Twelve Fallacies About Free Speech, Refuted

At Areo, Greg Lukianoff (An attorney who is the President and CEO of FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) wrote this article to refute twelve fallacious arguments about free speech. Here are the fallacies:

  • Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence.
  • Free speech rests on the faulty notion that words are harmless.
  • Free speech is the tool of the powerful, not the powerless.
  • The right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say; it still leaves other people free to kick you out.
  • But you can’t shout fire! in a crowded theatre.
  • The arguments for freedom of speech are outdated.
  • Hate speech laws are important for reducing intolerance, even if there may be some examples of abuse.
  • Free speech is nothing but a conservative talking point.
  • Restrictions on free speech are OK if they are made in the name of civility.
  • You need speech restrictions to preserve cultural diversity.
  • Free speech is an outdated idea; it’s time for new thinking.
  • I believe in free speech, but not for blasphemy.

Visit Areo for Lukianoff's responses to each of these fallacies.

In response to the fallacy that free speech is an outdated concept, Lukianoff gave this succinct defense of John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty (available from free at this link):

John Stuart Mill’s central arguments in On Liberty remain undefeated, including one of his strongest arguments in favour of freedom of speech—Mill’s trident—of which I have never heard a persuasive refutation. Mill’s trident holds that, for any given belief, there are three options:

A) You are wrong, in which case freedom of speech is essential to allow people to correct you.
B) You are partially correct, in which case you need free speech and contrary viewpoints to help you get a more precise understanding of what the truth really is.
C) You are 100% correct. In this unlikely event, you still need people to argue with you, to try to contradict you, and to try to prove you wrong. Why? Because if you never have to defend your points of view, there is a very good chance you don’t really understand them, and that you hold them the same way you would hold a prejudice or superstition. It’s only through arguing with contrary viewpoints that you come to understand why what you believe is true.

Lukianoff ends his article with this:

Free speech is valuable, first and foremost, because, without it, there is no way to know the world as it actually is. Understanding human perceptions, even incorrect ones, is always of scientific or scholarly value, and, in a democracy, it is essential to know what people really believe. This is my “pure informational theory of freedom of speech.” To think that, without openness, we can know what people really believe is not only hubris, but magical thinking. The process of coming to knowing the world as it is is much more arduous than we usually appreciate. It starts with this: recognize that you are probably wrong about any number of things, exercise genuine curiosity about everything (including each other), and always remember that it is better to know the world as it really is—and that the process of finding that out never ends.

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About Lindsay Shepherd

Today I learned about the 2017 case of Lindsay Shepherd, a graduate student/teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Waterloo, Ontario. Her crime was to allow an even-handed classroom discussion about a Canadian law compelling the use of particular pronouns according to Jordan Peterson.

Her case also reminded me of the importance of (at least sometimes) secretly recording conversations.

Here is what happened, thanks to her foresight in recording a massively dysfunctional conversation Shepherd was forced to have with her supervisor, Nathan Rambukkana.

Shepherd is now an author. You can follow her at https://twitter.com/NewWorldHominin

Here is an excerpt from a review of Shepherd's new book, Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis::

This continuing campaign against Shepherd based on a pursuit of ideological purity should be regarded as a dark stain on the entire academic community. Throughout the book it is clear that Shepherd’s love of teaching is what defines her commitment to “open inquiry and the pursuit of truth.” As such, that unnamed college missed an opportunity to hire a first-rate educator – not to mention a heck of a storyteller. Sadly, demonstrable ability and commitment are now less important on campus than political alignment. That said, given her obvious attributes of drive, character, intelligence and sense of opportunity, it seems highly unlikely we’ve seen or heard the last of Lindsay Shepherd. As her experiences at Laurier make plain, she has an awful lot to say. And she’s not afraid to say it.

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How Pervasive is the Teaching of Critical Race Theory?

Last month, Andrew Gutmann started speaking out against critical race theory, as it was being taught at his daughter's private expensive Manhattan school, Brearley School. In his letter to the Brearly community, he accused Brearly of teaching children illiberal and indoctrinating antiracism initiatives and divisive obsession with race. Gutmann has founded Speak Up For Education. .

Today, Gutmann authored an opinion piece at The Hill. Here is an excerpt:

There appears to be widespread belief that opposition to critical race theory is a view held solely by the political right. This perception is wrong. It is certainly true that the conservative media has almost exclusively embraced viewpoints unfavorable to critical race theory while the liberal-oriented media has been overwhelmingly approving. But our polarized media does not seem to accurately reflect the view of most Americans.

Since my letter became public, I have received several thousand supportive emails and messages from people across this country, including many from self-described Democrats and liberals. The tone of most of the messages sent to me is not at all political in nature; instead, the tenor is one of desperation and powerlessness.

