It is an objective fact that both the left and the right have gotten more extreme in the past decade. Ideas previously considered taboo have been increasingly mainstreamed from both directions. What all these ideologies have in common is that they have no use for studying the objective truth as it is, or learning from the viewpoints of other people. They are already certain of their own correctness and righteousness, and the only thing left to do is to impose their vision on the rest of society, by force or other illiberal means if necessary. Such ideologies have no use for free speech.
On the other hand, moderates have a consistent interest in defending free speech. This is because moderates don’t have a pre-established commitment to an extreme ideology. This makes it more possible to be truly open to the different viewpoints that exist out there. After all, it is only natural that, when coming to a topic without preconceived commitments, one would want to gather as much evidence as possible, in order to arrive at a more accurate understanding of the objective truth. Moreover, given the lack of commitment to an overarching view of how things must be, moderates don’t always agree with the ideas of any one tribe. I mean, moderates don’t even always agree with each other on every topic! The fact that moderates don’t ever feel comfortable to join a tribe, and that disagreements are a normal part of life for moderates, also mean that they would have more incentive to embrace free speech. This is because free speech is both a mechanism for resolving our differences, and also a way to agree to disagree peacefully when we must.
Herein lies an important paradox: free speech allows people to reject moderation. Putting it another way, free speech must allow people to not be moderates, but if too few committed and outspoken moderates remain, free speech itself might cease to exist. In this way, some doomers might even say it is inevitable that free speech eventually digs its own grave.
Is there a way we can resolve this paradox, so that free speech doesn’t end up digging its own grave? I guess we can both uphold free speech, and also promote the virtues of political moderation within the bounds of respect for free speech. There is no contradiction in these things, as long as we are using the free market of ideas to promote moderation, rather than using censorship to force people to be moderate. Indeed, I believe one of the biggest mistakes of the 2010s free speech movement was a lack of discussion about the virtues of the kind of political moderation which would naturally support a culture of free speech. In the 2010s, free speech activists often talked about things like respecting the ‘marketplace of ideas’ when we opposed de-platforming and cancel culture, but we didn’t talk enough about why we should respect the marketplace of ideas. This, in turn, allowed bad faith actors to pretend to be one of us, in order to defend the speech of people they agreed with, only to later turn around to support anti-free speech actions from their own tribe, thus discrediting the whole movement, and setting the cause of free speech back even further.
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