Speech Or Silence: Free Speech Is Never Idiotic

Free Speech Is Always A Moral Imperative

Brian Mowrey

generally makes thought-provoking arguments on his Substack

Unglossed

, and I do recommend reading it. However, sometimes his ideas are simply wrong, and this is one of those times. To call Free Speech “idiotic” is simply wrong. To endorse the silencing of opinions with which we disagree is simply wrong.

Spare me your idiotic free speech pearl-clutching

This is far from the case; there are plenty of things I would personally render illegal to print immediately if I had a button that could somehow do the trick; likewise things that I would require to print. It would be illegal to portray the death of George Floyd as strangulation in all defiance of biological reality, for example; or discuss recycling without mentioning that it is largely futile and toxic, for another. In the former case no one would be wrongfully imprisoned for strangulating him. In the latter case recycling would cease as a practice and humanity would be free of those blue bins, and the homeless would cease sorting through the trash as much. Oh, how horrible these things would all be!

The “pearl clutching” which occasioned Brian’s essay was Alex Berenson’s admittedly self-absorbed but still on-point jeremiad against the New York Times for viewing First Amendment protections for speech a “thorny question.”

The New York Times has lost its mind. And by mind, I mean principles and understanding of the First Amendment.

I do not agree with everything that Robert Kennedy has to say. I do not agree with how Alex Berenson says much of what he says. I do not agree with the labeling of concerns over the First Amendment and the freedom of speech as idiotic. Yet while I might debate Robert Kennedy, Alex Berenson, or Brian Mowrey, I would never silence them nor countenance any effort to silence them.

My thesis in these matters is simple: Free Speech is a moral imperative. This I have long believed, and this I have long defended—even writing in defense of the quite detestable Louis Farrakhan when he was deplatformed in 2019, along with social media malcontents Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer.

Defending Louis Farrakhan. Because All Speech Matters

Why am I composing a defense of Louis Farrakhan and not Paul Joseph Watson or Laura Loomer? The reason is simple: I generally agree with what Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer have to say. Defending their rights of free speech is easy. 

Yet it is not just the agreeable speech that needs protection, but the disagreeable as well.  It is not just the popular idea that we have the First Amendment, but for the unpopular idea as well.  No matter how unpopular Farrakhan' ideas might be, no matter how disagreeable his words, he retains the right to speak his mind freely.  In light of the simultaneous banning of Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Louis Farrakhan, I rise first in defense of Louis Farrakhan, not because I agree with his words or support his ideas, but because I despise his words and condemn his ideas; I rise first in defense of Louis Farrakhan because, for me, his is the offensive speech wherein the true purpose of the First Amendment is realized. With full appreciation of the irony in such defense, Farrakhan gets top billing among these latest victims of censorship.

Brian himself writes on topics that Big Tech Social Media frequently has sought to censor and suppress—in particular, the lunacy of the COVID mRNA inoculations.

If the reader is familiar with the ascendant “alt right,” all that I have to say here will be semi-obvious; at the same time as a critic of the Covid vaccines, I trade in censored opinions and would seem an obligate free-speech supporter.

To his credit, his acknowledgement of this forces us to confront the prospect of there being societal value in censorship seriously. This is true whether we read his essay as an exercise in self-contradiction or in satire. Yet whether self-contradiction or satire, the end point is the same: a cynical and philosophically unsustainable depiction of Free Speech as little more than a leitmotif celebrating one’s own political and moral viewpoints. This is not so, and we must never make the mistake of thinking that it is so.

When I say that Free Speech is a moral imperative, I mean exactly that: we are called and obligated to speak our various truths, and to hear the truths of others. Free Speech is foundational to a Free Society, and to the premise of democratic governance. Free Speech is foundational to honest, upright, and ethical conduct. Free Speech is essential if we are to embrace human equality as a fundamental moral truth.

Nor is this merely me saying this for the sake of saying it. The ideal of Free Speech has existed within human thought since antiquity.

Parrhêsia (παρρησία) was one of the cornerstones of Athenian democracy

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The ancient Greeks pioneered free speech as a democratic principle. The ancient Greek word “parrhesia” means “free speech,” or “to speak candidly.” The term first appeared in Greek literature around the end of the fifth century B.C.

During the classical period, parrhesia became a fundamental part of the democracy of Athens. Leaders, philosophers, playwrights and everyday Athenians were free to openly discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in some settings.

Proverbs 31:8-9 charges us to speak up in defense of others.

Open your mouth for the dumb,
for the rights of all who are left desolate.

Open your mouth, judge righteously,
maintain the rights of the poor and needy.

In Isaiah 62:1, the prophet Isaiah proclaims Free Speech as foundational to righteousness.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch.

