Freedom of Speech Exists So We Can Argue About Everything Else

Truth, principles, morals and manners.

Photo by Patrick Robert Doyle on Unsplash

(Audio version here)

Arguably the most persistent misunderstanding about free speech is the assumption that defending someone’s right to say something is equivalent to endorsing or approving of what they said. This is false. A commitment to freedom of speech is a political principle about liberty and power. Truth, principles, morals and manners are separate questions.

When we protect freedom of speech, we are specifically protecting the freedom of individuals to believe and say things that other people think utterly wrong or find appalling. The right of ideas to be spoken only comes into question when someone strongly objects to them on the grounds of truth or ethics. However, we defend freedom of speech because people disagree profoundly about what is true, good, dangerous, blasphemous, hateful or unacceptable. Even when we are convinced that a belief is false or morally wrong, we cannot assume that those in power will always share our judgement. For that reason, a free society must protect the right of dissenters to challenge governments, institutions and prevailing moral orthodoxies.

Yet even people who understand this in principle often experience a degree of moral discomfort. I see this repeatedly when objecting to attempts to censor or punish speech. People who agree that the speech should not be banned nevertheless feel compelled to explain why the belief is mistaken, immoral or offensive. They seem concerned that defending a person’s right to speak will otherwise be mistaken for agreement with what has been said.

Sometimes I feel a little impatient about this and want to say, “You are missing the point. The truth or falsity or the ethics of this specific issue has no bearing on whether or not the speech should be permitted. Please focus on the overarching principle of free speech.” On reflection, however, I think it is both natural and good that people want to discuss the substance of issues themselves rather than the right to hold any view without being penalised for it. This is what we should want to focus on and be able to focus on. The fact that people keep returning to the substance of the issue isn’t evidence that they don’t care about free speech. It’s evidence that free speech is supposed to be a means rather than an end.

Having to continually defend freedom of speech gets in the way of the productive conversations that advance knowledge, enable self-correction and resolve conflict. Every minute spent arguing that someone should be allowed to express a view is a minute not spent examining whether the view is true, false, defensible or objectionable. A healthy culture is one in which people can devote their attention to evaluating ideas rather than debating whether they may be voiced at all.

The liberal goal should therefore be a society in which freedom of speech is so deeply accepted that punishing people for expressing unpopular views is simply not considered an option. Such a culture would not only protect individual liberty. It would free us to focus on the questions that really matter: what is true, what is good and what should be done. To achieve this, we must be able to separate the political principle of free speech from our desire to argue for what is true and good. The first creates the conditions for the second.

A Political Principle About Liberty and Power

The primary reason for protecting freedom of speech is not that people always use it wisely. It is that no government, institution or social faction can be trusted with the power to decide which opinions may be expressed. Even those who do not regard liberty as an intrinsic good should recognise that governments change and cultural orthodoxies shift. Powers granted to suppress today’s heresy may be used tomorrow against beliefs we ourselves hold.

Most people can recognise that human beings have often been mistaken about what is morally acceptable to think and say, and that these mistakes have frequently been enforced through political and cultural power. Taking a broad historical and geographical view makes this clear. During the height of ‘wokeness’, views that could lead to professional or social punishment included “There are only two biological sexes,” “Not all white people are racist,” and “Islam may not be compatible with liberal democracy.” In other times and places, people have been punished for saying “I do not believe God exists,” “I do believe God exists,” “Homosexuality is acceptable,” “Capitalism is beneficial to society,” “Women should be able to hold political power,” or “Interracial marriage should be permitted.”

There are very few people who would not object to being prohibited from expressing at least one of these views. The problem is not simply that some of these beliefs are true and others false. It is that nobody can reliably be trusted to determine which beliefs may be expressed and which must be suppressed.

Liberals who make this argument are often accused of moral or epistemological relativism and believing that all ideas are equally valid. This is a mistake. One can strongly believe there are clearly right and wrong answers to things and clearly better and worse ethical values to hold without being equally confident that the people who accept this will always be in positions of power. The conviction of those who believe, for example, that one religion is factually true and that it is morally imperative to make everyone else affirm it is just as strong as those who believe the earth is roughly spherical and that women are mentally competent adults with an equal right to autonomy as men. Conviction, therefore, is not the safeguard. The safeguard is a political principle that prevents any faction from acquiring the authority to silence dissenting views.

