7 July 2020

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Free Speech Letter Signatories Get it Wrong
 

Harper's Magazine, a publication of intellectuals and would-be smart people, has published a letter signed by such luminaries as Salman Rushdie, JK Rowling, Noam Chomsky and Malcolm Gladwell. In the letter, the signatories opine that free speech is under attack.They conflate government use of force to prevent speech in all its forms with public reaction to speech that the public dislikes. One hesitates to be argue against such luminaries who have suffered far more in defense of free speech than oneself. At the same time, they are almost entirely wrong in their argument.

The letter begins, "Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second."

One wonders what history books these people have been reading. Tolerance of dissent has never been popular, even where governments have allowed it to exist. The human race does not like its cosy ideas of the world challenged. Galileo is one such example. But in his case, the authorties punished him with canon and temporal legal punishments. Society as a whole largely ignored him because most people could not read,let alone afford, his books.

The letter continues, "The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides. The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty."

In other words, this is what-about-ism posing as serious thought. The Nazis at Nuremberg sought acquittal because their Soviet judges represented a regime no less evil. They were hanged anyway. Just because one cannot arrest Al Capone does not mean John Dillinger should go free.

They complain, "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."

One can but laugh. These are not the acts of the state, and therefore, cannot be infringement on freedom of speech. Instead, each of these is an economic problem, one of commerce. Publishers and newspaper owners fire editors all the time, occasionally for a reason rather than a whim. Books are withdrawn because they won't sell. Journalists at an aviation magazine have no business writing about coal mining. Professors quoting literature in class should always be questioned. Circulating a peer-reviewed academic study is more problematic. And heads of organizations ousted for mistakes reminds one of the principle of ministerial responsibility in a Westminster-style democracy. Someone must take responsibility.

It is that last word that the signatories have missed. Free speech does not mean free of consequences. One is free to tell one's spouse that they have become unattractive. To expect no response is silly. Criticism inevitably will provoke a defensive reaction.

As John Locke put it, the freedom of one man's fist ends where the nose of another begins. Speaking one's mind is a great thing. To be taken to task for it ought to be expected. So long as the state does not use its monopoly of force to silence dissent, there is no free speech issue at stake. What is at stake is their ability to speak their minds without negative response. That is not a right.

© Copyright 2020 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.


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