The question I would like to approach in this brief
essay is 'What are the intrinsic strengths of maintaining a
principle of free speech'?, and 'should such a principle, if it
can be found, operate within a Democracy'?, Furthermore,
is it ideal, indeed, an intrinsic quality within Democracy
that the principle of free speech be maintained?
I shall begin the defence on behalf of a principle
of free speech by defining the environment in which it
exists. Democracy has been interpreted to mean many
things to many people, but suffice it to say that for the rest
of this essay it shall be understood to mean power of
governance ‘Of the people, by the people, for the people’,
such that those citizens of said Democracies are mutually
responsible for the governance of the collective social
structure. It should be pointed out at this juncture that in
defining our democracy as power of governance ‘for’ the
people, I am in no way condoning or alluding to a situation
in which a pro-active government impels or coerces its
member into a ‘better’ more moral state of being under the
guise of a majoritarian mandate. Rather I define ‘for’ the
people to mean a state in which, to the utmost of its ability,
the state shall endeavor not to interfere with the basic
freedoms of its population and to maintain an environment
in which the provisions of certain basic freedoms, ie:- the
right to life, etc, are protected by the power of the state. The
test will be whether a principle of free speech can be
maintained, not just as a corollary of some other basic
liberty, nor merely as a Nozickian “side constraint”, but
rather as a prior principle more fundamental than any
majoritarian concern.
It is obvious from the start that concerns can be
raised about the purported primacy of free speech, given the
fact that acts of speech can, and very well do, cause harm of
one sort or another. This occurs not just through such things
as loss of social standing, psychological abuse, or the
myriad other forms of harms that accrue through acts of
slander or denigration of character, but also real physical
harms, through such instances as the verbal commands
issued by malefic militarists to name but one instance.
These are cases in which due to the peculiar position of the
speech act as a mechanism for communication, operating
within a chain of command whose motivations and
agenda’s have little to do with the protection of free speech,
we would be loath to say they were occasions in which the
free exercise of the speech acts should be protected by any
free democratic state. Hate speech is another topical
example of the illustration I wish to draw. In acts of
supposed hate speech, the governing body, whether it be a
small institution or a full blown state, takes it upon itself to
legislate and prohibit all forms of speech and other
communications that degrade the dignity of some other of
its member, on the grounds of race, sex, religion, or any
other discrimination that is deemed to be harmful to the
well being of its membership.
Another argument that is often heard and which
again illustrates the concern with free speech as a primary
principle is that of sedition. In cases of sedition it appears
self evident that the state has a responsibility to its
membership to maintain a secure and stable system in
which the best interests of the population can be catered for,
through an environment that allows for the greatest
expression of personal freedoms for each of its member.
This can not be the case, runs the argument, when people
perpetrate seditious acts, whose sole intention is
insurrection and the overthrow of the state. The state then
has a legitimate responsibility to protect the sovereignty of
democratic governance, and thus acts of expression, of
which speech is but one, that convey or communicate a
message that is contrary to the perpetuation of a just and
free democratic state can and must be prohibited on the
basis of social security. The question of who it is that
decides what is best for the whole is another question that
we shall briefly touch on later in the essay, suffice it to say
here that the majority within a democracy dictate the moral
and legal climate through election of representatives that
convey the motivations and morals of the majority of there
electorate. It is of course debatable as to whether this
actually occurs in reality or whether it is more of an
ideological truism, given such ambiguities as vested
personal and business interests that time and again arise in
relation to elected officials.
These are but some of the concerns expressed by
those who would deny the primacy of a principle of free
speech, in fact most of these concerns do not even
recognize acts of speech as separate from a more general
form of expression and see speech acts as being a subset of
a more general species of expression. Thus as it would be
negligent of any free democratic state to allow injury
through physical harms perpetrated by one member upon
another, so it follows that just because it is an act of speech
does not mean it is separated from the more general
censures justly enforced upon other forms of expression.
For if speech is but another form of expression then it
should be subject to the same restrictions that all forms of
expressions must adhere to, and as the state would not
condone the violence of an angry man, so to it cannot allow
acts of speech that incite or create harm for those of its
member. These are compelling arguments on the face of it
against the primacy of a principle of free speech, and it now
rests upon the proponents of a free speech principle to rebut
them.
