Jonathan Rauch makes The Case for Hate Speech:
Our great blessing was to live in a society that understands where knowledge comes from: not from political authority or personal revelation, but from a public process of open-ended debate and discussion, in which every day millions of people venture and test billions of hypotheses. All but a few of those theories are found wanting, but some survive and flourish over time, and those comprise our knowledge. …
History shows that the more open the intellectual environment, the better minorities will do. … To make social learning possible, we need to criticize our adversaries, of course. But no less do we need them to criticize us.
Dale Carpenter shares why he agrees:
As a matter of history, Rauch is certainly right that gay-rights advocates and opponents have met repeatedly on the battlefield of ideas, and that the former have consistently bested the latter. Rauch’s case directly and powerfully supports the view that government should not ban hate speech.
All in all, a timely rebuke to the politically correct silencing of offensive ideas.
12 Comments for “You Can’t Confront Bad ideas If They Can’t Be Expressed”
posted by Doug on
There is a huge difference between discussing hate speech in an intellectual atmosphere and burning a cross on a families front lawn in order to terrorize them. Just as you cannot yell fire in a crowded building hate speech ought to be controlled to some degree.
posted by Tim on
Burning a cross is a physical act, not just speech. In your example would be, at the very least, civil and criminal trespass and probably assault. An act already covered by current laws.
Yelling “fire” is also covered by current laws. That speech is meant to cause immediate physical harm. I don’t think that that is the type of hate speech being talked about here. An example of problematic hate speech restrictions would be university speech codes.
posted by JohnInCA on
Wait, hold on.
Who is seriously *advocating* for hate speech laws in America? I mean, despite what the right-wing liars say, there isn’t one anywhere int he US of A. You have to go Canada or England for that shit.
And there’s a marked difference between boycotts and calls to advertisers then actual “silencing”. I mean, being free to say whatever hurtful, hateful and down-right evil thing you want to say is an American tradition. But being free from the people saying they want nothing to do with you… is not.
So what, exactly, are you protesting here?
posted by Houndentenor on
About 10 years ago I was in Amsterdam and decided to visit the Anne Frank House/Museum. It’s hard to explain that experience in words. Go, if you are ever there. At the end of the tour there was an interactive exhibit where we were shown video clips and asked our opinion. Several involved “hate speech”. Very few of the participants endorsed allowing angry mean-spirited public displays and I dare say (and admittedly have no evidence to support this) that most of the people who believed that even the most heinous of speech should be allowed were the Americans.
I am for free speech: mine as well as everyone else’s. That means supporting the rights of people like Fred Phelps that I find morally reprehensible. I agree with Stephen that it’s best to let all that out in public so that ideas can be debated, rebutted and exposed. I also understand why Germany has laws against denying the Holocaust. I wouldn’t want such a law here, but given their history and the danger of rewriting history to excuse such a heinous crime against humanity cannot be allowed in the place where it happened. But that is an exception.
But “political correctness”, the bogey-man of the right, is not a law. What it means is that people will look at you with disapproval if you use certain words or hold certain positions. It’s not against the law to be racist. It will get you criticized by most people and lose you friends. For reasons I do not understand, a lot of Americans believe in their own freedom of speech but don’t understand that my freedoms include the right to criticize their speech. They cry foul when that happens and play the victim. We can almost gauge how racist someone is at this point by how loudly they scream “how dare anyone call ME racist”.
There are no hate speech laws, no serious proposals of such laws, and not a snowball’s chance in hell that any such law would be upheld by the courts. So I don’t know why this is what Stephen wants to talk about today when Tom Ridge made a very interesting speech to the Log Cabin Republicans just days ago that one would think a gay conservative would want everyone talking about. I find that odd.
posted by Jorge on
You almost had me with you, but then you went into political correctness.
Political correctness does not merely lose you friends. It can cost you your job or get you suspended from school or college (although the former is much less likely to stick). In a country where we exert so much social control over private enterprise in the name of what is “right”, there should be a recourse to those situations where whether something is right or wrong is meaningless, yet people are penalized over it anyway. That is where you should have limits on the ability to criticize people’s speech–when it is a situation of de facto destruction.
We can almost gauge how racist someone is at this point by how loudly they scream “how dare anyone call ME racist”.
