Free Speech: The Liberal Way by TaraElla

From abortion to CRT, state power is making discourse toxic. We need to stop politicizing everything.

Welcome to The Liberal Way, a series where we will discuss what the liberal way for dealing with various cultural and social controversies should look like. I think this is needed because too many people have lost sight of what the proper liberal way is.

In this episode, I want to examine the issue of free speech from a liberal perspective. At first glance, there appears to be nothing much to say: liberals support free speech, case closed. However, to defend free speech effectively, we must understand why it is an important priority in the liberal worldview. We also need to understand what conditions are necessary to maintain the promise of free speech, and a healthy marketplace of ideas.

Free speech is important because it is the only way we can get closer to the objective truth, no matter what topic we are talking about. Individual liberal thinkers often have different emphases and different priorities. For example, as a Moral Libertarian, I believe it is most important that we get to the objective truth on matters of morality. Other liberals might prioritize getting towards the objective truth on other matters. But the common ground for all liberals is the need to get towards the objective truth. Above all, liberals believe that getting to the objective truth is the fundamentally necessary condition that must be achieved before we can build a good order. An order that is not based on the objective truth would inevitably be unjust, inefficient, and potentially harmful.

The promise of free speech can only be maintained if speech will not lead to illiberal consequences. People should be allowed to freely explore ideas and viewpoints, knowing that it will not lead to actually oppressive consequences enforced by state power. If debate on abortion is used as a launching pad for punitive abortion bans, if valid criticism of drag queen story hour leads to legislation that bans drag queens from performing in public entirely, if opposition to critical race theory is used to justify limiting free speech itself, it raises the stakes of allowing free speech, and gives credence to the postmodern 'speech is power' worldview. After all, if free speech can indeed lead to illiberal consequences enforced by state power, then it becomes difficult to argue against its limitation on the grounds of maintaining social tolerance. This is why liberals must firmly oppose using state power to wage the culture wars, which inevitably includes coercing acceptance and obedience towards a particular viewpoint in contentious moral debates. There can be no compromise at all on this principle, because if we allow even the slightest bit of illiberalism, we would have set a precedent that destroys the promise of free speech, and fundamentally compromises our argument against the postmodernist 'speech is power' worldview.

On the other hand, liberals should insist on separating speech and political action. Postmodernism has over-emphasized the 'power' in speech and discourse, which has been detrimental to free speech. I think we can turn this around by telling people to focus on where the 'power' actually lies, i.e. the politicians who make the laws. For example, if you oppose abortion bans, your problem is not with those who argue against abortion on moral grounds. Your problem is with the legislators who introduce and pass bills to ban abortion, who often do so out of political, rather than moral grounds. Rather than de-platforming or otherwise disrespecting the free speech of private citizens with pro-life views, you should protest those politicians instead. However, you should still respect the free speech of pro-life individuals, because they are speaking from their conscience in good faith. If you disallow speech that is rooted in genuine belief on contentious moral matters, there is no longer free speech, practically speaking. While people might legitimately and strongly disagree on policy, free speech on matters of personal morality should be sacred, and treated as so. To achieve this goal, there must be a level of separation between politics and regular speech. This is another reason why liberals need to oppose the political culture warriors on both the Left and the Right, who seek to politicize everything. Their methods are a threat to free speech.

This brings us onto my final point: the right to privacy, and the necessity of separating the public from the private. Culture warriors on both the Left and the Right often seek to enlarge the public sphere, and diminish the private, by claiming almost everything as part of either a 'system of oppression' or 'the common good'. This would lead to forced conformity, which liberal thinkers going back to John Stuart Mill have long warned about. This is why we should, in principle, defend individual freedom against overly broad claims of the 'common good', especially where this so-called 'common good' isn't agreed to universally.