Firstly I would like to look at an argument we
touched upon earlier. The state within a democratic society
must never be seen to be that which it isn’t, namely
infallible. For it is this assumption more than any other that
leads one to hand over the personal liberties and freedoms
that any free thinking and freely choosing autonomous
individual holds to be essential to there notion of personal
integrity and freedom. If one assumes the state to be a
beneficent entity then one is more likely to suspend the
exercise of total personal freedom in favour of a more
mutually beneficial system that protects the individuals
personal freedoms in a co-extensive manner with others of
there society. Yet governments are not infallible, in fact
they tend to be time and place specific organs of fallibility,
much as human beings themselves are. For it is people who
run governments, lest we forget, and as such those that
wield the power of the state are as open to fallibility as
anybody else, thus one of the reasons for giving over
personal autonomy to the state starts to look a little shaky.
If anything this begins to look like a pretty good reason for
maintaining personal freedom of speech so as to enable one
to criticize unjust regimes that may be wrong in the
execution of there powers. In fact one might wish to
contend that it is only through the free and open
communication of ideas that a free democratic government
can be seen to be ‘accountable’ to the electorate of which
they serve. For the nature of democracy, as it was
interpreted earlier, is that the power should flow from the
people to the state not the other way around, or if it is the
other way round at all then it is a form of ‘empowerment’
of the peoples basic freedoms as opposed to the suppression
of them, which could be seen as dis-empowerment through
state interference. In maintaining this principle of free and
open discussion we find that those that administer the
power of the state are now subject to a form of
accountability that acts as a check upon any misuse of the
sovereign power ceded by the people to these individuals
who choose to represent them.
As a quick aside, it might be well to mention the objection
of Henry David Thoreau, in his great liberal treatise,
'Civil Disobedience', for he makes a very telling point
in relation to the necessity to maintain the protections for
individuals in a society, be it democratic or not, but more
especially Democratic for our purposes. Civil Disobedience
is often confused with sedition in relation to justice by
systems and forms of governance who seek to maintain
powerful positions in the face of tyrannical misanthropy.
Indeed sedition can be used as an excuse to perpetrate acts
of injustice upon an unpopular minority, by an unscrupulous
government, in moments where resistance to injustice,
although justified, is assumed by the ruling powers to run
counter to there interests. Whether these interests are for
personal or public benefit. Thoreau illustrates this beautifully
in relation to a general taxation policy, and while the
topical illustration is somewhat beyond the scope of this
essay, the principle upon which the illustration rests is
pertinent.
Let us assume, that through inculcation of the masses over
a long period of time, a public or mainstream persona, or
mindset is constructed, by a state run media organelle. This
same mindset subtly constructs the framework upon which
subsequent electoral issues are fought. it is not too great a
stretch of the imagination to picture just such a situation, given
the historically presidential examples, of Nazi Germany, Soviet
run Media, even the Burmese state funded and controlled press
in the run up to the 2010 election. Now of these, of course only
the Burmese example purports to exist within a democracy,
even though the Nazi example was initiated by Goebbels during
a proportional representative system in a constitutional
democracy.
This singular mindset, coerced and manipulated by a powerful
body that controls the organelle through which information
flows publically, then duly elects the representatives that best
represent the closest fit to the mind set that has been engendered.
Now of course this would not have to happen with only state
control, or malefic and coercive governments, but could be
created and constructed through any powerful collective that
manipulated and controlled the flow of information on a public
level, such as a large cabal of Corporate enterties in a purely
capitalist system of private media, where the cabal of Corporations
simply manipulated the general mindset, by owning all the
channels of public communication, ensuring only their
collective message was being inculcated through out the masses.
The great danger then in this illustration is, as Thoreau so
sagaciously supposed in relation to compulsive taxation in his
own essay, that if dissenting voices, all be they unpopular voices
be silenced, in the name of some fabricated conception of sedition,
then a form of coercive tyranny exists within the democracy that
is at once unjust, and counter to the personal and public
welfare, if it is assumed that the general public welfare is to be
found in the flourishing of each individual as 'best judge' of
there own lives. Thoreau went on to say, that not only was
it necessary that these dissenting voices be heard, but that the
population both singularly and as a whole had a responsibility
to ensure that dissenting voices are heard, so that the slippery
slope of tyrannical rule be avoided by any healthy and well
functioning democracy. As Voltaire so rightly supposes, in this
instance it appears that 'the only thing that is demanded of a
mature democracy, is eternal vigilance', and as an addendum
maybe, we can say the greatest insurance within a democracy to
keep the tyranny at bay, is to ensure the free exercise of opinion
in the widest possible manner, so as to ensure that malefic
or powerful cabals or enterties do not subvert the general freedoms
for their own personal agenda's.
