arguments that challenge them. Objectivity in these matters is reached through the Courts, debate panels, town hall meetings, laboratories, and honest discussion between individuals. By definition, objectivity cannot be reached without calmly entertaining all ideas and convictions no matter how "extreme" they may be. How are we absolutely certain that black people aren't superior and that the world isn't run by Jews? We haven't had the courage to ask these questions, so we honestly aren't certain.

“[The] State should leave purely verbal utterances strictly alone. Language, it is urged, can be a safety valve for feeling which might otherwise find more dangerous expression; debate, even using the most heated forms of argument, has a cleansing power; even the most detestable ideas – the advocacy of genocide, for example - should be allowed the widest possible public expression and then be met by reasoned argument.”
--- Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Ireland, 1973–77)

An affront to personal growth: In the course of a (healthy) person's life they will adopt a variety of positions, informed by their experiences and feelings regarding those experiences. Those positions will change over time, generally becoming less extreme as life grinds them down into resignation, and the focus turns towards the internal life and family. It's called growing up and growing old. The uninhibited expression of these earlier positions is vital to that growth as it allows the person to experience dignity and trust in their own mind. Without that basic dignity a person may stagnate in their worldview, "doubling-down" on their positions as they get older. Another important aspect of an individual's expression is the likelihood they come into contact with people who disagree with them and can give good reasoned arguments against their position. In my youth I was a revolutionary Marxist. I had very certain beliefs and prejudices which made be malleable in the hands of my party as well as potentially violent if I were to be agitated. Because Marxist beliefs are generally accepted as harmless in my society I was free to express them and occasionally be challenged by family members, friends, and people in general. Slowly over time these counter-arguments percolated in my mind and allowed me to (although reluctantly at first) objectively look at the faults in that philosophy and it's multi-100,000,000 deathtoll. Today there are millions of young people out there with horrible extremist views who cannot air them publicly and be corrected, so they will congregate with like-minds and stagnate in those positions.

Conclusion

Those who wish to limit Free Speech have the burden of logical argument, as I've said at the beginning. That is still the case after I have laid out my argument, even though I didn't actually have to do so. The ball has always been, and still is, in the tyrants' court.