In Esther 4:14, Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, counsels her to speak up in defense of the Jewish people, when Haman plots genocide.

For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

At the same time, Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 counsels us to be tolerant of what others have to say.

Do not give heed to all the things that men say, lest you hear your servant cursing you; your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others.

While it may be fairly said that Free Speech is a moral imperative much more honored in the breach than in the observance, even saying that leaves us still with the acknowledgement that Free Speech is a moral imperative, and has been for societies both ancient and modern.

That the ancient Greeks would have notions of Parrhêsia , and that exhortations to both speak truth to power and be tolerant of others speaking truth to power are found throughout the Old Testament establish that Free Speech as a moral principle dates back to the very origins of Western civilization. Free Speech is not some passing fancy, or a convenient defense of that which is politically convenient or popular.

Quite the contrary, Free Speech frequently has a price tag. As the truism goes, “freedom is never free.” Often we must sacrifice for the sake of speaking our particular truth, especially when that truth discomfits those with political power.

The execution of Socrates and the house arrest of Galileo both attest to the very high price people have been called to pay for voicing ideas those with political power found uncomfortable. My own cancellation from LinkedIn, and Alex Berenson’s suspension from Twitter, are but two of an endless listing of examples of people that Big Tech Social Media have sought to punish for daring to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy.

Whatever Planet Jeff Zients Is On, LinkedIn Is A Satellite In Orbit

Moreover, the execution of Socrates and the house arrest of Galileo stand as proofs against Brian’s contention that “society functions on taboos”. If society were dependent upon its taboos just to exist, the sufferings of Socrates and Galileo would not be memorable. If taboos were essential to functioning society we would not elevate and canonize Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., while criticizing and condeming George Wallace.

Additionally, whether Brian’s essay is serious or satirical, we are still presented with a number of morally challenging statements, perhaps the most notorious is this aside on racism:

More broadly, what is objectionable about the American cultural religion’s fetishization of free speech (FREE SPEECH!) is that it renders invisible the inorganic suppression of dissent that takes place during any epoch of liberal “progress.” If it were understood that racism is only “wrong” because no one is allowed to say otherwise, lest they be exiled from society, opposition to the liberal orthodoxy might be more widespread.

If we accept the presented thesis that moral taboos are merely the prevailing consensus opinion of the prevailing culture, then the postulate that racism (and, by implication, all forms of bigotry and discrimination) is merely “wrong” because the prevailing consensus opinion says it is wrong follows directly. Yet it is in such dismissal of the wrongfulness of bigotry that we find the clearest refutation about morality and taboos.

If the attitude that bigotry is intrinsically wrong is merely prevailing consensus opinion, then we must reject the reasoning Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., applied to the topic in his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”.

Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?

It takes no great leap of logic to extend Dr. King’s thesis on segregation to cover racism, bigotry, and prejudice broadly. However such mindsets present themselves, they still amount to a fundamental objectification of another human being, and an attempt to dehumanize that other person. If we legitimize such mindsets as being the prevailing consensus opinion, we inevitably invite that same dehumanization be visited upon ourselves.

To count such attitudes as being in any way “moral” is thus to invite nihilism. By direct consequence, racism, bigotry, and prejudice are intrinsically and eternally immoral, regardless of what the prevailing consensus opinion should be.

As the history of Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement itself shows, our society has certainly embraced many morally wrong views. Some have been and are being moderated. Some are still held. Some have been properly jettisoned as being wrong. We are hardly a perfect people, and ours is hardly a perfect society. We do not live in a perfect world. At best, we live in a perfectible world.

However, in order that we might strive to perfect our society, in order to address where our society gets morality wrong, we require honest and open discussion about all things. We cannot have such honest and open discussion if we permit speech to be suppressed based on the whimsy of either a majority or an extremely vocal minority. This inevitably brings us back to my original premise, that Free Speech is a moral imperative. Speech must be permitted, tolerated, and even celebrated, or else we cannot improve our situation.

How, then, do we apprehend Brian’s essay that extolling the virtues of Free Speech is but a “fetish”, and nothing more?

If we take it seriously, then we must reject it, based on the reasoning I have stated herein. If we take it as satire, then we must still reflect on its articulated points, which again leads us to the reasoning I have stated herein, or reasoning very much like it.

Whether serious or satire, the one thing we must not do is accept the points articulated in the essay, for regardless of the intention behind their articulation, those points are to the last wrong.

Society is not held together merely by shared taboos. Morality is not merely a prevailing consensus opinion. Free Speech is not idiotic.

Free Speech is and always has been a moral imperative.

1. History.com Editors. Freedom of Speech - Origins, First Amendment & Limits. 4 Oct. 2021, https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/freedom-of-speech.