Acts of free speech then in relation to sedition as a charge levelled
by popular or general opinion as expressed through the organelle
of government should be liberally adjudged in relation to the
context in which it exists. If it exists within oppressive situations
in which the minority opinions, no matter how unpopular they
may be, are suppressed then we should be wholly suspicious of
such a charge. If however, a seditious charge be levelled in a society
in which free speech is supported and maintained as a primary
right, and duty, then it may be assumed, albeit judiciously, that
the charge was the outcome of some action that followed from the
speech act itself that cut across the co-requisite rights or duties of
other of the citizenry in a free, liberal and democratic system of
government.
Thoreau's charge then, that we as citizens have a responsibility to
ensure dissenting opinions be heard, and that if necessary we must
hold this responsibility to account through civil disobedience, is a
powerful argument for the primacy of free speech in democracy.
It is also a strong pointer to the direction that democracy needs
to take in order to ensure that powerful elites with personal
agenda's are at least transparent in there actions, if not held to
account in the market place of idea's that is the bastion of any
proper functioning Democracy.
So, another good reason, and one that runs in
conjunction with the aforementioned support of an
independent free speech principle, is that only if the
electorate has the access to the requisite information can it
be said to be acting to the best of its ability when making
decisions. The decision making process must be allowed
the fullest exercise, and thus the fullest access to
information concerning these decisions, in a democracy. As
any D.M.P is constrained by the well spring of information
from which it draws. Thus if we are indeed looking for a
truly free democracy then the open exchange of ideas is
essential for the education of the electorate. Only when the
electorate are allowed access to the full range of competing
choices can they be said to be exercising there full
democratic freedom when making such decisions, such as,
who is the best candidate for the job?
So both the argument for accountability and the
argument for the fullest access to information for the
electorate, lend weight to the idea of the primacy of a
principle of free speech, yet they also lend weight to the
protection of more general freedoms of expression as well,
and thus free speech is often subsumed in modern law into
a more general protection for freedom of expression. This
freedom of expression is held to be sacrosanct in many
liberal documents, such as the ‘declaration of human rights’
article 19, or even within the charter of the United Nations
article 55(c), which seeks to maintain the dignity and worth
of the human person through “the universal respect for, and
observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for
all without discrimination as to race, sex, language, or
religion”. Thus further support is given for the freedom of
speech under a more general banner of ‘freedom of
expression’. This promotion and protection of basic human
rights and freedoms could also be seen as one of the
greatest self-limitations of a democracy. Preventing it from
becoming tyrannical. The tyranny of the majority being
rightly seen as one of the greatest evils of any democracy
and one in which John Stewart Mill particularly warned
against in chap 2 of his great liberal treatise ‘On Liberty’.
Talk of a general freedom of expression is all well
and good, and so far as it lends support to freedom of
speech as a species of a more general freedom of
expression, we may say that it benefits a society and is an
intrinsic part of any free democracy. So is there anything
about an act of speech that would allow for a specific
principle of free speech to emerge over and above any of
the other competing principles? Let us now examine what it
means to speak freely and examine why this might be seen
as being a cornerstone of any free and open democracy.
Both the arguments for free speech presented before
are, as Frederick Schauer so rightly points out in his work
‘Free speech: A Philosophical inquiry’, consequentialist
in approach, ”each of these arguments values open
communication for what it does, not for what it is”(chap4,
pg47).
These arguments still do not create an environment
from which we may procure an independent principle of
free speech, but rather recognize free speech as a necessary
condition of a properly functioning democratic process, and
thus are arguments that see freedom of speech not as an
intrinsic good unto itself but rather as beneficial due to the
benefits that society accrues through the exercise of these
freedoms. In short they are consequentialist. Yet there are a
number of arguments that do not rest upon the need to edify
the society, rather the emphasis is upon the individual.
