On
June 17, the political commentator Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on
Fox News, asserted that crying migrant children separated from their
parents are “child actors.”
Does this groundless claim deserve as much airtime as, for example, a
historically informed argument from Ta-Nehisi Coates that structural
racism makes the American dream possible?
Jordan
Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has
complained that men can’t “control crazy women” because men “have
absolutely no respect” for someone they cannot physically fight. Does
this adolescent opinion deserve as much of an audience as the nuanced
thoughts of Kate Manne, a professor of philosophy at Cornell University,
about the role of “himpathy” in supporting misogyny?
We
may feel certain that Coulter and Peterson are wrong, but some people
feel the same way about Coates and Manne. And everyone once felt certain
that the Earth was the center of the solar system. Even if Coulter and
Peterson are wrong, won’t we have a deeper understanding of why racism
and sexism are mistaken if we have to think for ourselves about their
claims? And “who’s to say” that there isn’t some small fragment of truth
in what they say?
If this specious line of thought seems at all plausible to you, it is because of the influence of “On Liberty,”
published in 1859 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill’s
argument for near-absolute freedom of speech is seductively simple. Any
given opinion that someone expresses is either wholly true, partly true
or false.
To
claim that an unpopular or offensive opinion cannot be true “is to
assume our own infallibility.” And if an offensive opinion is true, to
limit its expression is clearly bad for society. If an opinion is partly
true, we should listen to it, because “it is only by the collision of
adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of
being supplied.” And even if an opinion is false, society will benefit
by examining the reasons it is false. Unless a true view is challenged,
we will hold it merely “in the manner of a prejudice, with little
comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.”
The
problem with Mill’s argument is that he takes for granted a naïve
conception of rationality that he inherited from Enlightenment thinkers
like René Descartes. For such philosophers, there is one ahistorical
rational method for discovering truth, and humans (properly educated)
are approximately equal in their capacity for appreciating these truths.
We know that “of all things, good sense is the most fairly
distributed,” Descartes assures us, because “even those who are the
hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than
they already have.”
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Of course, Mill and Descartes disagreed fundamentally
about what the one ahistorical rational method is — which is one of the
reasons for doubting the Enlightenment dogma that there is such a
method.
If you do have faith in a
universal method of reasoning that everyone accepts, then the Millian
defense of absolute free speech is sound. What harm is there in people
hearing obvious falsehoods and specious argumentation if any sane and
minimally educated person can see through them? The problem, though, is
that humans are not rational in the way Mill assumes. I wish it were
self-evident to everyone that we should not discriminate against people
based on their sexual orientation, but the current vice president of the United States does not agree.
I wish everyone knew that it is irrational to deny the evidence that
there was a mass shooting in Sandy Hook, but a syndicated radio talk
show host can make a career out of arguing for the contrary.
Historically,
Millian arguments have had some good practical effects. Mill followed
Alexis de Tocqueville in identifying “the tyranny of the majority” as an
ever-present danger in democracies. As an advocate of women’s rights
and an opponent of slavery, Mill knew that many people then regarded
even the discussion of these issues as offensive. He hoped that by
making freedom of speech a near absolute right he could guarantee a
hearing for opinions that were true but unpopular among most of his
contemporaries.
However, our
situation is very different from that of Mill. We are seeing the
worsening of a trend that the 20th century German-American philosopher
Herbert Marcuse warned of back in 1965:
“In endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is
treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misinformed
may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda rides along with
education, truth with falsehood.” This form of “free speech,”
ironically, supports the tyranny of the majority.
The
media are motivated primarily by getting the largest audience possible.
This leads to a skewed conception about which controversial
perspectives deserve airtime, and what “both sides” of an issue are. How
often do you see controversial but well-informed intellectuals like
Noam Chomsky and Martha Nussbaum on television? Meanwhile, the former
child-star Kirk Cameron appears on television to explain that we should
not believe in evolutionary theory unless biologists can produce a
“crocoduck” as evidence. No wonder we are experiencing what Marcuse
described as “the systematic moronization of children and adults alike
by publicity and propaganda.”
