By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
-Lord Acton
From "Schooling, sex, and segregation" in The Economist's "Erasmus" blog:
In some ways, campus politics in Britain are merely a rather tepid version of what goes on at American colleges, where battles over what can be said on campus, about matters like faith, sex and sexual orientation, have been raging harder and for much longer. What's missing from the British scene is the purist libertarian voice which protects the right of individuals and sub-groups to air all manner of controversial views, from militant atheism to religious conservatism, so long as they do not harm others (as segregation might well do) or incite people to violence. That is something Britain could learn from.
The liberal value of free speech is not about allowing people to say what has the backing of science or what has the backing of conventional norms; instead, it is about establishing individuals’ ability to say what they believe. Free speech is not about ensuring that the truth is spoken. It is about ensuring that falsity may be spoken without threat of reprisal. Whether it is the Westboro Baptist Church or Kurt Westergaard’s controversial cartoons, people should be free to express whatever opinion they want.
However, there are those who seek to ban certain forms of speech in order to prevent the offense that they can inflict upon others, but the problems with such schemes is that they ensure that there will be political conflicts about what should be an acceptable form of speech. B.C.’s hope that there can be a pure libertarian voice in the problem of religion on British campuses is thus a hope that there can be grammatical rules of free speech applied there so that conflicts about religion and identity can be restricted to civil society.
On the issue of free speech, we can see that there is a divergence in the understanding of what is mean by the term which can largely be identified between a conflict between the classical liberal and the social democratic view. Useful here is Adam Smith’s discussion of two different types of rules: a type which is grammatical whereas another which is compositional. He defined the difference in The Theory of Moral Sentiments:
The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar; the rules of the other virtues, to the rules which critics lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition. The one, are precise, accurate, and indispensable. The other, are loose, vague, and indeterminate, and present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it. A man may learn to write grammatically by rule, with the most absolute infallibility; and so, perhaps, he may be taught to act justly. But there are no rules whose observance will infallibly lead us to the attainment of elegance or sublimity in writing; though there are some which may help us, in some measure, to correct and ascertain the vague ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those perfections. And there are no rules by the knowledge of which we can infallibly be taught to act upon all occasions with prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence: though there are some which may enable us to correct and ascertain, in several respects, the imperfect ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those virtues. (TMS, III.6.11)
The divergence between classical liberalism and of social democracy can be best expressed by looking at the ways that the two handle the rules of free speech. Whereas classical liberalism approaches free speech from a grammatical point of view, social democracy approaches free speech from a compositional point of view.
The tension between the classical liberal view and the social democratic view, when the two doctrines had yet to fully diverge from one another and were allied against the aristocracy and absolutism, are evident in two different statements of free speech within the American Constitution, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The American Constitution’s First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen reads: "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law."
For classical liberals, what matters is that certain rules are followed: That the law should have no authority to suppress any speech, and that private citizens ought to respect other people’s speech within civil society, though the classical liberal view no doubt emphasizes the former. The American First Amendment expresses this grammatical view with the simple clause “Congress shall pass no law…” That is a rule which is grammatical in nature, and there is no vagueness within its expression which allows for Congress to act in the matter. It is a rule which simply directs Congress to act in a way which can be perfected by its no interfering in “abridging the freedom of speech.” For classical liberals, what matters is that Congress, or any other legislative body, adheres to the rule of not interfering with the freedom of speech.
For social democrats, what matters is a environment of toleration, and there therefore must be room for speech which harms that environment to be banned. Within The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, there is room for the National Constituent Assembly to define “abuses of speech” for reasons of that body’s deliberation. Freedom of speech is therefore not grammatical, but “loose, vague, and indeterminate.” The manner in which the legislative body may constrain the freedom of speech is left undefined, and thereby provides no rules by which that body may infallibly act towards the general welfare. The government may therefore suppress certain forms of speech, “hate speech,” in order to protect the value of toleration. In order to prevent the offense that a group like the Westboro Baptist Church or a National Socialist party may inflict upon others minding their own business in society, the government may suppress certain forms of speech. Examples include Canada’s government preventing the Westboro Baptist Church from protesting within its jurisdiction, and the German government’s suppression of NSDAP in all its forms.
Overall, the difference between the ways that the First Amendment and Article 11 define the freedom of speech displays the two different ways in which both classical liberals and social democrats think about freedom of speech. The classically liberal First Amendment simply prevents Congress from making any law regulating speech in the grammatical “Congress shall make no law…,” and thereby provides a grammatical rule which can be perfectly put into action. The socially democratic Article 11, on the other hand, allows for the National Constituent Assembly to define abuses of speech which may then be suppressed, and thus for judgement calls to be made as to what should exactly be protected by free speech.
If freedom of speech is to be “loose, vague, and in determinant” and if there are to be judgment calls about what it exactly means, then there is going to be conflict in society about defining it. These conflicts are not simply a matter of people having heterogenous preferences. Instead, these conflicts shall be a matter, as they actually are, about conflicting identities. In the article from “Erasmus,” we see those conflicts about identity boil over in Great Britain’s universities as people try to enforce their own identities as the proper identity of society at large by trying to enforce them. There are necessarily going to be political winners and losers once the conflicts have been resolved, and it is uncertain whether society at large shall even benefit from that resolution.
B.C.’s lament that there is no “purist libertarian voice” within the conflict makes the most sense when considered through the perspective of free speech preventing the need for political winners and losers on topics of speech. The purist libertarian voice being the classical liberal view I’ve identified above of establishing freedom of speech as a matter of “precise, accurate, and indispensable” rules. “Congress shall pass no law…” on the matter of what speech is allowed in society, and so the conflict within civil society on questions of identity cannot be waged within Congress largely protecting those minding their own business from the consequences of those questions. There is therefore nothing to be fought there on the issues, and nothing to demarcate winners and losers on the issue besides what people voluntarily choose to do.
Very few people, for instance, had their lives changed by the recent scandal over free speech and “Duck Dynasty,” and there was no need to call judgment from Congress to interfere with the decision. Some may have been upset at the decision, but they were free to make their concern heard, and to cut off their own connections with those who had made the decision. Everything was contain and handled outside of Congress’ jurisdiction without any reference to political power.
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