There’s much to appreciate in an editorial that’s proven highly controversial on an issue that shouldn’t be controversial at all. That free speech has become a hot, and sore, topic proves the necessity for such an editorial. That it’s been reviled as an attack on the left, by the left, for its “bothsides-ism”* demonstrates its necessity.
So why then did the New York Times editorial board, no slouches they, open an editorial they knew would be so deeply controversial, and taken by those with whom they feel the strongest camaraderie, with these words?
For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.
Some have characterized this as a “minor imperfection” in an otherwise valuable editorial about tolerance of differing views. Others have attacked it as the New York Times falsely equating the left’s criticism of hate speech with Republican book burning, “pure moral panic.” The discussion of this editorial has been exceptionally disingenuous.
No it's the part where I organize a mob to get you fired and/or make you unemployable, shut down your business, browbeat your publisher into canceling your book, etc.
Hope that helps. https://t.co/2tzPyRQbQR
— Cathy Young
(@CathyYoung63) March 19, 2022
There is no right to speak one’s mind “without fear of being shamed or shunned.” The core of free speech is the ability to speak, whether to express one’s view or to express one’s disagreement with another’s view. There is no right not to be shamed for what you say. There is no right not to be shunned for saying it. The right to shame, to shun, is as much a core free speech right as to express one’s view in the first place.
Indeed, the deprivation of this right is at the core of Maryanne Franks’ polemic against First Amendment absolutists, whose exercise of the right to disagree makes her favored speakers, women, feel too hurt and self-conscious to freely express their views without fear of backlash. It’s no less wrong when the NYT says it as when Franks says it.
What it is not is a “minor imperfection,” no matter how much you appreciate the balance of the editorial. Or not, if your expectation was that the NYT should have shredded the right for its barrage of new unconstitutional laws to control and censor speech rather than the well-intended if occasionally excessively punitive mobs of left-wing allies merely trying to make a more “polite” world through iron-fisted speech policing directed at destroying the lives and livelihoods of anyone who strays an inch from the path of righteousness.
The Times is right that Americans are concerned, very concerned, about their ability to speak freely without fear of having their lives ruined. And this fear is very real, even if some don’t pay a great deal of attention to that end of the problem. Shows canceled. Tenured professors fired. Speakers beaten. Books unpublished. The list of consequences is breathtakingly long and deep.
For most people, the only aspect they see, or at least remember, are the high profile names. It’s not just about Louis C.K. or J.K. Rowling, but thousands of people you’ve never heard of whose lives and careers were crushed by mob attacks and accusations in smaller venues that never rise to the level of the NYT front page. But it happens. It happens with shocking regularity, even if you don’t know about it.
We are under no illusion that this is easy. Our era, especially, is not made for this; social media is awash in speech of the point-scoring, picking-apart, piling-on, put-down variety. A deluge of misinformation and disinformation online has heightened this tension. Making the internet a more gracious place does not seem high on anyone’s agenda, and certainly not for most of the tech companies that control it.
But the old lesson of “think before you speak” has given way to the new lesson of “speak at your peril.” You can’t consider yourself a supporter of free speech and be policing and punishing speech more than protecting it. Free speech demands a greater willingness to engage with ideas we dislike and greater self-restraint in the face of words that challenge and even unsettle us.
As a precept, that the current climate for free speech is one of extreme intolerance, excessive control and punitive reactions for speech that’s at worst within the bounds of reason and at best quite correct if disagreeable to the extreme narratives in which the radical fringes have wrapped themselves.
The editorial took aim at both progressive “cancel culture” and conservative speech-restriction laws designed to thwart progressive efforts to infuse education with normalizing their ideological views on race and gender. The Times conceded that it, by policy, refuses to publish “hate speech,” a phrase that remains undefined and smacks of Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography from his concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), “I know it when I see it.” It distinguishes the proscriptions of the First Amendment, a limitation on government, not individuals,** from what it characterizes as its “principle” of rejecting speech it finds offensive.
Therein lies the problem with the Times’ opening sentence, framing the approach it takes to free speech as a principle. The shockingly wrong assertion that shaming and shunning in reaction to speech that one finds wrong, foolish or offensive is not some inadvertent error, a “minor imperfection” in an otherwise valuable call for tolerance and sufferance of speech with which you disagree.
In the past, I’ve tried to differentiate criticism, our right to disagree with what someone else says, from cancel culture, the effort to punish speech by using secondary action against employers, universities, publishers and others. Any discussion of free speech that fails to include some limiting principle that encourages robust disagreement without scorched earth consequences is fundamentally contrary to free speech. The New York Times didn’t make a minor mistake opening its editorial with an assertion that is fundamentally wrong. You can’t support free speech by denying its core rights to shame and shun.
But just because you have a right to do something doesn’t mean you should.
*The invention of the word “bothsidesism” is one of those intellectual travesties that has gone without sufficient discussion. There are occasional false equivalencies and responsive assertions that are factually or intellectually false, but on most issues, there are reasonable and rational arguments for and against. A reasonable person will consider all fair arguments and reach whatever decision they deem best. Rather than face fair contrary argument, some have chosen to dishonestly denigrate it as “bothsidesism,” reflecting a recognition that their arguments may not prevail when the fair arguments of the opposition are presented as well.
**Notably, the laws being enacted by Republicans will be subject to suit to enjoin them and hold them unconstitutional. The mechanism exists to address these bad laws. There is no mechanism to address attacks by mobs large and small from destroying the lives and fortunes of individuals.
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