My father likes to joke, I’m not racist, I hate everyone equally. It’s one of his few stereotypically liberal beliefs :*
posted by Don on
It’s the slippery slope argument that we are on the brink of soshulism. It’s similar to the reason why Obamacare will kill your grandparents: Jeebus & Constitoooshun.
I know perfectly well what I said makes no sense. That’s the point. Throwing around straw men, wailing like chicken little on a crack run, and then claiming to be the only thing between the black president and his communist takeover of America is the basic line of thinking.
This isn’t happening. It’s not going to happen for a long, long, long, time, if ever. But this is what we have to suffer through because there has been no Whitewater or Vince Foster or Monica Lewinsky.
I’m just grateful that we weren’t subjected to endless Benghazi here. But that’s probably only because there was no gay angle.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
1. Their is a funny British comedian — blanking on the name — who did a good bit about how the right-wing loves to use ‘political correctness’ as a boogieman. He then goes onto talk about how bad — overtly — racism, sexism and homophobia were. Its on Youtube.
2. ‘Hate Speech’ codes may exist at certain colleges and universities, although their is certainly no shortage of different political and religious ideas being expressed. I see/hear plenty of right-wing loonies on campus (and the typically religious fundamentalists), so I don’t understand it when some on the claim claim that ‘conservatives’ can’t have ideas on campus or express them. If its a college of any significant size, its probably got liberal, libertarian, socialist, conservative student clubs, student media and the like. If they are a private institute, then their is no First Amendment issue.
3. In terms of legal rights, context probably matters here more then content. Having an academic discussion or a crowd of students at a bar trying to act smart, is probably a bit different then say, burning a cross on someone’s yard or being in a situation where you do not feel safe to challenge the racist or sexist or homophobic ideas being expressed.
posted by Mike in Houston on
So who is actually doing this “politically correct” silencing?
It seems that the folks screaming loudest about “political correctness” don’t quite understand that they’re not the only ones allowed in the public square — claims about curtailing “religious liberty” being the newest call sign from that crowd.
Free speech does not mean free from consequences.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Rauch’s case directly and powerfully supports the view that government should not ban hate speech.
I am just baffled by this “controversy”.
Is anyone seriously suggesting that the government (as opposed, to say, private employers) might or should ban hate speech? If so, any attempt by the government to suppress hate speech would last about thirty seconds in a federal court until it ran into the First Amendment like a bug hitting windshield.
The “controversy” about government suppression of hate speech seems to be entirely one-sided (coming from far-right, wing nut Christians claiming that churches will be shut down, pastors jailed, and so) , fanciful (our Constitution would shut down any such attempt quickly), and entirely manufactured for political purposes.
Jon Rauch said not a word about government suppression of hate speech. His article talks about a private boycott. Dale Carpenter did raise government suppression of hate speech, but why? Even he goes on to say, in the next sentence, “Supporters of the boycott might respond that nobody is advocating that the government ban Ender’s Game, or censor the works of homophobic writers.” So why did he raise it?
Any why are you taking it seriously?
posted by Don on
I disagree with Rauch’s column. It sounds really sweet and terribly nice and all but wholly unrealistic. His nice tactic works in the early stages of convincing people to your way of thinking. But once the persuadables have moved, you have the bullies who are afraid of change. The only language they understand is fear, even though they are loud, brash braggarts.
Methinks Mr. Card’s softening rhetoric was the imminent fear of losing a pot-load of money from the movie people who would likely invoke some clause in the contract that he couldn’t say anything that would hurt the movie’s chances of success.
He’s a bully. He isn’t going to move with rhetoric. He’s already swayed by the fear that he will burn in hell. All anyone has to counter that argument is to fear a living hell on earth by opening your mouth anymore.
Maggie Gallagher ain’t gonna switch sides by talking nicely. But she will shut up and sit down if it is in her best earthly interests to do so. She can hold onto her afterlife preferred seating even with her mouth shut.
This is not an endorsement of hate speech laws. It is an endorsement of confronting the rump and staring them down. People who marginalize despite appeals to reason will only respond to being marginalized themselves. Rauch’s happy talk is cute, but is too ivory tower. It simply doesn’t work that way at this stage of the game.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Does this mean that the IGF will bring back its message board and never, ever ban posters for ‘bad’ or ‘offensive’ ideas 😉
posted by Doug on
TOUCHE !