“But it cannot be the duty, because it is not the right, of the state to protect the public against false doctrine. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion. In this field, every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” U.S. Supreme Court in Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945)
Moderator message at the former Political Rhetoric Busters Disqus channel and its reincarnation as a Word Press blog
Some people advocate absolute free speech or something close to it. Some may even want to remove limits on speech that incites imminent violence, is defamatory, child porn, and/or false advertising. It is the case that allowing all speech, except what can now be punished or proscribed, is tantamount to being fair, objective and impartial? If so, that means that dark free speech[1] is fair, objective and impartial.
But on the other hand, facts, truths and logic are often bitterly contested. For example, people who deny that global warming is real or caused mostly by human activities disagree about the science, the data and its interpretation. They usually also attack the scientists as liars, incompetent, ignorant of basic science, and/ or enemies of the state. The two sides rely on different, incompatible sets of facts and logic. Minds do not change.
The Supreme Court made it clear that because judges have no idea of how to separate honest from dishonest speech, the Constitution protects dark free speech as much as honest free speech.
History, and cognitive and social sciences make it clear that dark speech is more persuasive than honest speech. Evolution hard-wired human brains to respond more strongly to threats and the negative emotions threat elicits. In practice, this means that dark speech is easily made to be stronger than honest speech, e.g., by lying, exaggerating and so forth. For example, President Trump’s claim that there is an emergency along the Mexico border is considered by most people to be a false alarm.[2] Nonetheless, that alarm is persuasive to many people, especially when people crossing the border are falsely portrayed as murdering, raping, pedophile narco terrorists.
Ban the speaker: The political right often criticizes the left as intolerant of opposing speech. They point to instances where speakers on college campuses are disinvited to speak. The left responds that the speakers are socially damaging in various ways, e.g., they are liars, or they foment unwarranted fear, hate, intolerance, etc.
In view of his past history of fomenting hate and racism, Australia canceled a visa for Milo Yiannopoulos to visit there. The Guardian reports: “Immigration minister David Coleman said on Saturday that comments about Islam made by Yiannopoulos in the wake of the Christchurch [New Zealand]massacre were ‘appalling and foment hatred and division’ and he would not be allowed in the country.”
The shooter in the Christchurch New Zealand mass murder was explicit in his ‘manifesto’ that he was murdering to divide people about guns and he used social media to spread his message of racist rage and hate while he slaughtered innocents and showed it online in real time.
Given history and human biology is it fair, objective and impartial to let people use dark free speech against the public? Or, because the courts have held there is no way to tell truth from lies, (1) allowing dark speech free reign is fair, objective and/or impartial, and (2) that’s the best that inherently flawed humans can do in view of their cognitive limitations?
Footnotes:
1. Dark free speech: lies, deceit, unwarranted emotional manipulation such as fomenting unwarranted fear, hate, anger, intolerance, bigotry or racism, unwarranted opacity to hide relevant facts or truths.
2. “Numerous polls suggest Trump’s decision was popular among his Republican base. But his decision to use executive authority to fund a wall along the southern border is opposed by a clear majority of the public. That is reflected in six polls taken from early January to early March. By roughly a 2-to-1 margin, Americans oppose Trump’s decision to use emergency powers to build a border wall. That’s a wider margin than the Senate resolution to overturn Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, which passed 59 to 41.”
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