Opinion: “Free speech” can't make Silicon Valley a utopia; its consequences are just way, way better than restrictionism's
Image from the 2018 movie adaptation of Fahrenheit 451
At Opp Now, we enjoy daylighting (and treating respectfully) alternate viewpoints traditional media ignores. But lest we wear rose-colored glasses about “free speech,” City Journal reminds, below, of its challenging implications. Though diverse self-expression can't create a *perfect* society, the alternative (speech-restrictionism) makes for far worse: a culture that's “morally inferior,” conflict-avoidant, and biased towards privileged elites.
This brings us to the key point: when we debate the desirability of free speech, we should keep in mind what we’re comparing free speech to. And what we are comparing it to, if we do not accept the utopian indulgences of would-be censors, is a predictably malignant culture. Epistemic reasons are often cited as the foundation of support for free speech—that is, freedom of speech leads to truth. This is, I believe, broadly right. But it is a difficult proposition to prove, and if it applies, it does so only over the long term. During any stretch of time, free speech is not going to guard a government or organization against making some grave errors. The epistemic argument, even at its strongest, will always be liable to leave hostages to fortune, and we cannot simply stipulate that all the truths it permits us to uncover are worth the few, perhaps especially pernicious, falsehoods it allows to spread; this line of reasoning implicates a complex set of value judgments, and those with different worldviews are unlikely to agree about which truths are so important as to merit tolerating which falsehoods.
Fortunately, in the meanwhile we have a surer and more grounded reason to value free speech: not so much for the truths it may reveal as for the vices it keeps in check. We must not content ourselves with a contrast between the inevitable messiness of a free-speech regime and a sanitized version of speech-restrictionism. In practice, the alternative to free speech is, frankly, a morally inferior culture. Speech restrictions cultivate the taking of offense, rather than the development of measured and sober rebuttals to ideas that bother us. Because rules about speech, to have any teeth, need officers to enforce them, they undermine face-to-face resolution of tensions between peers and colleagues and push ordinary slip-ups of communication into the province of official hierarchies and disciplinary proceedings. Speech controls encourage sweeping condemnations of people based on their worst days or moments, rather than holistic assessments of their contributions to an institution or community. They incentivize performative fragility and the embellishment of wounded sensitivities. They promote unenlightening ad hominem attacks rather than substantive discussion. They increase resentment and alienation, since restraints on speech almost inevitably give a kind of veto over expression to those who are quickest to anger and thereby render the regular person’s ability to participate in conversation dependent on the unpredictable responses of others.
Speech restrictions have not typically taken the form of setting up bright lines around specific words or phrases that cannot be said. Instead, they involve (depending on the historical moment) amorphous injunctions not to give pain or offense, not to subvert the foundations of society, not to undermine morals or religion, not to promulgate hate or bigotry. But as these are inevitably contested categories, punishment gets meted out in a way that cannot but look arbitrary to many. This system foments mistrust and friction between those who should be seeking common ground. It makes timidity and cowardice, rather than plain-speaking and truthfulness, the order of the day. It generates ignorance of one’s own values, and distances us from our own thoughts—for we largely figure out what it is we actually believe through trying out arguments and replying to objections and pushback. But when we’re afraid of the consequences of venturing an idea in public, we lose the benefit of this process of intellectual self-discovery.
A culture of speech restrictions leads us to regard disagreement as a crisis rather than an opportunity. For those who find success in targeting wrong-speakers, it fosters arrogance and a taste for unaccountable power. It prompts us to see our opinions as a kind of property or identity of which it would be wrong to deprive us, rather than as provisional notions about what’s right that demand revision in light of further evidence. It induces a self-righteous attitude that pathologizes dissent rather than accepting it as a natural result of people with different backgrounds and experiences reasoning in good faith.
As the requirements of correct speech are not only essentially vague but also shifting and nebulous, systems of speech-restraint predictably take on the exclusionary dimensions of codes of etiquette and manners. Appeals to “decency” and “civility” then become pretexts for ignoring the voices of those, often from less polished or less privileged backgrounds, who have not had the opportunity to master these codes, and mistakes of phrasing or word choice are magnified into markers of “being a bad person.” Caste loyalties are entrenched, and instead of approaching disagreeable remarks charitably, with an eye toward learning from the other person, a feeling of superiority at having stayed current with the latest shibboleths crowds out a shared sense of civic commonality. Snobbery based on petty linguistic gamesmanship spreads, and respect for real intellectual achievement is lost to an inegalitarianism founded on “not saying the wrong thing.” …
No sensible proponent of free speech ever thought that it came without costs. Even the canonical text on the subject, Mill’s On Liberty, does not (as it is widely mistaken to have done) argue that speech cannot have negative effects on others, but instead provides reasons for why the pros of free discussion nonetheless outweigh the cons.
Read the whole thing here.
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