A society committed to freedom of speech accepts a difficult trade-off. Some genuinely repellent speech must remain permissible because the alternative is granting authorities the power to decide which speech is too repellent to be allowed. Accepting this trade-off does not require us to refrain from condemning ideas that are false, harmful or morally unconscionable.

Indeed, one of the advantages of keeping bad ideas visible is that they can be challenged openly. When harmful beliefs are driven underground, they often become poorly understood, romanticised or misrepresented as more reasonable than they are. When they can be expressed in public, they can be examined, criticised and answered. The purpose of free speech is not to protect bad ideas from criticism. It is to ensure that criticism can occur openly and that the strongest arguments prevail through persuasion rather than coercion. This is where truth, principles, morals and manners come in.

Truth, Principles, Morals and Manners

The purpose of freedom of speech is not to create a culture in which everybody has their own truth, anything goes and all moral judgements are suspended. Supporting freedom of speech does not require moral indifference. It does not mean that all speech is equally wise, kind, truthful or admirable.

A liberal society does not abolish moral judgement. It relocates it from the coercive power of the state to the consciences of individuals and the norms of civil society. People remain free to argue vigorously about what is true and false, right and wrong, wise and foolish.

Truth: To establish what is true, we need institutions dedicated to discovering truth as that which corresponds with reality. This requires academic freedom, free inquiry, viewpoint diversity, a commitment to evidence and reasoned argument, and a culture in which errors are acknowledged and corrected rather than denied or concealed.

At present, many of these norms are under pressure. Influential strands of academic thought have embraced forms of postmodern scepticism that cast doubt on objective knowledge and treat some claims as beyond legitimate challenge. At the same time, right-wing populist movements have increasingly offered “alternative facts,” emotionally satisfying narratives and a reflexive distrust of expertise. Although these tendencies differ in important ways, both undermine the norms that make truth-seeking possible.

Faced with ideas that appear obviously false and potentially harmful, the temptation is often to suppress them and this impulse is strongest when directed at the ideas of our opponents. As competing ideological camps become increasingly committed to narratives rather than reality, many people find themselves supporting whichever side appears less irrational, unethical or threatening to their own values rather than asking which claims are actually true.

This is not the answer. At a time when competing political factions are increasingly detached from reality, it is more important than ever to care about what is true and to defend the right of dissenters to dissent. To challenge false and harmful ideas, we need those ideas to be openly expressed and answered. More importantly still, we need criticism from within our own movements and political tribes. Without internal dissent, errors are protected from scrutiny and can become entrenched as orthodoxies. Freedom of speech is therefore not merely a liberty to be protected for its own sake. It is one of the primary mechanisms by which individuals and societies distinguish truth from error. It enables us to test our beliefs against criticism and, when they withstand that criticism, to hold them with greater confidence.

As John Stuart Mill wrote,

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Principles: If we value the ability to argue for our ethical, political, philosophical or religious principles, we should be concerned when particular viewpoints are excluded from mainstream discussion. In recent years, cultural conservatives raising concerns about immigration and the compatibility of some religious beliefs with liberal democratic values, and gender critical feminists arguing for the importance of recognising biological sex, have frequently found themselves excluded from institutional and public forums.

When mainstream spaces close their doors to dissenting perspectives, alternative spaces inevitably emerge. Some remain committed to open discussion and principled disagreement. Others become increasingly insulated from criticism and more vulnerable to radicalisation. As views are driven from shared forums into ideological enclaves, opportunities for challenge, correction and mutual understanding are diminished. It is impossible to know how particular debates might have developed had dissenting viewpoints remained fully represented within mainstream institutions. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to think that open engagement is more likely than exclusion to encourage intellectual accountability, ethical consistency, resistance to extremism and facilitate conflict resolution.

