It stands to reason that free speech laws protect especially speech disliked by those in power. Otherwise, there would be no need for a law. However, free speech on its own is only a negative principle, and governmental respect of rights has never and will never be enough to sustain a civilized society.
What do I mean when I say that free speech is a negative principle? The First Amendment does not tell us what we should say or what speech means; it simply says that whatever it is, the government ought not to get involved. It is concerned with rights rather than what it right. Take, for example, flag burning. Flag burning is a form of expression that I think should be counted under the First Amendment and protected in this country. After all, is speech to be free only if it is patriotic? Where is that constitutional caveat? No, those who protest this country should have the right to speak their minds. Indeed, they have the exact same right to speak as one who praises America. Neo-nazis have the same rights as peace protestors who can speak as freely as pulpit clergy who in turn have as much of a voice as Black Lives Matter. This is what makes America unique – we say that the government has no power over the speech of any of these individuals.
However, this legal principle has led to a modern turn on the political right, in which all speech is viewed as equally valid and anyone who is offended by, say, a neo-nazi sending them pictures of gas chambers somehow has a weak character and is viewed as too childish and soft to deal with American freedoms; they must need their safe space. In other words, a legal negative principle (that the right to free speech shall not be infringed) has come to mean that all speech is beyond moral castigation.
This happened the same way everything in 2016 has happened: Too many years of unbearable progressive puritanism and doublespeak has fueled a partisan hatred of the left; anything that even smells like Barack Obama or his administration is indelibly tainted and must be purged from the conservative ranks. Therefore, since Social Justice Warriors say that praising America is an act of violence and asking someone to play golf is a microaggression, all speech must be equally morally valid. If that logic sounds absurd, it’s because it is. If there is one lesson I have learned from the kulturkampf of this year and this election cycle, it is that two wrongs do not make a right.
The left’s delusion does not mean that gas chambers are a joke, or that any jerk off the street deserves to say his piece in one’s home or business. More important: If someone at my dinner table cries “To the gas chamber with you,” it is not a moral weakness to kick him out of my house. On the contrary, it is moral strength; it is hating evil. But in 2016, hating evil is equivalent to needing a “safe space” free from being offended. Call it whatever you like; I’m willing to bet you would not allow just anyone to come onto your private property, to your business, or even up to you in the street and speak their mind with impunity. If, for example, you are walking with your mother down a public road and someone starts hurling verbal abuse at her and you do not get offended, you are the worst sort of cretin. True, no number of words will twist your ankle, but it is just as true that honor often demands a response to effrontery, especially when it is not our own honor we are defending.
What I am saying, in other words, is that free speech is more of a rule for what the government cannot do than a guiding principle for life. As a moral principle, it fails the same way that libertarianism fails generally. That philosophy does not recognize the need for a shared moral code in society. The United States Constitution limits government censorship of speech but never tells us what man is or what happiness he ought to pursue. It does not explain that no matter how law-abiding a citizen may be, there will never be neighbors living in peace so long as there is contempt between them. It does not and cannot explain what peace is, or what neighbors are, or that speaking in a certain way will inevitably make people hate you, and that this is natural and human and just. That is because the constitution only limits government power and trusts other moral authorities to guide man in forming a functioning society, a role fulfilled at the time of the constitution’s writing by religion.
It slanders the founders to say they considered all speech that is legal to be right. It is false to assume that they sought no Judeo-Christian peace and love of their neighbors and always spoke whatever dark thought entered their minds. This is to attribute to the Founders a post-modern nihilism, a view of society in which every individual truly is detached from the common good. Not merely declining to centrally legislate for the common good, but rather failing to care about it at all, which is madness.
The notion that society will survive just as well with every man truly caring only about his own affairs goes not against the legal but against the moral core of our country. It is a cruel nearsightedness warned against by the holy texts of our religions, in which “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours,” a society of alienation, detachment, and moral turpitude.
It leads to a situation in which base opportunists with racist followers are defended by conservatives when they are kicked off Twitter. True, Twitter is run by progressives with a double standard. But two wrongs do not make a right. People from whom the average conservative would have categorically distanced themselves ten years ago are defended with the perennial argument that got Mr. Trump nominated, the argument that the left does worse all the time.
A man who says whatever he wants is a slave to his worst impulses. Though the government should not stop him, he should stop himself, and we should look down on him when he doesn’t. But instead, we now defend his right to service from a private company, no matter what he says, and call his political views conservative if he makes feminists upset.
All because “the left is worse”.
Two wrongs make a right to free speech, anywhere, at anyone’s expense.
And don’t you dare get offended…
Well laid out. Enjoyed reading.