Why free speech is fundamental
Steven Pinker
Those who are unimpressed by this logical
argument can turn to one based on human
MORE THAN two centuries after freedom experience. One can imagine a world in
of speech was enshrined in the First which oracles, soothsayers, prophets,
Amendment to the Constitution, that right popes, visionaries, imams, or gurus have
is very much in the news. Campus speech been vouchsafed with the truth which only
codes, disinvited commencement speakers, they possess and which the rest of us
jailed performance artists, exiled leakers, a would be foolish, indeed, criminal, to
blogger condemned to a thousand lashes question. History tells us that this is not the
by one of our closest allies, and the world we live in. Self-proclaimed truthers
massacre of French cartoonists have forced have repeatedly been shown to be mistaken
the democratic world to examine the roots — often comically so — by history,
of its commitment to free speech. science, and common sense.
Is free speech merely a symbolic talisman,
like a national flag or motto? Is it just one Perhaps the greatest discovery in human
of many values that we trade off against history — one that is prior to every other
each other? Was Pope Francis right when discovery — is that our traditional sources
he said that “you cannot make fun of the of belief are in fact generators of error and
faith of others”? May universities muzzle should be dismissed as grounds for
some students to protect the sensibilities of knowledge. These include faith, revelation,
others? Did the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists dogma, authority, charisma, augury,
“cross a line that separates free speech prophesy, intuition, clairvoyance,
from toxic talk,” as the dean of a school of conventional wisdom, and subjective
journalism recently opined? Or is free certainty.
speech fundamental — a right which, if not
absolute, should be abrogated only in How, then, can we know? Other than by
carefully circumscribed cases? proving mathematical theorems, which are
not about the material world, the answer is
The answer is that free speech is indeed the process that the philosopher Karl
fundamental. It’s important to remind Popper called conjecture and refutation.
ourselves why, and to have the reasons at We come up with ideas about the nature of
our fingertips when that right is called into reality, and test them against that reality,
question. allowing the world to falsify the mistaken
ones. The “conjecture” part of this
The first reason is that the very thing we’re formula, of course, depends upon the
doing when we ask whether free speech is exercise of free speech. We offer these
fundamental — exchanging and evaluating conjectures without any prior assurance
ideas — presupposes that we have the right they are correct. It is only by bruiting ideas
to exchange and evaluate ideas. In talking and seeing which ones withstand attempts
about free speech (or anything else) to refute them that we acquire knowledge.
we’re talking. We’re not settling our
disagreement by arm-wrestling or a beauty Once this realization sank in during the
contest or a pistol duel. Unless you’re Scientific Revolution and the
willing to discredit yourself by declaring, Enlightenment, the traditional
in the words of Nat Hentoff, “free speech understanding of the world was upended.
for me but not for thee,” then as soon as Everyone knows that the discovery that the
you show up to a debate to argue against Earth revolves around the sun rather than
free speech, you’ve lost it. vice-versa had to overcome fierce
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resistance from ecclesiastical authority. share it. People will expose themselves to
But the Copernican revolution was just the the risk of reprisal by a despotic regime
first event in a cataclysm that would make only if they know that others are exposing
our current understanding of the world themselves to that risk at the same time.
unrecognizable to our ancestors. Common knowledge is created by public
Everything we know about the world — information, such as a broadcasted
the age of our civilization, species, planet, statement. The story of “The Emperor’s
and universe; the stuff we’re made of; the New Clothes’’ illustrates the logic. When
laws that govern matter and energy; the the little boy shouted that the emperor was
workings of the body and brain — came as naked, he was not telling them anything
insults to the sacred dogma of the day. We they didn’t already know, anything they
now know that the beloved convictions of couldn’t see with their own eyes. But he
every time and culture may be decisively was changing their knowledge nonetheless,
falsified, doubtless including some we hold because now everyone knew that everyone
today. else knew that the emperor was naked.
And that common knowledge emboldened
A third reason that free speech is them to challenge the emperor’s authority
foundational to human flourishing is that it with their laughter.
is essential to democracy and a bulwark
against tyranny. How did the monstrous The story reminds us why humor is no
regimes of the 20th century gain and hold laughing matter — why satire and ridicule,
power? The answer is that groups of armed even when puerile and tasteless, are
fanatics silenced their critics and terrifying to autocrats and protected by
adversaries. (The 1933 election that gave democracies. Satire can stealthily
the Nazis a plurality was preceded by years challenge assumptions that are second
of intimidation, murder, and violent nature to an audience by forcing them to
mayhem.) And once in power, the see that those assumptions lead to
totalitarians criminalized any criticism of consequences that everyone recognizes are
the regime. This is also true of the less absurd.
genocidal but still brutal regimes of today,
such as those in China, Russia, African That’s why humor so often serves as an
strongman states, and much of the Islamic accelerant to social progress. Eighteenth-
world. century wiseguys like Voltaire, Swift, and
Johnson ridiculed the wars, oppressions,
Why do dictators brook no dissent? One and cruel practices of their day. In the
can imagine autocrats who feathered their 1960s, comedians and artists portrayed
nests and jailed or killed only those who racists as thick-witted Neanderthals and
directly attempted to usurp their privileges, Vietnam hawks and nuclear cold warriors
while allowing their powerless subjects to as amoral psychopaths. The Soviet Union
complain all they want. There’s a good and its satellites had a rich underground
reason dictatorships don’t work that way. current of satire, as in the common
The immiserated subjects of a tyrannical definition of the two Cold War ideologies:
regime are not deluded that they are happy, “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by
and if tens of millions of disaffected man; Communism is the exact opposite.”
citizens act together, no regime has the
brute force to resist them. The reason that We use barbed speech to undermine not
citizens don’t resist their overlords en just political dictators but the petty
masse is that they lack common oppressors of everyday life: the tyrannical
knowledge — the awareness that everyone boss, the sanctimonious preacher, the
shares their knowledge and knows they
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blowhard at the bar, the neighborhood
enforcer of stifling norms.
It’s true that free speech has limits. We
carve out exceptions for fraud, libel,
extortion, divulging military secrets, and
incitement to imminent lawless action. But
these exceptions must be strictly delineated
and individually justified; they are not an
excuse to treat speech as one fungible good
among many. Despots in so-called
“democratic republics” routinely jail their
opponents on charges of treason, libel, and
inciting lawlessness. Britain’s lax libel
laws have been used to silence critics of
political figures, business oligarchs,
Holocaust deniers, and medical quacks.
Even Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous
exception to free speech — falsely
shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater — is
easily abused, not least by Holmes himself.
He coined the meme in a 1919 Supreme
Court case that upheld the conviction of a
man who distributed leaflets encouraging
men to resist the draft during World War I,
a clear expression of opinion in a
democracy.
And if you object to these arguments — if
you want to expose a flaw in my logic or a
lapse in my accuracy — it’s the right of
free speech that allows you to do so.
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