A few weeks ago, NPR offered a program on “free speech” in which none of the participants took a strong stand in favor of free speech.
In this video, Matt Taibbi (Journalist/Commentator), Nadine Strossen (former President of the ACLU), Amna Khalid (Carlton College History Professor) and Nico Perrino (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) respond to the lopsided NPR presentation. Each of these participants recoiled at the idea that there is such a thing as a “free speech absolutist,” an idea repeatedly promoted by the NPR panel. Matt Taibbi explains:
This idea that we’re free speech absolutist is something that’s been invented by people who are against the who want to regulate speech in a way that i think is new and very repressive. They’re mischaracterizing the positions of people like all of us.
Nadine Strossen further explains:
Government may restrict speech if but only if it can satisfy an appropriately heavy burden of proof if it can show that the particular restriction is necessary and the least speech restrictive alternative in order to promote some countervailing goal of compelling importance whether that goal be public safety for example or individual safety and when you think about it that just makes common sense of course most of us would be willing to trade off free speech for you know public safety or even national security but it’s a fool’s choice to give up free speech if we’re not gaining safety in return or worse yet as is often the case if the censorship no matter how well intended does more harm than good which is typically the case.
Taibbi points out that the NPR panel has no solutions to the “problem” that speech is often unruly and offensive:
It’s so important to our conception of what our society is all about this idea of of being able to express ourselves that is preferable to the alternative. The alternative is that somebody would have to regulate the speech and that’s the problem is once once we get into who’s doing that regulating that that’s where we get to the scary part and they don’t address any of that. All they want to do is, in a very narrow way, say “Oh this libertarian hands off approach to to speech regulation doesn’t work.” But it’s so much more complicated than that.
Amna Khalid accuses the NPR panelists of being myopic, over-focusing on the relatively functional state of American culture compared to the many vast oppressed populations in other parts of the world, where free speech is desperately needed:
In our current moment if you cast your eyes beyond the pond and look at the rest of the world you will see so many examples of how limitations on free speech are a way of shutting down the rights of minorities.
I’ve listened to the NPR presentation and repeatedly heard the NPR panel members attack the straw man they labeled “Free Speech Absolutist.” It is as if those panel members never heard of widely recognized restrictions on free speech, including libel laws, incitement laws, laws prohibiting speech constituting hostile work environments and laws prohibiting fraud. I highly recommend this discussion:
Very interesting discussion. A quick question/comment:
Around minute 55 there’s some talk about how some speech evokes neural activity “indistinguishable” from what’s seen with physical harm.
The speaker doesn’t consider any psychological harm-like responses in people who are being bullied into silence against their will and end up frustrated by not being allowed to express their concerns. That hypothesis is suspiciously asymmetric, as if only certain people’s feelings matter: my fragile psyche is more important than yours.
There’s an implicit principle here that there is an assumption of a hierarchy of psycho-harm that needs airing.
JohnE: That is an excellent point and it does need airing. I’m imagining, for example, a professor whose career has been gutted into going-through-the-motions because he/she is afraid to vigorously engage with students on important topics in the classroom. They clam up because spineless administrators have a propensity to seriously entertain complaints by performative students who pretend that offensive speech is the equivalent of physical violence. I’d like to see that research, BTW, and if there is anything to it, why doesn’t it pertain equally (or more) to the complaining woke students, to the professor and to the majority of students, those who have been bullied into silence in our current zeitgeist?
Erich, the few who are listening are afraid to speak up. Our government has been lying to us non-stop for thirty years, and I have to say the worst is the Biden administration. It refuses to acknowledge the role played by natural immunity, which every serious replicable study has shown is far stronger than vaccinations. It is protecting Chinese rather than US interests. It denies that 200,000 people entering the U.S. illegally every month is a problem, and denies that flying them to targeted states to increase Democrats’ voting power is happening. It is denying that the rate of spending can lead to inflation, even that inflation exists.
I’m going to violate the American Psychiatric Association code of ethics and say that Joe Biden suffers from serious dementia. He clearly displays confusion, lack of situational awareness and expressive aphasia. And, the next three people in line of succession are Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Patrick Leahy. We’re screwed.
Perhaps Wokeism operates as a kind of license that provides legal or social immunity for one’s otherwise forbidden actions. Sort of like the Inquisition where selfless clergy tortured people (with deep regret, of course) in order to save their souls.