I was recently watching Sargon of Akkad's live-stream in which he engaged a man in a debate on the street regarding free-speech. What stood out to me was that while Sargon felt that everyone should be able to express themselves freely, he also believed that people should be arrested if for someone threatening to kill a person what harassing another person. I suddenly remembered an American comedian from a few years back. Jeff Durham. His routine involved puppets, the most famous of which was a skeleton named 'Achmed'. Achmed was a dead, rather incompetent and unsuccessful suicide bomber. This character's tagline was, "Silence! I kill you." I remember how back then, how everyone would incorporate that line into harmless humor and how, under Sargon's logic, simply mimicking this character in a text message could be constituted well after the relationship between two people turned sour as a threat. This threat would not only substantiate any fraudulent claims of behavior, it would serve as grounds in itself for an arrest.
I have heard this stance repeated several times since Democrat Maxine Waters openly encouraged people to harass Sarah Hucklebee Sanders. Like Sargon, even the most rational of people have since denounced such statement on flatly moral grounds. However, refusing to engage in debate rather than addressing an argument on subjectively moral grounds or allowing for an exception to the freedom of expression if favor of security seems to no longer be restricted to the extreme left. It seems now that everyone is declaring everyone else crazy and standing solely on the basis of a moral declaration that behavior is wrong. These contradictions seem to be especially true when individuals are faced with questions relating freedom of speech to the sincere desire to preventing violence and extremism. While strongly agree with this emotional assessment, I am troubled by the apparent paradox this position causes with regards to freedom of speech.
Speech in itself is neither threatening nor offensive. It is the individual who FEELS threatened or FEELS offended. The trouble is that this is entirely subjective. Further, should it be illegal to ridicule a person who causes you emotional harm or illegal to express the emotional consequence of that harm? Without the freedom to ridicule wouldn't this enable the most vile of behaviors to become normalized? If laws should only be applied to ACTIONS, how do we distinguish the difference between proper ridicule stemming from inappropriate behavior and harassment? But how does one differentiate from the fear of someone exposing and ridiculing one for inappropriate behavior from that of a legitimate fear of violence? Is this even possible to distinguish? Can speech act to normalize such behavior and encourage extremism? It seems some exploration is necessary to resolve this apparent paradox of logic.
Let's examine freedom of speech through the lens of those who want to limit speech in order to prevent the spread of extremism and see if there is a connection to harassment. The most effective way to ensure extremist ideas do not establish a beach-head in society from which to spread is by highlighting the flaws and dangers of extremist positions in a manner which communicates both the circumstances which most often fertilize them as well as how to illuminate their flaws to others. By encouraging open debate, we arm individuals with the understanding of these flawed ideas while simultaneously encouraging them to develop their own skills of reasoning and debate. This arms individuals with both the ability to counter any instances in which those unsatisfied with the current state of affairs suggest such ideas in such a way that is internalized by their own exploration of the idea rather that standing on any subjective moral authority. Authority is always less successful because without each person being allowed to follow the logic of the claim for themselves, many will suspect they are being manipulated. Those that accept authority willingly are less practiced in developing new solutions will simply dismiss any idea they incorrectly interpret as equal to those that are forbidden out of hand limiting their exposure to alternative ideas say nothing for different implementations. Others who oppose the legitimacy of any authority as a matter of principle will suspect that because an idea is forbidden, the reason MUST be because that idea holds some 'truth' that those in power do not want to be seen.
In addition to providing a defense against extremism, the process of open debate also serves as an tournament venue in which ideas compete to determine which have the highest probability of success before investing resources in an implementation. Contrarily, both of the approaches previously discussed have the effect of conditioning people to assess and discard an idea based on how others or an authority feels about the idea rather than an idea's utility. This effect greatly hinders the ability to find practical solutions as trial-and-error become the only means of assessing what is ineffective rather that logic. This is indeed why the market mechanism of capitalism which allocates resources based on supply and demand is well suited to the method of governance of democracy under a banner of free-speech where every citizen can propose new ideas as well as criticize the ideas of anyone else openly. By encouraging everyone to participate, we ensure the widest net is cast for catching the potential ideas which deal with issues we all face. By using the approach of open debate to refine and test these ideas, we ensure greatly reduce the resources wasted in the planned stage before attempting investing in any implementation by determining which solutions theoretically best addresses the issue or problem. Through this system of constant debate and refinement the ideas and proposals that have the highest probability of success rise to the top. This not only minimizes the amount of resources wasted in trial and error before implementation is attempted but this also ensures resources are allocated to ideas which solve real-world problems rather than to those 'pet projects' favored by people with the most influence.
