Feb. 16, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
28:57
3595 Why Free Speech Is All That Matters
Civilization is a conversation, and moral progress is always the most shocking part of that conversation. Every great moral advance in human history has been met with shocked revulsion by significant existing power groups.The great abolitionist Wilberforce spend more than three decades making the case for ending slavery, before the British Parliament finally voted to outlaw the hideous practice on the third of the globe ruled by Great Britain. John Milton wrote his passionate defense of free speech in 1644 – freedom of the press was not achieved in England until 1695, more than half a century later.Equal rights for women and minorities, freedom of trade, separation of church and state, the right to divorce – each of these advances was considered an appalling break with virtuous traditions – and they all have one thing in common. One thing. In the absence of free speech, these advances would never have occurred.Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Civilization is a conversation, and moral progress is always the most shocking part of that conversation.
Every great moral advance in human history has been met with shocked revulsion by the rulers, by the powers that be, and those who depend on them.
The great abolitionist Wilberforce spent more than three decades making the case for ending slavery before the British Parliament finally voted to outlaw the hideous practice over the third of the globe ruled by Great Britain.
John Milton wrote his passionate defense of free speech in 1644.
Freedom of the press was not achieved in England until 1695, more than half a century later.
Equal rights for women and minorities, freedom of trade, separation of church and state, the right to divorce.
Each of these advances was considered an appalling break with virtuous traditions, and they all have one thing in common.
One thing.
In the absence of free speech, these moral advances would never have occurred.
The principle of free speech rests on the most fundamental intellectual virtue, which is humility.
Intellectual humility is the fundamental recognition that we do not have all the answers to all the moral problems in the universe.
Any reasonably intelligent student of history sees this pattern over and over, that what is accepted As moral perfection in one moment is turned over, as immoral prejudice in the next moment.
The idea that the state...
The centralized aggregation of coercive power in society should pick and choose acceptable arguments and ideas was once thought commonplace and religious dogma was forced down the throats of the people by the armed might of the government.
Over the course of hundreds of years of religious warfare and over the piles of millions of corpses, the separation of government and arguments was created.
See, this is what happens.
The moment that government has the power to attack people for holding a particular opinion or making particular arguments, civilization ceases to be a marketplace of ideas and becomes something quite different, sometimes quite disastrous.
During the Protestant Reformation, hundreds of years ago now, various divergent sects each tried to gain the power of the state and its power to compel people to enforce their belief systems on everyone else.
The Anabaptists fought the Calvinists, who fought the Zwingalians, who fought the Catholics, and so on.
People with differing fundamental beliefs about virtue and God and salvation could not live peacefully, side by side, because the sword of the state was available to cut down the minds of those who disagreed with them.
If you didn't get control of the power of the state, your opponents would.
And they would use that power against you.
So, sitting out the conflict was not an option.
You win, they lose.
They win, you lose.
No coexistence is possible when the state controls ideas.
During the religious wars, In Germany, which were so vicious and endless that, it was said, one could scarcely pass a tree without seeing a heretic hanging from it.
German society became so violent and fractured that the entire Enlightenment, the age of the Enlightenment, passed Germany by like a river recoiling from a scalding scar of lava.
Leaving a medieval core in an increasingly technological society which later erupted in the form of Nazism.
The price of losing free speech is often millions of bodies.
In the communist Soviet Union, the second most bloody revolution in history after the communist takeover of China, reform was impossible because dissenters were killed or sent to slave camps in the snow.
Seventy million souls were murdered during the course of this terrible totalitarianism.
Intelligent people, people with real solutions, kept silent.
And later reported that the only free speech that existed in Soviet Russia was when you whispered to your wife in the dark, shivering under blankets from the cold and the fear.
Nothing could be reformed.
Or improved because the government controlled public conversations and therefore the death and the hunger and the violence and the cold went on for generations until the eventual complete economic collapse.
We in the West do not inhabit a different universe from Nazi Germany or fascist Italy or totalitarian Russia or communist China.
The physics are the same.
The cause and effect is the same.
Human nature.
Is the same.
Free speech, you see, lets us see ahead as a society.
It warns us of the potential consequences of immediate decisions.
You know, this leads to this, leads to this, which gives us pause in our arrogance of omniscience, that we think we have all the answers.
We think we have solved all the problems.
We think we know exactly what to do to fix poverty or bigotry or injustice or inequality, for that matter.
