“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, Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 545 (1945)
Constitutionally protected free speech includes facts, truths, and sound reasoning, (collectively, honest free speech), and lies, including lies of omission or truth-hiding, flawed reasoning and unwarranted emotional manipulation (collectively, dark free speech). Unless a legal line is allegedly crossed, e.g., defamation, incitement to violence or false advertising, the courts usually won't even consider lies or flawed reasoning because that isn't what the law is for. Unless someone crosses a legal line or is testifying under oath and lies to the court (perjury), the courts do not see any difference between truth and lies or sound reasoning and flawed reasoning. Outside the courtroom, the scope of free speech in public is vast. Politicians, ideologues, pundits and marketers are all free to do an essentially unlimited amount of lying and flawed reasoning to the public with no legal liability.
When considering the scope of free speech in public, moral authority seems to be equal to all forms of free speech from the legal point of view. What about from a social point point of view?
When asked about politics, most people would say that their perceptions of reality and reasoning is firmly grounded in facts and logic. In general, most would claim to dislike and not employ things like lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity (truth-hiding), and maybe also unwarranted emotional manipulation such as fomenting irrational fear, hate, distrust or bigotry. It is reasonable to believe that over about 85% of adults would claim they prefer facts, truths and sound reasoning over lies, deceit, truth-hiding, flawed reasoning and probably also emotional manipulation.
It is also reasonable to believe that some people believe that at least for politics, the means justify the ends, and thus they are willing to admit that they would lie, deceive, hide truth, apply flawed reasoning and emotionally manipulate to get what they want.
Assuming there is a social preference for honest free speech in politics, does that reflect a belief that there is usually more moral authority or value in honest free speech compared to dark free speech? If it isn't a matter of morality or ethics, then what is basis for the preference?
And, what about people who would not hesitate to use dark free speech in politics to get what they want? They can morally justify lies, deceit and emotional manipulation as a way to achieve good social outcomes, which justifies their behavior. They can even morally justify it as something that benefits themselves, but that benefit then flows to the rest of society. They can also justify dark free speech as something that God would approve of.
Is there more moral authority or value inherent in relying on fact, truth and logic than in relying on lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity and unwarranted emotional manipulation? Or, is it the case that morals and moral behavior are so personal and so subjective that there is no point in even trying to discern any kind of socially meaningful difference between honest free speech and dark free speech?
No comments:
Post a Comment