So if we accept the arguments made above that free-speech both increases the chances of finding and implementing an effective solution with the resources on hand as well as defending against extremism, how did America arrive in it's current state given it's history of advocating free speech? Is free-speech the cause of our current problems or are these problems just a symptom of something tangential to free-speech? To begin exploring this question, let's first perform a little thought experiment.
Assume a country begins with an equal number of voters distributed from the extreme left of the political spectrum through the center and on through the extreme right. Following a bell curve, the majority of voters are around center as undecided and open to convincing by either side. Now, the government declares that any speech subjectively interpreted as extreme-right (Nazi) is equivalent to Nazi ACTIONS and punishable by decades in prison. Most voters agree with this sentiment as they acknowledge the danger which occurs when vile extremist views are allowed to spread. As a result, few protest at laws passed that equate speech to actions for that small fringe minority. However, now a situation is created in which the extreme left is allowed to continue their rhetoric with no equivalent counterweight on the extreme right. The extreme left begins to draw people to their side not by the merit of their arguments but by simply silencing opposition by convincing people that those who are furthest to their right, which to them is far-right but in reality is just the furthest right allowed to speak, are actually 'Nazis'. Given the laws in place equating speech to action, voices on the right closer and closer to the center are silenced and imprisoned. As this occurs and more moderate voices on the right are silenced, the more any conservative voices begin to stop speaking. As this occurs, the more it appears to any new or undecided voter that the majority actually agrees with the extreme left rather that the extreme left being the loudest unrestricted voice that is heard. This trend continues and it conditions those who are uneducated or undecided to believe that the loudest voice on the extreme left is held by the majority of others and that they should consider any mildly conservative views as inappropriate.
Most reasonable people would agree that things like threatening a person with violence, enticing violence or various forms of harassment are inappropriate. As a result, when laws were passes making such inappropriate behavior illegal, most reasonable people took little issue. However, we forget the old adage that, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" Each day, that road appears to have fewer and fewer exists.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, harassment statutes were passed throughout America with the best of intentions. However, what we failed to realize is that the 'free' in 'Free-Speech' is not the same as the 'free' as in 'free beer'. There is an intrinsic cost that must be paid to ensure the freedom of expression which cannot be avoided. This cost is the risk that one will ACT in a capacity that inflicts harm upon another before they can be stopped by authorities. This cost in unavoidable because the principle of free-speech is implicitly unconditional and 'in the event of imminent harm' imposes a subjective condition. The only way to prevent a person from acting is to deny them access based on purely subjective criteria and suspicion. In order to achieve this by any measure, an exception clause must be authorized which violates the principle of free and open expression. This exception by it's very nature not only violates the integrity of the free-speech principle but provides the lever which will inevitably be used by the law to justify even more exceptions.
That's the contradiction and thus the cause of the paradox. As in our thought experiment, these exceptions in free-speech intended to prevent violence wind up enticing violence upsetting a balance. Censorship will start at one extreme end of the spectrum (in our case the extreme right) and work their way towards the center, silencing all opposition until the voice of the extreme left is the only voice that can be heard. Anyone in a position of authority interested in appealing to the masses (Democratic Party impetus) will view that fact that all that can be heard is the voices of the extreme left as evidence that only a small fringe minority disagrees with that voice. Consequently, these politicians will attempt to carry out the suggestion of this voice which will force those who have been up to that point been silent to speak out and they will be targeted and destroyed leading to massive civil unrest and everyone on all sides being convinced they know who was responsible.
And THIS is how we have arrived at our current political shit-storm. Not because of Liberals, not because of Fascists, not because of Russians, not even because our Government. It is because all of us, myself included, at one point allowed ourselves to become tangled inside a web of our own good intentions. We choose to be polite rather than express for the world to see what we truly thought and what we truly felt.
One whom is willing to sacrifice freedom for security, one whom is unwilling or neglects to pay the cost of constant vigilance, one who choose to abstain from their basic human need for self-expression even if done so to avoid conflict... deserves neither security nor freedom.
