I take it as a matter of course that what we desire is some sort of open and honest communication. Such a thing is enshrined both in our popular culture, and in our formal culture. Popularly, we speak of a desire to "really get to know" someone, which of course implies clear and open communication with them. It implies that they speak to us without any deception, and that we understand them without our own biases getting in the way. There is also a desire that others "really know us", which would imply that we desire to speak clearly and honestly, and that others listen to us seriously. We want to be known, and to know others. Going in either direction, there must be communication that is honest, frank, and clear. We must challenge ourselves not to lie, bother to others and to ourselves.
Much more could be said of this existential desire for open communication on an interpersonal level. Indeed, at a later time, I would like to say investigate these things more closely. But now is not the hour for that investigation. Instead, I wish to look at the formalization of our desire for honest speech, as a culture. I want to look at how we have brought that interpersonal need for honest speaking into the social sphere.
As a nation, we have formalized this desire in many ways. One of them is in our commitment to free speech, especially political free speech. This is a legal, or juridical, formalization of honest speech. True, the law does not explicitly prohibit lying, in and of itself. Instead, its emphasis that our communication be genuine and honest is on what it guarantees, not what it prohibits. It guarantees that we can, legally, always say what we think. This is true even if our honest, genuine thoughts pose a problem for those in power.
But there is another element to our culture's commitment to free speech. This later one bases itself upon that legal formalization, but it extends out beyond it, reaching into the social-political sphere. As a culture, we have come to expect that the legal formalization of free speech manifest itself as a blanket permission to say anything, anywhere. But we have also intertwined that legal formalization with the ideal of open debate.
This in-formalization is an extension of the blanket guarantee of free speech (legally formalized in our code of laws) combined with our popular notion of the "marketplace of ideas". This later concept refers to the belief that all ideas, no matter how preposterous or morally repugnant, should be heard and debated in public. Those ideas that have the Truth behind them will tend to win out naturally, without infringing on anyone's freedom to say what they think.
So, what has grown out of this codification of law and cultural ideal has been the widespread belief that all ideas are to be equally entertained upon the debate stage, immediately and at all times. We tend to take it as granted that there is no place where an idea cannot be trotted out, and where it is not owed an immediate formal debate. One can see this when, for instance, someone is told that this-or-that private venue (like a home or personal Facebook page) is not open for debate; there will always be someone that sulks about it, saying "I thought you respected free speech!".
This is our cultural principle: all things are to be discussed and debated, endlessly, at all times.
Of course, when the actual, legal formalization of free speech comes under assault, a significant number of people become predictably upset. This is understandable. After all, free speech is the means by which we live honestly, so it is natural that we become upset and concerned if we see moves being made to limit that speech. Moves like banning flag burning as protest, restricting speech that causes "division", and the like.
However, we also see people become upset when the informalized ideal of public debate (which, again, is not identical to free speech as such) seems to be under threat. Or when it is not even threatened, but is simply thwarted in some specific location or venue.
For instance, we know that sometimes college students block certain speakers from coming to their campus to express ideas they deemed inappropriate. This has happened on several occasions, and has sparked some notable careers for certain "intellectual dark web" personalities. Some people have even made a living by doing little more than reiterating the need for free speech, albeit in an insipid and intellectually vapid manner. Examples would be people like Dave Rubin, who has little to say beyond bemoaning "the media" and praising free speech in a sort of vague, intellectually non-committal way. I cannot help but notice that his articulation of the need for free speech never goes beyond the abstract, and it seems to me as if this is because he has nothing to actually say. But I digress.
However, I am suspicious that we, as a culture, have actually earned a right to be upset and concerned over the state of open debate, let alone free speech. I am suspicious that specific individuals, like the Dave Rubins of the world, have any justification in fretting over these topics, either.
This is because I take it as a fair question to ask whether or not we have reason to think that this principles of free speech and open debate are really upheld by those who talk incessantly about them. I assume that free speech has never really been the problem. Save for a few extremists at the Far Right or Far Left, no one has been calling for legal boundaries on free speech. And I am comfortable ignoring the extremists, for now.
Rather, the problem has been over the cultural expectation predicated on free speech: constant public debate over any and all ideas, at any venue. While the members of the "intellectual dark web" have been bemoaning the death of debate, I find it fair to question whether or not the sort of debate they seem to idealize has ever been alive. Put another way, I am curious whether or not they have seriously advocated for open and rigorous debate. Put a more blunt way, I suspect they are full of shit.
Well, let us first find out what an open debate culture would really look like. If we seriously want open, honest, public debate, then we need to see if we even culturally espouse the proper conditions for it to happen. If not, then our concerns about open debate need to move back a step to a more fundamental level. So then, we must ask ourselves, what are the material conditions that are necessary for freedom of speech to be made fully manifest in our cultural ideal of open debate?
