The Progressive Argument for Free Speech
A reader sent me a link to this critique, sort of, of free speech in the Daily Princetonian. I say "sort of" because I thought the thinking and logic of the article was pretty muddled, so much so that I am not even totally sure what point they are trying to make, exactly, though it clearly is meant as a critique of Conservatives defending free speech. Frankly I was pretty depressed that a Princeton philosophy major couldn't write in such a way as to make even their thesis clear.
Anyway, the comments are closed and I still feel enough of a connection to Princeton that I wanted to at least try to engage the students, so I wrote this back:
I didn't find your Daily Princetonian article of 9/25 particularly compelling, in part because you don't engage with defining an alternate regime if you toss out free speech. "we don't need to hear any more form group x or y" is a fine policy for setting up your personal Twitter block list, but how does it work in a democracy? Everyone assumes when they advocate for such controls that they and their fellow believers will be the ones controlling, but do you really believe that? After the last election? What if a President Lindsey Graham (god forbid) were to take your rules advocating for getting rid of hate speech and define hate speech as advocating for abortion rights? The ACLU didn't famously defend the speech rights of the American Nazi party because it liked Nazis -- it defended them because they were justifiably afraid that the precedent of speech limitation might someday be used to restrict speech far more dear to them.
This is why I think Progressives are making a huge mistake in opposing free speech, on their own terms.
Speech codes are written by and for the privileged. They are written by the oppressor to shut up the oppressed. George Wallace did not need the First Amendment, black kids trying to go to the University of Alabama needed it. So the progressive opposition to free speech (e.g BLM shouting down the ACLU over free speech) is either 1) completely misguided, as the oppressed need these protections the most or 2) an acknowledgement that progresives and their allies are now the privileged, that they are the ones in power, and that they wish to use speech codes as they have always been used, to shut up those not in power. In our broader society the situation is probably #1 but on university campuses we may have evolved to situation #2.
The folks who wrote the first amendment were thinking about this dynamic. Had they instead decided to write a speech code, it likely would not have been good. It might well have banned the criticism of slavery, for example, if Jefferson and his Virginians had anything to say about it. But they didn't create a speech code, thank god. In fact, I am trying to think of any time in history I would have been comfortable with the ruling elite locking down the then-current norms of their society into a speech code, and I can't think of one. What gives you confidence, vs. the evidence of all history, that you can do so today with good results?
