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Correct position on free speech

Author:		Stephen Waters
Posted:		11/20/06; 12:04:36 PM
Topic:		Correct position on free speech
Msg #:		610 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		524/612
Reads:		9346

I was asked a question the other day, "Now our professor has left us with the question "Who then has the correct position regarding free speech? Do we accept the 'clear and present danger' theory, the 'weighing of competing interest' view, or John Stuart Mill's contention that free speech must be absolute?" I replied:

One of the fine tributes to liberty is the quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. -- He was a poet and essayist while his son, OWH, Jr., was a justice of the Supreme Court: "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." But so far as resting comfortably in one's own ideas is concerned, the ignorance behind one's nose may be a prescription for personal disaster or worse.

If you look at what I've written, they all speak to the same subject:
People sometimes think they are correct when they are not. Since one plans one's future on the basis of what one thinks, to plan based on a mistaken mental map of reality is not in one's long-term best interest. So it turns out that sometimes telling people something they prefer not to hear may be doing them a service. That is why Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black said in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) "An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment."

Martin Luther King told people things they didn't care to hear, but needed to come to terms with. King was selective about when and how. His peaceful demonstrations rested at the edge of confrontation and stretched the meaning of "freedom of speech". Many other protesters were less selective and more intrusive:

• Does anyone have the right to protest service in Iraq loudly at the funeral of an American soldier killed there?
• Does anyone have the right to protest homosexuality at the funeral of someone who died from AIDS?
• Does anyone have the right to protest abortion in the face of someone entering the door of a Planned Parenthood clinic?

The right to say what one pleases does not imply the necessity to say it. If the purpose of communication is to convince by the merits of one's argument, intimidation has no rhetorical merit. Neither can one hope to convince by violating the sympathetic contract -- which is to say, if one is so put off by tactics that the target will not listen, attempts to communicate are bound to fail.

That said, the proper way to oppose offensive speech is with better speech. Censure rather than censor. Censorship is as poisonous as the original offense.

The sorry twist of academia has been to wring the value out of intellectual freedom by proposing rules that outlaw offense to someone else. The implication is it shows lack of respect to offend someone else. That is unsubstantiated, illogical, and follows from no valid premise. If one's mental map of reality is inaccurate, the offense would be to think so little of someone to do nothing. Neither of us is served to leave it that way.

Both religions and pseudo-academia use the purported freedom from offense ploy to establish a protective carapace to try to shield themselves from intellectual examination. The Danish Cartoons of Mohammed are an example. See: "Courage to stand up to thugs"

Over all, two principles underlie society if it hopes for continuous improvement -- doubt and reciprocity.

1. Allowing continuous peaceful change is the only safe way for individuals to invest in society. That kind of system admits *doubt*. Beause there may be a better way, we always have to build into society a process that allows for peaceful change.
2. Doubt means you have to be open to ideas that aren't your own ˜ We call it freedom of speech and press, but it is equally the wisdom to listen. It means acting with *reciprocity*.
3. Those who do not factor in doubt and reciprocity in the practice of society do not believe in society itself.

• Brief version: On what does society depend
• Expanded version: Measured steps toward civilization
• Described in terms of political systems: Why democracy
• From a journalist's view: Journalistic Indifference

Americans elevate freedom of speech and press but seldom promote what is unspoken in the First Amendment -- the freedom to listen and the wisdom of doing so. As Michel de Montaigne wrote 500 years ago, "Why should I not run to embrace the truth when I see it coming." He understood that good ideas were more valuable than ideas that were simply one's own. Incidentally, Montaigne invented the word "essay" and Shakespeare read Montaigne before writing his plays.

So an underlying task often overlooked in American education is not so much to tout the freedoms of speech and press, but to inoculate students with the desire to listen, to constantly improve one's mental map of reality, the better to plan one's very best future.

Well, this was longer than I had expected. And remember, I am not a philosopher. I'm just someone trying to learn how to live life as best I can.

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