Although it may be the case that society gains some benefit
it is “incidental to the primary focus of individual well
being”(chap4 pg. 48).
Aristotle was one who observed that the freedom of
speech was an intrinsic good unto itself, as it allowed for
the full and complete self-development of the individual.
This self-development was supposed to be the ultimate
ideal upon which any free society should set itself. For he
presumed that the life worth living is the one in which
personal growth, self fulfilment and the full and open
development of the rational qualities is realized. So the
emphasis is upon what a person ‘should’ be striving
towards not what they actually are. It follows that free
speech is an intrinsic good due to the fact that rational
qualities are more readily realized through an open
communication policy, and for Aristotle the abiding
difference between humanity and mere animals was the
development of this rationality, of which animals
supposedly lacked. One may well argue that it was
presumptuous of Aristotle to presume that animals lacked
the requisite faculty of rationality, after all who knows the
mind of a lobster! yet this is an aside for now. Suffice it say
that if Aristotle was correct in this assertion, then it
strengthens the claims of those who support a free speech
principle in so far as speech is an integral part of rationality.
If the development of a person’s rationality is what counts
then we would have to conclude that speech was indeed an
intrinsic good. There are however strong objections to this,
as who is to say that the development of the rational being
is any more important than say the right to food, warmth, or
shelter; and if all that can be said of speech is that it is
another form of self expression, as violent abuse is, then
what is to stop society rightly censuring speech, much along
the lines that it already does for other anti-social
expressions. It would seem ludicrous to suggest that society
should not interfere with acts of speech when many other
forms of expression are prohibited so as to maintain an
environment conducive to the health, wealth, and
fulfilment of the members of that society.
There must then be something about acts of speech
that separate them from other forms of self expression if we
are going to succeed in creating a primary principle of free
speech that isn’t trumped by other societal concerns and
requirements. Here we start to approach the crux of the
argument levelled by proponents of free speech, namely that
acts of speech are a peculiar form of expression and in fact
could be aligned with the freedom to communicate. This
freedom to communicate is itself derived from what most
liberal thinkers believe to be the cornerstone of any free and
open society, namely, ‘the freedom of thought’. The old
adage that you may take all my freedoms but you will never
take my thoughts is a common understanding. Yet what of
cases in which one is brainwashed or manipulated into
doing something by constant reinforcement regimes?
Modern advertisers may fall into this category, as might commercial companies that actively try to manipulate advertising
campaigns that increase there desired results, namely, profits. Some may even target young people, which on the face of it might make sound
economic sense, as youth have less mental barriers to
overcome and thus are a desirous target market. ‘Get them
while they are young’, being an important part of such a
manipulative advertising and marketing strategy. So here would be a situation in which
people are being actively manipulated by others whose
agenda’s have little or nothing to do with realizing full
self–development, rather, it is driven by profit, not people.
Should not society then have the right to protect its citizenry
from such abuse, especially when the targets of such
manipulation are themselves not fully rational beings? Here
seems to be a strong argument for some form of censure of
acts of speech as modes of communication, and thus any
primary principle of free speech founders upon the rocks of
other competing freedoms.
We do however have an intuitive belief that thought,
and its closely allied faculty of opinion, are sacrosanct in
any open and free society. So it cannot be the mere
expression of speech acts that gives any free speech
principle its philosophic clout. Rather it may be more
supportive to think of acts of speech as the first natural
extensions of thought itself, for thought seems to function
in such a way as to moderate itself through language much
as speech does, both are dependent upon language for there
existence. If we think at all it is usually through the mode of
language. Speech acts are a primary extension of this
language and as such form a bridge between thought and
action. Some may argue at this point that any extension
from thought itself is an action and this may be a valid
point, but the peculiar nature of speech is that unlike any
other action it relies upon the internal thought process and
motivations of the expresser implicitly and cannot be
divorced from the language of thought in the way that any
other form of expression can. Furthermore if we are to
recognize that the self development and betterment of the
individual is of prime importance, both to the individual
and as a spin off society at large, and further recognize that
the freedom of thought is a natural given that cannot and
should not be controlled by any free and open democracy,
then we may wish to allow acts of speech a more important
role in the formulation of judgements about which principles
to adopt at a lexically prior stage when establishing societal
principles at large.
