It was clear to me from the questions that followed that the children had very little notion of what freedom actually was or what it entailed. For example, could it be right to allow climate-deniers to spread their falsehood and lies? The question begs many questions, of course: it assumes that it is beyond reasonable doubt that the globe is warming, that the warming is caused by man’s activities, that the warming is a wholly harmful phenomenon and that there is only one possible solution to it. I am insufficiently knowledgeable to pronounce on these questions and have heard eminent people whom I respect and whose integrity I have no grounds for doubting argue for very different conclusions.
But even if there were answers to these questions that were a good deal more certainly true than any answers that we possess today, it still would not be right to silence doubters and deniers: for error and even malice are the price of freedom. In the realm of intellectual freedom it is not truth that sets you free, but error, or rather the permissibility of error. And the freedom to tell lies is one of the most basic freedoms of all. There can be no freedom without it.
Well, the audience was only young and perhaps this was strong meat for their immature digestions rendered sensitive by a constant diet of modern pieties, as the young these days are said to be more likely to develop allergies because of the sterility and cleanliness of modern homes and ways of life (what they need is more dirt and early contact with potential pathogens). But soon they would be going off to university, where it was likely that they would encounter an even narrower and powerfully self-reinforcing view of the world. The pressure to conform would add to the natural self-righteousness of youth, which is often mistaken for idealism, and their impulse to censor in the name of their own irreproachable virtue would be strengthened and entrenched.
The long-term prospects for freedom of speech, then, are not altogether rosy. Those who value it are less vehement in their defence of it than are the self-righteous in their assault on it.
Anthony Daniels, “Free Speech’s Emboldened Enemies”, Quadrant, 2018-03-10.
June 26, 2020
QotD: “The freedom to tell lies is one of the most basic freedoms of all”
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