On Free Speech: you only oppose it if you imagine that you will be the censor.
I am in favor of robust freedom of speech, and always have been. I’ll give you my “why” in a moment. Regardless, I decided to write this essay after reading this post by Jonathan Turley. Let me say up front: I am tired of people on the left (including and especially those regarding themselves as “liberal”) attacking free speech. It is not only morally wrong, it is self-defeating when we do it.
When I was a teen, the biggest danger to free speech came mostly from the right. Growing up in Texas, the Christian right, particularly the Evangelicals, had a lot of political power. Evangelicals may not have been a majority, but there were a lot of them. Plus, vaguely socially conservative people held Evangelicals in a grudging esteem. The thinking went “I wish I had the spirituality, discipline, and strength to live according to the precepts of Evangelical Christianity, best to go along with their agenda. Maybe their rules will help me live better and be a better Christian.” Throw into the mix the PMRC, co-founded by a conservative senator’s wife, whose goal it was to eliminate good music, and well as the anti-video game crusaders of the time.
These people wanted to eliminate all speech, literature, music, cinema, and any other kind of art or thought that they considered blasphemous, lurid, or just in bad taste. In short, they wanted to get rid of the good stuff. 1 They also wanted to replace evolution with Young Earth Creationism (later nerfed into so called “Intelligent Design”) in the textbooks. My sister can tell you about when she was a teen and the Evangelicals wanted to remove Harry Potter books from the libraries because they promoted sorcery to the youth. Moreover, don’t forget conservative Democrat senators Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton jumping on the video game censorship bandwagon (see here) in response to sex in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Seriously, think about that for a moment.
Where I lived, the right had the power to get away with this. What stopped them? What saved us from having nothing but the Left Behind novels and pathetic Christian “rock” as we attended mandatory church services? Free speech is what. The tradition of free speech and the First Amendment of the US Constitution which protects free speech from government interference. Yay!
Except, now the left (or parts thereof) wants to get rid of free speech. We have law professor Mary Anne Franks, author of The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech who finds free speech to be too "aggressively individualistic". She would instead rewrite the First Amendment to subordinate the right to free speech to the “common welfare” and “domestic tranquility.” We have Dr. Ibram Kendi who thinks free speech is “racist” (under his own unique definition of 'racism'; see also this), because, well of course he does. Or you can read Gavan Titley simultaneously defend his own free speech rights while arguing that free speech that challenges so-called “antiracism” is really only a ploy of some sort, and so does not deserve protection. And on it goes ...
Why do people like Professor Franks, Dr. Kendi, Mr. Titley and the rest think it is a good idea to curtail free speech? For the same reason anyone is foolish enough to curtail free speech: they think they or people who agree with them will be the censor.
I honestly wonder whether Professor Franks or Dr. Kendi are thinking things through when they propose rewrites to the first amendment. On the one hand, we have Professor Franks who thinks individual rights should be subordinate to “common welfare” and “domestic tranquility.” Think about this historically for a second. Remember all those people during the civil rights movement who thought MLK Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and Malcom X’s “Plymouth Rock landed on us” speech were stirring unrest. You know “unrest” that thing that disrupts “domestic tranquility.” Under Professor Frank’s version of the constitution, the right gets to shut that down. Does she fail to understand that speech which threatens an unjust domestic tranquility is the kind most needed? Or does she only favor disruptive speech that conforms to her ideology?
Professor Franks may also want to think how the powers that be are going to interpret “common welfare” when the next Donald Trump or George W. Bush comes to power and decide to suppress speech. Remember that time W's press secretary threatened a popular comedian for saying something unpopular? Well look it up professor, because that’s where your proposal takes us.
Then we have Dr. Kendi who thinks the entire structure of the United States is racist to its core, including the judiciary and police. Yet Dr. Kendi also wants to grant the power to censor to that same racist-to-its-core judiciary and police in an effort to stamp out racist speech. I really doubt he thought that through. His grand plan is to amend the constitution to create a “Department of Antiracism” that would be able to nullify legislation it considered to be racist and even stamp out ideas that it considers racist. Yes, that’s right, he is proposing the same old “if only we had some philosopher kings to rule us” idea that fails every time. Better hope your philosopher kings aren’t appointed under a right-leaning administration. You know, like the time Donald Trump appointed all those far right philosopher king justices to the Supreme Court. You may not get the Department of Antiracism you envisioned, Dr. Kendi.
Dr. Kendi may also want to protect his freedom of speech so that he can continue to make transphobic remarks without the heavy hand of the state censor shutting him up.
But why free speech? Here is my own take on why free speech is a moral imperative. (I told you I would get back to this.) No one has a lock on the capital T Truth, much less all of the smaller truths that we rely on for out practical day-to-day existence.
Repeat after me, “I could be wrong about that.” Being able to admit you could be wrong is the big step in achieving real maturity. This is why open discussion is a good thing. It allows us to acquire new ideas and to test out our old ideas. It allows us to question and refine our values. Why do you think the ruling elites always want to curtail free speech? It’s because they don’t want us questioning their wars, challenging their profits earned at our expense, or otherwise questioning why things are the way they are. That’s why.
Free speech helps protect all of us against the dystopian urges of the right and the left. We need a world where everyone has the right to out the dystopian schemes of Evangelicals or the Dr. Kendis of the world for what they are.
And always remember, if you get offended you have the right to not listen.
I hear the Catholic Church could be just as bad if not worse in Boston.