Some immediate ideas relate to what I said at the onset of this essay. One is that our speech has to first be entirely honest. If we are to discuss and debate ideas, then we must speak honestly about them. Otherwise, we risk mischaracterizing the ideas (either our own or our opponent's), and thus thwarting our ostensible goal of accurately discussing and debating them. If we debunk an idea, but we have mischaracterized it from the start, then we have perhaps debunked the wrong idea, or else debunked nothing at all.
Second, our speech must be contextually informed. We are material beings, embedded in a material and temporal context. To speak without reference to the real material and temporal contexts framing that speech is to try and break out of the real flow of time and into some eternal, pure realm of untethered truth. Perhaps this works for mathematics, but it won't due for any discussion of issues pertaining to human life. This means that our speech cannot be a-contextual regarding philosophy, psychology, and political ideology. To that end, we must make sure that our speech acknowledges the ideas we are debating in their fullest contexts, and that it is coherent in regards to those contexts.
Third, our speech must refrain from enticing our opponent's and our audience's worst cognitive aspects. By this I mean, we must speak so as to not get the audience or the person whom we are debating or those who are listening "riled up". We cannot be trying to shock people, or make them angry or upset. We know that when the human brain is made angry or scared, its capacity for real critical thinking is short circuited. Thus, its ability to actually digest the information or ideas being offered to it is severely compromised. If we are honest in our desire for open debate, then (to put it bluntly) we must try as much as possible to avoid deliberately pissing off or scaring our opponents and audiences.
There are more principles which we could elaborate, but these three shall suffice for now.
So then, we can now ask ourselves if these basic principles are being met, either by the culture at large or by the sub-set of free speech 'warriors' who constantly bemoan the state of open debate these days. If they are not, then the entire enterprise of framing any sort of debate or discussion around the notion of free and open speech becomes tainted by a lack of proper thought. If the free and open speech in question is merely shock-value speech, then it fails before the first word is uttered. Yes, the formalized quality of free speech is upheld (which is to say, the legal freedom of one's speech in and of itself). But the ideal of open discussion and debate - the cultural ideal of free speech and its function in society - is maid into a mockery.
Enter people like Milo Yiannopolis, Ann Coulter, and Steven Crowder.
These individuals have appeared as major actors in the popular debate regarding the sanctity of the free speech, as well as the sanctity of the sort of honest debate and discussion which we expect to flow from that right. Unfortunately, much of the discussion they have tried to cultivate has centered on the minor number of students who actually want to legally restrict free speech. Of course, such people do exist. The chirping canaries in this coal mine are not wrong, per say, just premature. Furthermore, the alt-Right which typically aligns with the likes of those I mentioned tends to have some on its edges who would like to curb free speech legally. So, if we are to feign that this is a problem, then it must be feigned in all directions.
But this is not really what was at issue in the protests that kept out speakers like those I mentioned above. I'll put it bluntly and, literally, boldly: There was never a real, credible threat to either legal free speech or open public debate and discussion.
Again, this is why I say that it is unfortunate that the real issue was sidelined by an overblown (and disingenuous) concern regarding free speech, qua free speech, or regarding the health of modern public debate.
The reason genuine legal free speech was not really the issue is that there was never a credible threat of a legal amendment to undue our freedom of speech, or for specific laws to curb it. That's obvious.
But the reason that open public discussion and debate was never at issue is that people like Yiannopolis, Coulter, and Crowder were never going to these places to engage in the rich historical practice of freely discussing and debating serious ideas.
They are going there to violate precisely those principles I discussed above, which is to say they were going there to deliberately undermine genuine free debate and instead enact some sort of mockery of it. Some wink-and-a-nod play at genuine dialogue which was really just being shocking for the sake of being shocking. I have no doubts, based upon looking at their other work, that people like Yiannopolis, Coulter, and Crowder were not going to present interesting ideas in an open and intellectually rigorous, honest, and creative way. I don't think those three (or their ilk) even have that capacity. They were going to mischaracterize their opponents, rile up their audience, and generally get emotional reactions.
What made it all so repulsive was that despite their obvious lack of intellectual credibility, they continued to play up the part of aggrieved truth-teller, so saddened at the death of free debate. As I said, none of them were there to pursue dialogue in interesting intellectual territory. They were re-hashing stale ideas, regurgitating tired talking points, and doing it in a way to try to rile up detractors and promote their brand of abrasive persona.
In other words, free and open debate was never under attack because it was never going to happen in the first place. No challenging new concepts were going to be presented; no good faith arguments were going to be made. Shock artists were going to pander to their base, piss off the kinds of people their base loves pissing off, and make a little money.
That is not debate. That is not intellectual exploration or genuine thinking. It's something new; some bastard art form that combines motel-room level art with live performance. Let us call it shock-kitsch. Low-brow mock-intellectual theater was blocked, not riveting public discourse or debate.
Now, am I in favor of legally restricting the right of charlatans to play-act at being intellectuals? No. I'm not. Restrictions are dangerous and easy to abuse. But am I going to continue to pretend that keeping people like these from performing their predicable, boring, shock-kitsch at universities is either a threat to free speech or an egregious insult to open public debate?
No.