As societies, We keep moving faster and faster and faster all the time.
Technology has put a brick on our gas pedal.
While outside, the world grows murkier and foggier.
Try it.
Try driving at high speed in the fog.
See what happens.
So, you and I are no different, fundamentally, from the people in the past.
Human nature is not some liquid that instantly conforms to the contours of its environment.
You know that every moral advance you take for granted was viewed as shocking and offensive and appalling by the majority of people when they first heard it.
Look at slavery.
Powerful people owned slaves.
And powerful people, then as now, also owned politicians.
And if there had not been freedom of speech in the 19th century, I can guarantee you we would still have slavery today.
Because powerful interest groups in society would have silenced the abolitionist arguments, and the modern world would never have come into being.
We have labor-saving devices because labor became expensive, and labor became expensive because slavery was ended.
You see how this works?
Those who believed in and defended slavery could point to 150,000 years of unbroken human history.
Slavery everywhere all the time.
Everyone has owned everyone else at some point or another.
150,000 years!
I guess 6,000 if you're a particular kind of fundamentalist.
That is a lot of years.
And those who rose up against that endlessly high cliff wall of thorny and destructive history and said, I don't care how high it is.
I don't care how dangerous it is.
I don't care whose feelings get hurt.
We are going to climb this cliff and drag humanity up with us to the sunlit heights of a world without slavery.
And most people...
Thought the abolitionists were crazy and evil.
And it took decades to even begin to change people's minds.
What about you?
Are you so entirely sure that you are on the right side of history?
That you are willing to allow the government to kill ideas that shock you?
If you are, well, Let's just say you have a lot more self-confidence than I do.
And I don't think that's a good thing.
Here's the thing.
I guarantee you that we are not finished or done as a civilization, as a species.
We have not completed for all time our long climb up that thorny wall to a better world.
And I also guarantee you that whatever comes next, whatever moral argument is next proposed, it will be shocking to you.
It will seem outlandish and immoral and appalling and threatening because that is the nature of new moral arguments.
People should not be bought and sold with the land and serfdom.
People should not be bought and sold like livestock and slavery.
Women should have the same legal rights as men.
Government-enforced segregation is wrong.
Every single one of these arguments was violently opposed when it first emerged.
Imagine if those who opposed them had access to the power of the state to squelch criticism, to punish people for making a moral argument, for making a moral critique, for risking social ostracism in the honorable pursuit of dragging mankind up the thorny cliff to a better place.
Are you?
Are you so confident that you have all the right answers for all time so that you are willing to use the power of the state to smash the marketplace of ideas?
That is an insanely grandiose position.
I do not know what the future holds for mankind.
I do not know whether a shocking idea has merit or is false unless I have the chance to examine it, to debate it, to review it, and if I find it egregious, to oppose it in the marketplace of ideas.
Take an example.
Take an example from your own mind.
Imagine the most egregious, wrongheaded, most offensive argument you can conceive of.
I can think of dozens myself.
Surely you want these terrible bad arguments to be roundly rejected by everyone around you in your society, right?
Right?
But if you use the power of the state to suppress these arguments, ah, guess what, my friends?
They don't actually disappear from the face of the earth.
Hey, remember how the government was going to get rid of illegal drugs in our society?
The government can't even keep drugs out of prisons.
So even if free speech becomes a prison, bad ideas will still be everywhere.
So how do we oppose bad ideas?
Well, first you have to recognize and understand this fundamental fact.
People are going to get hold of bad ideas no matter what.
Why?
Because internet.
So, given this reality, you have two choices.
Either These bad arguments, these offensive ideas can be dragged into the social spotlight by the most competent intellectuals in your society and exposed for the nonsense or nastiness they are.
These bad ideas can be banished from the public sphere by force, which means Are they gone?
No.
It means they live on, on the internet, unexamined, unopposed, like brain-eating zombies.
And those in your society who are the most susceptible to the seedy indoctrination of bad ideas will remain undefended by your most powerful intellectuals.
Inoculation.
You know, the idea that a managed exposure to a dangerous virus grants immunity to illness in the future.
Think of that.
If bad ideas are banned, they go underground and infect susceptible minds far more powerfully and broadly than they ever could if they had been subject to open social scrutiny, which requires absolute freedom of speech.
And think of the young, the susceptible, those whose minds are still forming.