I have received emails from parents expressing devastation that their kids, as young as five years old, are coming home from school after being taught to feel guilty solely because of the color of their skin. I have received messages from grandparents feeling hopeless that their grandchildren are being brainwashed and turned against their own families. And I have received notes from teachers brought to tears because they are being required, day after day, to teach fundamentally divisive, racist doctrines and being forced to demonize their own students.

Perhaps the most powerful – and most frightening – of the notes I have received are the several dozen from those who identify themselves as having immigrated to America from the former Soviet Union or from countries in formerly communist Eastern Europe. These emails are never political in nature and are nearly identical in message: These first-generation Americans all write that they have “seen this movie before.” They are familiar with the propaganda, the tactics of indoctrination and the pervasive fear of speaking up that plague today’s United States. Simply put, they cannot believe this is happening here.

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Looking Back at the Censorship of the NY Post Story about Hunter Biden’s Laptop

I repeatedly encounter people who identify on the political left who insist that the Laptop found at a computer shop in October, 2020 was not Hunter Biden's laptop and that it was a Russian ploy to interfere with the U.S. Presidential election.  The fact that these beliefs persist tells a sad story about the power the news media has to defraud its trusting audience.

This CBS Report from April 3, 2021 is recent confirmation of my belief that the laptop really was Hunter Biden's laptop. April 2021, long after the election was decided, was a politically convenient time and place for Hunter to deny that the laptop was his, but he didn't deny it. October, 2020, when the NY Post initially  reported on the laptop, prior to the election, was also the perfect time for Hunter Biden to deny that it was his laptop, but he didn't deny it then either. He has never denied that it was his laptop. In fact, in the above CBS interview Hunter Biden stated that it is possible that it might have been his laptop. Watch the CBS video excerpt and observe Hunter Biden's demeanor. Is this the sort of person who would use his father's name to cut lucrative self-serving deals with foreign powers? Is that the sort of person who would write the emails found on the laptop. Seems apparent to me.

If this laptop and payoff had been about any of Trump's degenerate children, the media would have been all over it. The failure to cover this story is stunning jour - - - I almost wrote "journalistic malpractice," but it was far worse. It was an intentional and deliberate ongoing muti--news-outlet conspiracy to keep citizens from knowing something important that might affect their views on an upcoming election. Full disclosure: I voted for Biden and I was horrified by the thought that Trump might win a second term. There are more important principles at play, however, than the result of any one election. See Russell Brand's interview with Glenn Greenwald on this topic:

Glenn Greenwald has focused laserlike on this topic from the beginning. His felt need to tell the truth cost him his job at The Intercept, a news organization he founded. See "Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept: An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept." See also, Greenwald's article on the alleged Russian disinformation: "With News of Hunter Biden's Criminal Probe, Recall the Media Outlets That Peddled the "Russian Disinformation" Lie."

Were the materials on Hunter Biden's laptop the sorts of things the media should report on? The NY Post described some of the materials here:

In the final months of the heated 2020 presidential race, The Post revealed a trove of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop that raised questions about his then-candidate father’s ties to his son’s foreign business ventures, including Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company linked to corruption.

The emails revealed that the younger Biden introduced a top Burisma executive to his father, then vice president, less than a year before the elder Biden admittedly pressured Ukrainian officials into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma board adviser, sent Hunter on April 17, 2015.

An image of Hunter Biden found on the laptop at the center of The Post exposé The water-damaged MacBook Pro — which bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation — was dropped off for repair at a Delaware computer shop in April 2019, but the individual who dropped it off never returned to pick it up.

. . .

In addition to his Ukrainian connections, other emails on the computer showed Hunter discussing potential business deals with China’s largest private energy company. One deal seemed to spark considerable interest with the younger Biden, who called it “interesting for me and my family.”

. ..

Hunter Biden’s position with the reportedly corrupt energy company — which paid him “as much as $50,000 per month” — “created an immediate potential conflict of interest” because his father was involved in US policy toward Ukraine, the report stated.

This is a complex story with fails in many directions, including Twitter's stunning decision to shut down the Twitter account of the NY Post so that it could not promote its blockbuster story.

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The Many Problems with the Concept of “Microagressions”

If you would like to explore the many ways that the modern usage of the term "microagressions" has fallen off the tracks at the hands of modern "anti-racists," consider reading a soon-to-be published law review article by an attorney and a psychologist, Edward Cantu & Lee Jussim, Ph.D. Their article is titled: MICROAGGRESSIONS, QUESTIONABLE SCIENCE, AND FREE SPEECH.

I'll begin with their conclusions:

When scientists speak, people listen, even if the science is unscientific. If scientists are going to declare a broad and indeterminate number of acts inherently subtly racist, and a critical mass of those in positions of power and influence are ideologically inclined to believe them, it is imperative that the claims not be grossly exaggerated and that they be grounded in solid scientific methodology. The [current micro aggression construct- "CMC"] fails in this regard. After critical analysis, the CMC appears to be a project in attempting to retroactively validate initial ideological hunches; or, at best, to give voice to POC by substituting the scientific method for the perceptions of some of them. Whichever it may be, it is clear that, at this point, nobody—neither diversity administers, academics, or journalists—should take currently propagated lists of microaggressions as representative of anything meaningful. We assert this not to be gratuitously insulting to CMC researchers, but to forestall the harms that the CMC we fear may cause.

