Why Free Speech?
Free speech is the child of both freedom and freedom of conscience. In turn, it is the parent of the free press, free media and academic freedom.
Since the quest for freedom is irrepressible, unquenchable, indestructible, free speech also lives a charmed existence - often on the edge, frequently the target of tyrants, the refuge of poets and playwrights and the undying light of the persecuted and the martyred.
Why do tyrants tremble and rage at free speech? It is because of its unshakeable association with truth. Not that everything spoken is true - indeed much that is spoken is untrue and unkind and uncouth. But free speech sets up the glorious clash of truth with falsehood, the kind word with the unkind, the courageous with the cowardly, the gracious with the mean and what is true, with what is false. And in the bright sparks and light of that clash, the tyrant stands naked, exposed.
Without free speech, the ruler rules untested and unchallenged and both monarchies and democracies will become totalitarian dictatorships. In order for the people to give virtuous feedback to their rulers, free speech must be unshackled from the ruler’s own rules, regulations and prison walls.
The determination to broadcast the oppression of the people and the crimes of a tyranny, will lead to the persecution of those heroes among us who become the standard bearers of free speech. Mahatma Gandhi, Julian Assange, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela were seen as direct threats by oppressive regimes who knew only too well that the “pen is mightier than the sword.” The campaign to free the Australian journalist Julian Assange is also a campaign to liberate free speech and the right to challenge the abuse of power.
Poets, novelists and religious reformers have also been martyred for free speech because they have all “spoken truth to power.” The Nigerian poet Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by a corrupt Nigerian government because his literary work challenged the exploitation of his people and the degradation of the environment by oil companies. Many years ago (1536), the English reformer William Tyndale was first strangled, then burnt at the stake because of his challenge to the established church and because he dared to translate the Bible into the language of the people (English). The road to free speech has not been free.
Must we be free to think? Then we must also be free to say what we think - for if the mind is believed to be a window of the soul, then speech must be the hand that unlocks this window to the world.
Human beings have the unique ability in the created world to offend (and take offence) by speech. Presumably, other living things may also offend each other by the barks, howls, hoots, mews, neighs, squeaks, screeches and roars by which they convey hostile intent and aggression. But this cannot be compared to the “hurt,” the “offence,” the “emotional trauma” that human beings are capable of feeling and retaining, in response to intelligible noises made with the mouth, lips and larynx - i.e. speech.
Speech that calls for or results in contemplation may offend, may “deeply hurt,” may cause “emotional distress,” but must still be freely allowed. Speech regularly causes all these reactions in children, particularly teenagers, who disagree with their parents. Speech between husband and wife or brother and sister also often causes deep hurt and distress. It cannot be banned. Indeed, free speech of this kind seems to be the price of human progress in the family - and also in society and in the cities and nations of our world.
But speech that constitutes a direct call to violence has typically been disallowed and declared illegal, even in societies who have regarded free speech as a fundamental right. The free speech absolutist will insist that a call to violence may be ignored and be countered by another equal call to peace.
There are many undesirable matters of mind and soul and heart that may be overcome or ignored by the individual and the slide to undesirable action averted. But an action, once committed implies that the threshold from thought to action has been crossed. Many facilitating steps however, will often pave the way from thought or speech, to action. For example, if adultery is desired and then pursued by several deliberate steps toward this goal, these several steps may make turning back from adultery impossible. The prohibition against speech that directly calls for violence is regarded in similar fashion, as a move beyond free thought and free speech and a deliberate decision to proceed along the path to violence.
The prohibition in some countries (including Canada, Germany, UK, Austria, Australia etc - but not in the USA) against hate speech however, is a relatively new development. Hate speech is supposed to intentionally cause emotional and mental (but not physical) harm or distress to the supposed victim. At a fundamental level, however, we allow hate speech in our families - including the basic taunt from a petulant teenager, “I hate you.” Does this cause distress to the parent? Does it deeply hurt the parent? And should the child be punished for saying hateful things, including “I hate you” to the parent? Punishment of course, is likely to lead to more hate. And worse, the child may keep silent after being punished, but keep hating, in a spiralling circle of rebellion and grief. The better course would be to allow the child to speak - and then counter the “hate speech” with love and other speech.
Hate speech laws are usually applied to speech targeting race, religion or sexual orientation. There are two other problems with banning such speech. The first is the rather obvious objection of the definition of just what constitutes hate speech. In other words, who defines hate? For example, the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was discovered in several photographs with the racist, derogatory “blackface” appearance and costume. If his government should decide that any mention of “blackface” should constitute a hate crime and then passes legislation to this effect, it would mitigate against all the principles of free speech and make a mockery of hate speech laws. The nation would then be on the slippery slope of changing definitions of “hate” and the real possibility that nobody’s speech will eventually be protected from almost any accusation of hate.
Under the cloak of “hate speech” laws, police in Hampshire, England recently arrested an army veteran for a Facebook meme which was said to cause “offence.” The arrest was recorded by an English free speech activist. In fact, the arrested army veteran had merely reposted what someone else had posted on Facebook! An ex-police officer was also arrested for the same “offence.” This particular assault on free speech appears to have had something of a happy ending, but the grave dangers to society of the targeted and/or arbitrary application of hate speech laws were exposed for the world to see.
The other problem with defining and enforcing hate speech laws is that the purveyor of the supposed “hate speech” is allowed to believe the “hated” idea in secret, instead of being challenged openly to debate his views in public. In fact, when brought out to the open and debated, either side’s views may be exposed to the real possibility of defeat - and the triumph of truth. We the people can then witness the risky, essential, magnetic, and magnificent possibility of defeat of one’s own ideas, by better ideas.
It is not enough for speech to exist as a thought - it must be expressed and become real in order for us to witness its worth. In the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, we read of how “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory.”
Surely what applies to God must apply to us as well.