DDO Essay Tournament: The Freedom of Expression is an Absolute Right

Freedom of expression, if not held to be absolute, is worthless. As Noam Chomsky argues, “if we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”.[1] Popular opinions are usually not those which need to be protected, rather it is the unpopular ones, or certainly those unpopular with the establishment, which we must stand up for. This can be defended as a matter of intellectual principle. As Christopher Hitchens believed, when we limit freedom of expression, we not only hurt those who are censored, but also ourselves; “it’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to hear… every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action”.[2] If those who criticise popular views are silenced, then we lose any contribution that could have been made. The popular doctrines may simply be false, or it may be that allowing them to face criticism will result in substantial improvements being made to our understanding. Criticising a civil rights movement may provoke that movement to expand its scope, or redefine the oppression it opposes, even if its approach was broadly correct and the opinions of its critics morally repugnant. Criticising a scientific hypothesis may provoke a questioning of its assumptions and a search for new evidence which leads to further discoveries, even if the critics who would be censored propose ideas more false than the popular hypothesis was, or are motivated to attack the hypothesis for completely unscientific reasons. It is true that such changes may occur via discussion within the realm of accepted discourse, but exposure to that which is outside accepted discourse may nonetheless provide valuable inspiration for improvement which would be lost if freedom of expression was not absolutely protected. Of course, if the popular ideas are completely false, then the likelihood of their being effectively challenged within the realm of accepted discourse is effectively annihilated, and ‘unacceptable ideas’ become vital. Censorship, by constraining discourse, retards the development of ideas, and places untenable confidence in the ideas which are accepted. Indeed, censorship makes radical change impossible, which is why George Bernard Shaw writes that “the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships”.[3] If we are unwilling to place absolute confidence in the truth of our own ideas, then for that reason alone we must support freedom of expression absolutely. ‘Overconfidence’ characterises resistance to the absolute freedom of expression in another way. Who can we trust to be the censor? In creating a censor, we place in their hands the health of our intellectual culture. We allow this entity to decide on our behalf what constitutes a valuable idea, so we must not only place irrational faith in the strength of our ideas, but also in the censor. The censor must be of the kind we rarely witness on Earth – incorruptible in the face of profound power, and in possession of extraordinary wisdom. Leaving moral principles completely aside, there is no rational basis for censorship, since it requires that we make two immense leaps of faith. First, we must believe that our ideas are perfect; second, we must believe that there is a person capable of performing a duty of such deep importance adequately.Not only can censorship be shown to be unjustified a priori, but history shows us the cost of censorship. Obvious examples can be found, such as the subjugation of Galileo’s science to catholic doctrine, or the extreme cruelty of various regimes who have imposed censorship, and thus removed the ability of the people to challenge them, prominent examples of that being the USSR and Nazi Germany. However, these examples perhaps lose force because we are inclined to view our modern Western societies as beyond that kind of dogmatic stupidity and savagery. Martin Luther King, then, makes a far more powerful example. As Tim Weiner, author of ‘Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA’, writes: “Hoover saw the civil rights movement from the 1950s onward and the anti-war movement from the 1960s onward, as presenting the greatest threats to the stability of the American government since the Civil War.. These people were enemies of the state, and in particular Martin Luther King [Jr.] was an enemy of the state”.[4] The FBI wire-tapped Martin Luther King and conducted covert investigations in order to discredit him, calling him "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country" after his 1963 “I have a dream” speech.[5] Modern Western democracies are perfectly capable of identifying ideas as ‘dangerous’, ideas which we now widely accept as being just complaints against oppression and unjust war. If the United States was more accepting of censorship, it is not at all unreasonable to think that the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement would have been victims of it. We cannot think now that we are ‘above’ censoring valuable ideas, or that our Western governments would not decide to censor ideas which challenge its policy, if we permit them to do that. As a matter of intellectual principle, restrictions on the right to free expression are indefensible, and this has been clearly illustrated throughout history, and would have been illustrated again by our modern societies, if we had let them.[1] As quoted by Bracken, H.M., Freedom of Speech: Words are Not Deeds, p.124[2] [3] Shaw, G.B., Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Preface[4] http://www.npr.org...[5] http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu...[6] http://edition.cnn.com...