Marcuse
was insightful in diagnosing the problems, but part of the solution he
advocated was suppressing right-wing perspectives. I believe that this
is immoral (in part because it would be impossible to do without the
exercise of terror) and impractical (given that the internet was
actually invented to provide an unblockable information network).
Instead, I suggest that we could take a big step forward by
distinguishing free speech from just access. Access to the general
public, granted by institutions like television networks, newspapers,
magazines, and university lectures, is a finite resource. Justice
requires that, like any finite good, institutional access should be
apportioned based on merit and on what benefits the community as a
whole.
There is a clear line between
censoring someone and refusing to provide them with institutional
resources for disseminating their ideas. When Nathaniel Abraham was
fired in 2004 from his position at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
because he admitted to his employer that he did not believe in
evolution, it was not a case of censorship of an unpopular opinion.
Abraham thinks that he knows better than other scientists (and better
than other Christians, like Pope Francis, who reminded the faithful that
God is not “a magician, with a magic wand”). Abraham has every right to
express his ignorant opinion to any audience that is credulous enough
to listen. However, Abraham does not have a right to a share of the
intellectual capital that comes from being associated with a prestigious
scientific institution like Woods Hole.
Similarly, the top colleges and universities that invite Charles Murray to share his junk science defenses of innate racial differences
in intelligence (including Columbia and New York University) are not
promoting fair and balanced discourse. For these prestigious
institutions to deny Murray an audience would be for them to exercise
their fiduciary responsibility as the gatekeepers of rational discourse.
We have actually seen a good illustration of what I mean by “just
access” in ABC’s courageous decision to cancel “Roseanne,” its
highest-rated show. Starring on a television show is a privilege, not a
right. Roseanne compared a black person to an ape. Allowing a show named
after her to remain on the air would not be impartiality; it would be
tacitly endorsing the racist fantasy that her views are part of
reasonable mainstream debate.
Donald
Trump, first as candidate and now as president, is such a significant
news story that responsible journalists must report on him. But this
does not mean that he should be allowed to set the terms of the debate.
Research shows that repeatedly hearing assertions increases the
likelihood of belief — even when the assertions are explicitly
identified as false. Consequently, when journalists repeat Trump’s
repeated lies, they are actually increasing the probability that people
will believe them.
Even
when journalistic responsibility requires reporting Trump’s views, this
does not entail giving all of his spokespeople an audience. MSNBC’s
“Morning Joe,” set a good precedent for just access by banning from the
show Kellyanne Conway for casually spouting “alternative facts.”
Marcuse
also suggested, ominously, that we should not “renounce a priori
violence against violence.” Like most Americans, I spontaneously cheered
when I saw the white nationalist Richard Spencer punched in the face
during an interview. However, as I have noted elsewhere, Mahatma Gandhi
and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us that nonviolent protest is not only a moral demand
(although it is that too); it is the highest strategic cunning.
Violence plays into the hands of our opponents, who relish the
opportunity to play at being martyrs. Consequently, while it was wrong
for Middlebury College to invite Murray to speak, it was even more wrong
for students to assault Murray and a professor escorting him across campus. (Ironically, the professor who was injured in this incident is a critic of Murray who gave a Millian defense of allowing him to speak on campus.)
What
just access means in terms of positive policy is that institutions that
are the gatekeepers to the public have a fiduciary responsibility to
award access based on the merit of ideas and thinkers. To award space in
a campus lecture hall to someone like Peterson who says that feminists
“have an unconscious wish for brutal male domination,” or to give time
on a television news show to someone like Coulter who asserts that in an
ideal world all Americans would convert to Christianity, or to
interview a D-list actor like Jenny McCarthy about her view that actual
scientists are wrong about the public health benefits of vaccines is not
to display admirable intellectual open-mindedness. It is to take a
positive stand that these views are within the realm of defensible
rational discourse, and that these people are worth taking seriously as
thinkers.
Neither is true: These
views are specious, and those who espouse them are, at best, ignorant,
at worst, sophists. The invincibly ignorant and the intellectual
huckster have every right to express their opinions, but their right to
free speech is not the right to an audience.
Another
summer, another command from Hick on High. Breaking out his best Barack
Obama rule-by-executive-fiat pen, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
signed the erroneously titled “Maintaining Progress on Clean Vehicles” .svg)