What are they going to say if you ban ideas?
Oh, here is an argument that the authorities have banned!
You may not have read the story of the Garden of Eden in a while, but I'm sure you understand the power of forbidden fruit.
Young minds will roam the bad lands of bad ideas unprotected, unguided, impressionable.
This is how to spread bad ideas the most rapidly.
Make them enticing, make them exciting, ban them, refuse to engage with them, drive them underground.
Trust me, if you oppose bad ideas, and who doesn't really?
Free speech is your only protection.
And I mean that literally.
It is your only protection.
And think of the kids.
I mean that too.
Think of the kids.
When bad ideas are openly discussed and analyzed in society, they...
they lose their power to convince.
No one argues for slavery anymore because we had that debate.
It's settled.
Bad ideas are not some sort of airborne virus that infects you against your will, against your reason...
We become stronger and better people through our exposure to analysis of and rejection of bad ideas.
We learn tolerance through the analysis of bigotry.
If we ban bigotry, we weaken tolerance because a virtue must have some form of opposition in order to be considered a virtue.
I can't really praise my own willpower if I refrain from eating cheesecake while stranded on a desert island with no cheesecake.
Without temptation, is there virtue at all?
Here's another thing.
Okay, let's say we run to the state for protection from wrong think.
Okay, let's say we do that.
What are we saying, if we do that, about the quality of the education we have received from the state?
See, the state controls the education of our children for at least 12 years, usually more, much more.
If we are mortally frightened of mere arguments, of mere ideas, of mere criticisms, to the point that we run to the government for protection from words as if they were limb-shredding predators, what does that say about our education?
Guess what, friends?
Life involves conflict.
Life involves Involves differences of opinion.
Life involves negotiation.
Which means that being successfully alive requires that you know how to think critically, how to evaluate an argument, how to find its flaws, how to counter it, how to oppose it, how to verbally drive bad arguments to the inconsequential fringes of society.
If you don't know how to do that, and if you run to the government to protect you from the need to do that, you are forgetting something, something very important.
You're forgetting that it was the government that failed to train you how to think critically in the first place, how to make an argument, how to oppose bad arguments.
Should we run to the government to protect us from the failures of the government?
Come on.
To ask that question is to answer it.
Improve education.
Teach people to think.
Don't legislate against the bad effects of bad education.
That drags us down the thorny cliff to a worse place, a far worse place, a place of many and hotter levels.
It's a democracy, right?
Or a republic.
We're allowed to vote, you and I. Which means that the government accepts that we are able to process and evaluate highly complex and often data-driven arguments for the best course our society should take.
Some politician says we should do these 32 things to fix the economy and education and the deficit.
Well, actually, you don't really hear much about the deficit these days and all these other things.
And I have the right practical, legal and moral solutions to all these highly complex and seemingly intractable social problems.
And so you should vote for me after a careful analysis and evaluation of my policy proposals.
Come on, I mean, it's not like you're just going to end up voting for the guy with the better hair, right?
Because that would be crazily irresponsible.
So, if you're allowed to vote, encouraged to vote even, it's because you presumably have the capacity to evaluate and process complex socioeconomic and sociopolitical and moral arguments.
If you can do that, if that process is the foundation of our political civilization, Then why can't you evaluate and reject a bad argument or mean words?
If we can't evaluate and reject a bad argument, how on earth can we responsibly use our right to vote?
You see, now that is called a good argument.
Sure, keep your right to vote.
Which means you can evaluate complex proposals and choose among them wisely.
Which also means you get free speech.
The exposure to ideas and arguments that may shock you.
Just as ideas and arguments have shocked everyone throughout history, everywhere, all the time.
Now ask yourself this.
What sort of people, do you think, want to run to the government to protect them from criticism?
Quick question.
Do you think it's people with good arguments who are good at defending them, or do you think it might just be people with bad arguments or who are bad at defending them?
Let me ask you another question.
Do you think that it helps people with bad arguments or who are bad at defending them to protect them from criticism?
If you want to protect them from criticism using the power of the state, aren't you saying that such people cannot improve, cannot get better, or that their arguments are so irredeemably bad that they can never be rationally defended?
Huh.
I wonder.
I think people can get better.
Either their arguments can improve or their debating skills can improve.
Why do you think they can't?
Are you bigoted?
Look inward.
Think about it, really.
We're always going to have disagreements in society.
