Free Speech ... Especially For My Opponents
I Guess It's Time To Put Down A Marker
We're in the midst of a near-constant assault on the bedrock principles and institutions of this country and the entire political philosophy on which it rests. So it's probably time to make some noise about liberal politics.
By this, I don't mean some sort of grand manifesto for the Left; I mean, instead, a small statement about liberalism as a political idea. For a long time now, we have allowed people who oppose our liberal politics to speak almost unchallenged in no small part because we felt that liberalism was a self-evident good, that it was obviously right, that -- in the post-war world -- it had won the day. We assumed we didn't really need to defend things like toleration, basic rights, a government whose power was divided and limited, and so on.
Yet here we are.
In the absence of any sort of serious defense of liberalism, anti-liberal ideas (which, it turns out, were not vanquished forever with the collapse of Nazism and Stalinism) crept out of the dark corners of our society and found ways to ingratiate themselves into more and more people's thoughts about politics.
And so, today, we find ourselves debating whether something as seemingly sacrosanct as the First Amendment is, in fact, really something we care about. At a moment of extravagant executive overreach, a good chunk of the populace is openly flirting with accepting rather than challenging authoritarian actions.
Why? Because authoritarianism seems comforting when liberalism is challenging. Liberalism is constantly demanding that we work; authoritarianism promises to do the work for us. Liberal ideas are revolving and contestable, to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Richard Rorty; it insists that we have to keep deliberating rather than assuming that any claim is settled forever.
Anti-liberal beliefs are easy to slide into because they are designed to tell us we can have whatever we want. Theyâre seductive in their approach to tyranny. They give us permission to skirt the rules or make new rules if the issue is really important. They suggest that getting something done is what really matters. Or that itâs ok as long as you know your side is correct.
But that isnât how things work in a liberal democratic constitutional republic. Here, the law is supposed to matter more than the leader and more than my feelings. When my feelings are hurt, though, and the government comes along and tells me it will take my side ... well, that's actually when I need to double down on my liberalism. Because if we take the deal, if we give the government the power to silence those with whom we disagree, that's hard-won power that will be extremely difficult or maybe impossible to claw back in the future.
When we applaud the government for silencing our opponents, for hunting them down and throwing them out, we explicitly grant that same government permission to silence us and our friends in the future. Once we allow the government to be the arbiter of what sorts of opinions are acceptable to say out loud, we've given away the store.
There are a lot of things that people say that make me uncomfortable, hurt my feelings, and even make me feel less safe. And it can be extremely hard to acknowledge that they have the right to do that. Words can hurt, certainly, but it's not the kind of hurt that we resolve by sending someone to a prison.
But what I need is not someone bigger and stronger who will use their size and strength to make them stop, even though that might feel good to me in the moment. If I do that, which is easy and comfortable for me, I'm doing the work of the authoritarian for him and I'm potentially sacrificing my own rights in the not-so-distant future.
What I need to do instead is to stand up for myself, to challenge those who say things I don't like, to make claims that are better than their claims, to argue for my beliefs. And, ideally, to gather around me a lot of people who will listen to me, who will validate my feelings, who will agree with me when I'm convincing, and who will stand up for me when I feel less safe. If I do that, which is difficult and uncomfortable for me, I'm doing the hard work of political liberalism that can protect my rights for as long as I keep on working.














