Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Ogged questions the slippery slope from restrictions on free speech to tyranny:

It’s dogma in the US that if you give up a strong commitment to the right of free speech, you’re well on the way to tyranny, but we have now several countries with a softer commitment to it and, frankly, we’ve come a lot closer to tyranny lately than they have. So what are the prudential or slippery slope arguments in favor of the American conception of free speech that take into account the experience of these other countries?

Well, in normal times, the US has much stricter protections for negative liberty than many European countries. England has no written constitution, very restrictive speech laws surrounding trials and incredibly loose libel standards. France doesn’t have a adversarial justice system and many fewer protections for people who are arrested or are otherwise in the criminal justice system. Now, of course, the US is in the process of carving out huge exceptions to these hallowed protections, but in the best of times, the US does better on negative liberty.

But I don’t think one needs to make the slippery slope argument to generally defined “tyranny” to defend a broad proection for free speech, but instead one needs to make a slippery slope argument about restrictions on speech becoming too broad. As Jesse Singal argues, once you enshrine certain vague categories of speech that can be restricted – “offensive” speech, speech that offends dignity etc, inevitably these restrictions will be read incredibly broadly and freedom of speech will be tampered down. So, in Canada for example, they are not on the slippery slope to tyranny, but is a world where Mark Steyn is (rightfully, I may add) a martyr for free expression a good one?

Free speech is one of those values that anyone who claims to care about liberalism must hold incredibly dearly. Liberal theorists from Mill to Rawls have put freedom of expression at the top of their list for protected and guaranteed rights because it’s a key component to two key liberal values – autonomy and open discussion. The autonomy argument is obvious, restricting freedom of speech (especially when there’s no “real” or demonstrable harm) is pretty damn close to thought control. As for the value of a multitude of opinions,  Mill argued that only a totally free speech environment could eventually figure out “truth” or good arguments. In short, we need a market place of ideas. And anyone who has any respect for the Enlightenment can tell why this argument is A. true and B. self evident.

Freedom of speech is one of those issues that goes to the very heart of what it means to be a liberal. A liberal who doesn’t support expansive protections for speech, especially offensive speech, can hardly call themselves a liberal. Free speech is a value in its own right, and it’s one that goes to the very heart of what it means to live in a liberal democratic society.