When people are unable to make principled arguments from within their own ethical or political frameworks, those frameworks can become distorted, misunderstood and blended with ideas that are incompatible with them. People gradually lose the ability to articulate the principles underlying their views and instead come to understand themselves primarily in opposition to another tribe. Public discussion then shifts away from reasoned disagreement between people advancing evidence and arguments in good faith. Instead, it becomes a conflict between competing tribes, each advancing narratives, loyalties and selectively applied principles. The goal ceases to be the pursuit of truth or the resolution of disagreement and becomes the defeat of an opposing side. Protecting freedom of speech helps prevent this deterioration. It enables people to articulate, defend and refine their principles in public, subject them to criticism and distinguish them from less coherent or more extreme positions. In doing so, it creates the conditions for the difficult but essential conversations on which a healthy society depends.

Morals: While principles are often carefully reasoned ethical commitments, much of our moral life is more intuitive. People develop feelings about what is good, bad, fair or unfair and seek to understand and articulate those intuitions through discussion with others. This process is important. Most people are not writing philosophical treatises, yet their conversations about what is and is not morally acceptable play a significant role in shaping culture and social norms. When people feel unable to express moral concerns openly, they may begin to self-censor or conceal their true views. This makes it harder not only to communicate their values but also to examine and refine them. Open discussion allows people to test their intuitions, hear opposing perspectives and develop a more coherent understanding of what they believe and why.

Authoritarian movements often seek to control public discourse in the hope of enforcing a particular vision of the common good. Yet people cannot simply be compelled to believe what they are told to believe. When disagreement is suppressed rather than addressed, resentment often grows beneath the surface and more tribal or extremist movements can become increasingly attractive. Protecting freedom of speech therefore serves not only politics and truth-seeking but culture itself. It allows people to explore their values openly, learn from one another and participate in the gradual, organic development of social norms. In doing so, it helps create a society in which disagreement can exist without fear and moral questions can be worked through without coercion.

Manners: Manners exist in relation to this. How should we talk to and treat each other? Do we have a responsibility to be civil and respectful of each other’s dignity? Is this a good strategy for having productive conversations and finding common ground? What behaviours and attitudes should be considered antisocial or just inconsiderate? Is there ever any justification for name-calling or abusive language? Is it worse when somebody in a position of power does this but more acceptable when someone from a marginalised group does it to someone from a dominant one? Is it acceptable to insult or mock somebody’s religion? What about refusing to honour their preferred pronouns or their wish not to be referred to as ‘cis’ or ‘queer?’

Manners matter because they shape the quality of our interactions and the possibility of productive dialogue. Yet freedom of speech requires that people remain free to be rude, offensive or disrespectful, provided they do not cross the line into harassment, intimidation or other forms of coercion. This sometimes leads critics of free speech to assume that its defenders favour a culture of hostility and incivility. In reality, the opposite is often true. Most advocates of free speech value respectful and constructive discussion. They simply recognise that civility is most meaningful when it is chosen rather than imposed. Attempts to police language in the name of protecting feelings have frequently been used to suppress legitimate criticism, shield ideas from scrutiny or compel people to affirm beliefs they do not hold. The question of how we ought to treat one another is therefore best addressed through persuasion, social norms and moral argument rather than coercion. Freedom of speech creates the space in which those conversations can occur.

Freedom of speech is not, in itself, a theory of truth, a set of principles, a concept of morality or a code of manners. It cannot tell us what is true, what is principled, what is good, or how we should treat each other. Those are questions we must answer through continued discussion and debate with each other. What freedom of speech does is defend the conditions in which those conversations can occur. It protects our ability to challenge prevailing orthodoxies, criticise our own side, refine our principles, test our beliefs against evidence and develop our moral intuitions in conversation with others. It allows us to disagree without coercion and to persuade rather than compel.

When freedom of speech is weakened, these important discussions about truth, principles, morals and manners do not disappear. They simply become harder to have honestly. People become more likely to self-censor, retreat into tribes, repeat approved narratives and mistake conformity for consensus. The result is a disregard for truth, poorer ethical consistency, incoherent moral values and political discourse that is belligerent, intolerant and abusive.

Freedom of speech is therefore not the whole of the conversation but it is what makes those broader conversations possible. The political principle exists so that we can argue, openly and without fear, about everything else.

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