Another reason that acts of speech differ from other
forms of communicable expression is that they are
culturally ancient. That is, before the advent of written and
other forms of communication that came to be an accepted
part of society, speech was the most important
communicable asset the human species had. Most, if not all,
cultures stem from the roots of an exclusively oral culture.
It was in fact the only medium of communication open to
many cultures and as such holds a universal appeal that is
deep seeded within the architecture of the human psyche.
The censure of speech acts then could be seen as a betrayal
against a naturally occurring phenomena that is universally
practised by not just those alive today, but also by all our
ancestors from the first time they grunted which way the
woolly mammoths were heading. It is seen then as a gift
that has been passed down and hard won by those of our
past and should be protected by the current crop of
humanity so that it may be passed on intact to subsequent
generations.
Speech also acts, as I have hinted above, as a bridge
between thought and action. It allows for the evolution of
thought itself, through the barter and exchange of ideas.
This allows us to change or meliorate our opinions in such a
way as to inordinately strengthen our individual and
societal decision making process, and in any open and free
democracy this has to be an enormous plus. Speech also
allows us to test our ideas in free exchange with others
without actually having to implement them. This can act as
a societal & individual pressure valve, and allow for
situations in which the correct course of action can take
place rather than blithely blundering from one wrong action
to another. Speech then could be said to be the glue that
holds all the facets of human interaction together.
Further arguments can be offered that rest upon the
notions of personal autonomy and societal respect for
dignity, and although these are powerful arguments in favour
of the primacy of personal liberty, they are not necessarily
specific to a principle of free speech. That said, the argument
propounded by Thoreau in his great liberal and social
essay 'Civil Disobedience', pointed to a species of principle
that cannot be separated from any form of deliberation in
regards to whether free Speech is a necessary and intrinsic
quality, and primary principle of any proper functioning
Democracy, and as we noted quite clearly, the fullest and
most extensive exercise of free speech must be maintained
so as to avoid the pitfalls of a coercive tyranny of the
majority over the minority through the duress and coercion
of powerful manipulative bodies or powers that seek to
subvert general or other individual opinions in favor of
there own in an unjust manner, and in this regards free
speech is intrinsic to a fully functioning democracy.
To conclude then, we have discovered that the
freedom of speech allows for the greatest diversity of
opinion and this diversity is the very lifeblood of any
dynamic and openly free democracy. It allows the
democratic process to evolve and not remain static and thus
stagnate. We have also noted that the very nature of
democracy lends itself to the establishment of a principle of
free speech as a prerequisite to any open and free society,
but reservations were also noted in so far as acts of speech
can and do cause harm to others. What is probably needed
here is an appeal to tolerance, but that is beyond the scope
of this essay.
A balance must then be struck in which the
protection of society, from those that would use speech acts
not as expressions of opinion but rather as commercial or
inter personal tools of manipulation, must be weighed
against the fullest empowerment of the individuals human
right of freedom of thought, and speech as a natural
extension of that freedom. A principle of free speech then,
is I believe enshrined within the notion of democracy itself.
The prior nature of any principle of free speech then
should be recognized only in conjunction with other
competing freedoms, although it should always be with
grave deliberation that any censure or prohibition of free
speech in particular should be undertaken. Thus the
primacy of a principle of free speech over and above other
forms of self expression should always be foremost when
orchestrating a set of principles from which a free and open
democracy may function, and so the question of whether a
principle of free speech is intrinsically a part of democracy, must
be answered, in the unqualified affirmative,
albeit with the proviso that certain content of free speech
cannot be divorced from the context in which it is expressed.
That being said, the best defence against all forms of tyranny, wherever and however they may arise, is first and foremost the principled primacy of free speech.
Bibliography.
1.Frederick schauer. ‘Free speech a philosophical
enquirery’: Cambridge university press, Cambridge.
2.John Rawls. ‘A theory of justice’:
Oxford university press: ( 1990)
3.J.S.Mill. ‘On liberty and considerations on
representative government’: Everymans library; (1984)
4.Robert Nozick. ‘Anarchy, state, and utopia’
Basic books; (1980).
5.The oxford companion to philosophy; edited by
Ted Honderich; Oxford university press( 1990).
6. Henry David Thoreau. 'Civil Disobedience'
© Richard Michael Parker 1999
