Speaking Freely About Free Speech

Free speech matters a lot, but so do some other things.

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A protester with a bullhorn leads chants with Rutgers University students and faculty as they participate in a strike at the university's main campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Hi, 

I think I should stop being coy. I keep saying how I am not a free speech absolutist, but I haven’t really explained what I mean, at least not for a while and some readers and listeners are understandably getting annoyed. And since I’ve been working through the philosophical underpinnings of my conservatism, I thought this would be a good opportunity to lay down some markers. (Also, The Dispatch has internal meetings this week so I have to write this outside the news cycle anyway.) 

So in the spirit of thinking out loud—and explaining how I think about this stuff— let’s start with a familiar argument of mine. 

Democratic societies depend on undemocratic institutions. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Rosedragon55

    I would in fact argue the spoons are completely superfluous. Use a fork to eat the solids out of the soup, then drink the soup from the bowl. No spoon necessary.

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  2. Michael Johnson

    I am mostly Blue but I love your columns, Noah. It is clear throughout almost all of them you have a deep commitment to hearing and understanding those you start of doubting or disagreeing with before coming to conclusions. And when you do speak it seems you want to hear responses, but are going to have to make their way through some strong convictions you have come to through your deep listening and conservative disposition.

    This is how I describe democracy. It is a way of thinking, arguing, relating, etc. that is grounded in the kind of commitment you have to hearing and understanding others on your way to making and remaking sense of our world as it unfolds. So, for me, it was quite ironic to feel all all of that commitment throughout this piece while you were so narrowly equating "democracy" with voting.

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    Hussey

    Not to be a nooge, but “freedom of worship” rings in my ears like a cracked bell. “Free exercise” of religion entails much, much more.

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    Ben Connelly

    “The U.S. military is an institution that protects democracy, but it isn’t a democratic institution. Soldiers don’t vote on strategy, and outside a few specific battlefield conditions they don’t vote on tactics, either.

    The free market not only sustains democracy, it is broadly speaking democratic in the sense that people “vote” with their money. But neither private businesses nor public corporations are meaningfully democratic internally. ”

    If we were to be more specific, we might even say that the US military internally resembles pure socialism (ask Marxist Freddie DeBoer if you don’t believe me) and that corporations internally are socialistic (Ronald Coase).

    I tend to say that I’m a free expression maximalist but that I believe certain values are higher than free speech and when those come into conflict (life has tradeoffs and good things sometimes are in tension) I tend to side with the higher thing. Property rights, for instance, always beat expressive rights. As far as I see it, a bartender should be able to throw you out of his bar for saying anything he doesn’t like (or, if I’m being honest, for any reason at all).

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  5. Matt D.

    I would prefer a fork over a pen, but a pen over a spoon.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Normb1442

    If what you're saying is that the only way to def

    eat Hamas is to destroy Gaza entirely, I think you're describing the Israeli strategy accurately. Just don't get upset when the college kids accuse Israel of genocide, because that's what destroying a place with 2MM citizens, most of them innocent, is called.

    Have you read French's article yet? Until you do, let's call this exchange off?

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  7. Jhill

    This article was very good but I want you to consider the basis of one of your points. You state that universities do care about moral education and character but it is just that their definition of character is deformed. To make this assertion says there must be some sort of objective standard for character with which we can compare your and their idea to. This to me is actually the much deeper problem. It isn’t that the universities’ logic is faulty (ok I agree it can be and often is) in this case, but instead that your and their reasoning are simply not tied to the same base idea (that some things are just good or bad in and of themselves).
    We live in an era where we all argue using logic but at the end of the day only end up yelling at each other because there are no objective truths that we can all point to as common ground. I actually do not believe universities are trying to mold anyone to a particular moral standard. How could they when they have no standard they even all agree with. Instead I believe the groupthink of higher education operate to satisfy the same desperate need of all humans - to feel that they are “good.” And when there is no objective standard for what “good” actually is then it is quite easy to for them to claim they are “good” and, as more often is the case, more “good” than everyone else. As Animal Farm taught us everyone is equal but some “are more equal than others.”
    I would love to see an article from you expanding on your thoughts on religion’s role in a democratic society. I agree with you the nuclear family is vital but in the end a society that cannot agree on the most basic ideas of right and wrong will not survive regardless of how important it makes the family. Families roles are to instill the values and truths of life, but there need to be established agreed truths to pass down or the whole thing goes haywire.
    We have discredited, and now often won’t even argue for, the institutions (churches, mosques, synagogues, etc) that are the only ones that actually have a tree (ie a transcendent God who established what is good and what isn’t) to hitch their logic horse to. This to me is the root of all the turmoil and “insanity” that we now see. We will not regain our footing as a society if we cannot ground ourselves in some shared objective truths. “Alright if you don’t believe in God you don’t, but can we at least say then that aliens established the great truths.” Without this we will just go on yelling and things like killing innocent people at a concert will be deemed, by all too many, reasonable.

    Thanks for all you do to fight the good fight.

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  8. J.R.Shaw

    [As I pen this, there are already 179 comments and I'm disinclined to review them all. As such, if what follows has already been covered, please forgive me.]
    "In the great philosophical game of rock-paper-scissors, democracy is scissors and liberalism is rock."
    Given that the Dispatch peanut gallery probably includes a fair number of geeks, I believe that a more apt metaphor might be rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.

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  9. Tom Shirley

    Three loud cheers. This is the opposite of “effortless” writing - it is “effortful”, in the best possible sense of the term. You are wrestling with, grappling with, the truly difficult and important questions of the moment. Your “efforts” are appreciated.

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  10. Wlbrockman

    As I used to explain to young lawyers going for their first time to argue motions or try a case in Orleans Parish Civil District Court: You doom yourself to a career of frustration & disappointment if you think you can understand what goes on there by applying principles of logic, consistency, reason, common sense and legal precedent. Feelings, emotions and relationships are what control the decisions of judges & jurors (predominantly Democrats) there. Similarly, IMHO, it seems to me the patently illogical, irrational & unreasonable "arguments" of the presidents of three quite "progressive" universities were entirely predictable once it is understood that they, too, are unfettered by principles of logic, reason, consistency, common sense or legal precedent. Rather, they, like their students, kowtow to the dictatorship of progressive groupthink; the Church of what's happening now. The "religion" whose head is not a loving father but a doting grandparent, whose only wish is for his grandchildren to be happy.

    Thank you, Jonah, for exposing in detail the fallacies of their elaborate attempted subterfuges.

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