That's actually healthy.
I'm sure you know that.
There are three ways that human beings can resolve disagreements, and only one of them is any kind of real resolution.
They can negotiate, they can use violence, or they can withdraw from the disagreement.
Like if you want a job, but you're not offered enough money, you want more money, you can negotiate for more money before getting hired, or you can take the job and then steal from your employer, or you can go and look for another job.
If you want to go on a date with a woman, you can ask her out.
If she says no, you can gracefully withdraw, or you can kidnap her.
Right?
Negotiation, violence, or withdrawal.
That's all we have.
Civilization.
It's based on the principle of refusing to use violence against people who disagree with you.
If you want to buy a house, but you can't agree on some price, you don't get to become a squatter.
You don't get to just move in anyway, right?
I mean, that would be barbaric.
A total breakdown of civilized standards.
Think this.
Think of your most treasured moral perspective.
Now tell me, how old is it?
How new is it?
It's probably not more than a few decades old, particularly if you're on the left like you're secular.
Now imagine that there was no free speech when the ethics you now treasure were first introduced so recently.
Imagine those who opposed your treasured values were in control of the government, which controlled everyone's language.
What would you believe now if there had not been free speech in the past?
Who would you be?
What would you stand for?
If people in the past had not been able to forge new values, to communicate new ideas, to argue for new morals, If the powers that were had not let them be disagreeable or offensive, who would you be?
What would you believe?
You wouldn't even know the answer to that.
I mean, people disagree with me all the time.
Good!
I'm scarcely right all the time.
It's necessary.
It's healthy.
Because I have the humility of knowing that while I do have the most excellent methodology of rational philosophy, I'm far from perfect in every conclusion.
The idea.
The idea that I would call the police because someone disagreed with me or insulted me or was mean to me.
I can't even comprehend it.
Just personally, I think the police are needed for slightly more important things than hurt feelings.
There are people in desperate need who will not be helped by the police because someone got upset.
Do you want that on your conscience?
I sure as hell don't.
You may be wrong in any argument, any perspective.
I may be wrong, and it goes without saying.
And if we are wrong, and if we value truth, how do we want to be corrected?
We want to be corrected by better arguments, by rational persuasion, by reason and evidence, by the Socratic method, by Aristotelian logic, by anything except the power of the state, which...
We'll never correct us, but merely silence and punish us.
And also beware.
Beware, my friends.
If you grant the state the power to silence speech, never be so naive as to think that you will always be in control of that power.
The power to silence thought, to crush opinions and destroy arguments, that power...
Once loosed in society will not remain under your control for long.
Never ever give to the government a power you would not trust your worst enemy to be in control of.
Look, there are ideas in the world I find skin-crawlingly reprehensible.
Like, literally, they prickle the hairs on the back of my neck.
They're so bad, so wrong.
But you know what?
Those who advocate ideas which I truly hate should have free and open access to the marketplace of ideas.
Why?
Because if I surrender to hate, and I surrender to the thirst for power, For the thirst to silence those who disagree with me, who criticize me, yes, and even those who insult me, then I have created an unholy precedent in my society.
I have introduced force into conversation.
Can I guarantee I will remain in control of all that power for all time?
Can I guarantee that my daughter will never be punished by the power I have unleashed in the world?
It will never be used against her?
Of course not.
Once loosed, that power, the power to control speech is a summoned malevolence that rarely returns to where it came from.
Free speech is not a balance.
It is not a continuum.
It is binary.
It is an on-off switch.
Aside from the minor and rare instances of inciting riots and the old fire-in-a-crowded-theater analogy, free speech is everything.
Free speech is intellectual humility.
Free speech is moral courage.
Free speech is confidence in your ideas and your abilities.
Free speech is civilization.
Because the alternative to free speech is state censorship, which leads to vicious infighting for control over the apparatus of censorship, which leads to the flight of the most creative and the most intelligent members of your society.
You know, when the cage door starts closing, all those who love freedom sprint for the exit.
And state censorship leads to social stagnation, decay, where the least intelligent, and therefore often the least humble, Crow and cheer and shake their legal weapons from the high pinnacles of a civilization that literally crumbles beneath their feet.
The alternative to free speech is coercion, stagnation, decay, fear.
The general dumbing down of everyone and everything.
And the elevation of those with the very worst ideas to the very top of society with no way to oppose them.