The authors acknowledge that the concept of "microagressions" is a worthy subject of study (beginning with the research by psychologist Chester Pierce in the 1970s), but they find  that the list of words and phrases that might have some legitimacy as racial slights have now been coupled, through concept creep, with numerous expressions that are innocent or even complimentary (see their Appendix for many examples). In step with this concept creep, the Overton Window has been slammed down to forbid numerous verbal expressions that are A) not problematic to the great majority of those who are purported to be victims of these slights and/or B) depend for their meaning almost entirely upon the intent of the speaker and the context in which the words are spoken.

The authors warn that current "anti-racist" ideology refuses to take into account the intent of the speaker. This tactical use of microaggressions, combined with sloppy "science" is harming society socially, by shutting down needed conversation:

Yet, we fear that microaggression researchers via their alleged insights are increasingly teaching POC that they are under constant assault; that they are being conditioned to be constructively offended—that is, offended because they’re taught that they’re supposed to be—in situations that do not implicate racism.

The research regarding microagressions has increasingly been motivated to find something invisible to attempt to explain (often simplistically) observable racial disparities:

Although the civil rights legislation of the 1960s ended legal racial discrimination, inequality still persists almost 60 years later. Why? Many have concluded it must be because of something secret, subtle, hidden, and underground. But what? By the 1970s, the social sciences were on a quest to find these supposedly hidden, camouflaged, or unconscious forms of racism. Those efforts generated a slew of concepts, such as “modern”  or “symbolic racism,” “implicit bias,” and “stereotype threat.” Interestingly, just as is the case with microaggressions, each of these areas have been characterized by a wave of initial enthusiasm including many publications, followed by critical reviews highlighting weaknesses, flaws, confounds and alternative explanations that consistently indicated that the initial enthusiasm was largely unwarranted.

The term "microaggressions" has been given an ideologically-laced strategic labeling to dramatically increase the perceived threat-level, creating an inverse-Trojan-horse: The term "microaggressions" puts us all on edge, even in the absence of a rigorous scientific foundation for the commonly-made claims regarding microaggressions. In recent years, the number of words and phrases allegedly encompassed by "microaggressions" has exploded (again, see the Appendix of the article) to the extent that ordinary conversation is increasingly feared as a social minefield:

Interestingly, just as is the case with microaggressions, each of these areas have been characterized by a wave of initial enthusiasm including many publications, followed by critical reviews highlighting weaknesses, flaws, confounds and alternative explanations that consistently indicated that the initial enthusiasm was largely unwarranted. intentionality, and less directly but atmospherically, oppression and domination. Rarely if ever would the lay person label an act committed with benign conscious intent a form of “aggression.” But consistent with tactical concept creep, this is the term chosen, even with the knowledge that use of the term means imputing to well-meaning actors a state of mind normally associated with culpability.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written about the phenomenon of concept creep specifically in the context of microaggressions. In lamenting that psychology is “becoming a tribal moral community bound together by moral commitments to social justice and progressive ideals,” 95 Haidt noted that psychologists are incentivized “to find new ways in which members of allegedly victimized groups are harmed by current practices”; 96 hence the creeping expansion of the concept of harm. Particularly on point, Haidt also described as a “central innovation[] of microaggression theory” the disposal of a mens rea predicate for concepts such as “abuse” and “discrimination” “in ways that make it ever harder for anyone to defend themselves against ugly moral charges.”

Cantu and Lee Jussim have written a long, carefully researched, balanced and important article that will provide many of us the the confidence to raise our hands when we are next compelled to attend "anti-racist" training where the concept of "microaggressions" is blithely bandied about (as it often is). The authors were at least somewhat motivated to do this research because they were witnessing good-hearted people being chewed up in the current ideological juggernaut of "anti-racism."  Their article will help all of us to speak up whenever we are told to assume that "microaggressions" A) are ubiquitous and B) that labeling dozens of taboo expressions as taboo obviates the need to do real work to determine the mindset of those who speak.

The modern use of the concept of "microaggressions" is the equivalent of doing surgery with a chainsaw. All good and decent people know that we can't off-load human complexity to a simplistic list of taboo phrases assembled ad hoc by (often well-intentioned) ideologues.  Human beings are much more complex than that. Good-hearted people earnestly and make charitable case-by-case holistic determinations about whether people who are engaged in speech are being ignorant and rude or whether they are well-intentioned and kind-hearted (or something in between). I applaud the work done by Cantu and Lee because it will allow us to have more meaningful conversations going forward.

Continue ReadingThe Many Problems with the Concept of “Microagressions”