Let’s start with a thought experiment. In late-19th-century France, the brilliant chemist, Louis Pasteur, originated the germ theory of disease. The idea that diseases powerful enough to kill large mammals were often caused by organisms too tiny to see was extremely controversial.
Imagine that France was a dictatorship, rather than a generally free society, that the scientists who opposed Pasteur were favorites of the dictator, and that the regime then threatened Pasteur with incarceration or execution if he publicized his theory. Imagine they burned his notes, seized and destroyed his lab records, and intimidated his supporters into silence. The germ theory was a great breakthrough in our medical knowledge and served as a foundation, years later, for the development of antibiotics and other disease-fighting medications. If the State or Church had suppressed Pasteur’s freedom of speech, for how many years or decades might the growth of medical knowledge have been held back?
How Free Speech Fuels Progress
There are many such examples. Socrates, in challenging the Athenian state’s prosecution of the Peloponnesian War, developed revolutionary theories and virtually founded the field of moral philosophy. Copernicus and, later, Galileo challenged the geocentric theory upheld by the Church in favor of the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Darwin revolutionized our knowledge of biology with his theory of evolution.
Fortunately, although these specific heroes were often executed, threatened with torture, denounced, or saw their theories banned and their books burned, there were, in time, societies sufficiently free for their ideas to be publicized and disseminated.
True innovative theories, although they advance human knowledge and generally benefit practical life, are often bitterly opposed when first introduced. This is because, by virtue of being new, they challenge an era’s prevailing “wisdom” and trigger the guardians of entrenched beliefs.
If we protect the right of all individuals to speak their minds (excluding only those who perpetrate or advocate violence), rational human beings can decide for themselves which ideas are true and which are false. By contrast, if we legally rescind the right of some or all individuals to speak, then the legal system—the government—decides truth and falsity.
The Cost of Censorship
Let’s look at opposition to freedom of speech and its consequences. Several years ago, during the COVID pandemic, Jacinda Ardern, then Prime Minister of New Zealand, stated: “We [the government] will continue to be your single source of truth… Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.” In the United States, the Biden administration put this principle into action. They established a Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security—prompting free speech advocates, myself among them, to compare it to a “Ministry of Truth” from Orwell’s 1984—and, fortunately, the blowback caused the government to shut it down.
Nevertheless, the government proceeded with a suppressive policy of thought control. The Twitter Files revealed that government agencies “coached” social media platforms regarding who could and could not post about the COVID controversy. Numerous expert medical professionals who disagreed with government pronouncements were censored, including Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. It should be obvious to all honest persons that suppressing medical experts during a medical emergency inhibits our ability to learn the truth, to fight the disease, and to promote health.
I’m a philosophy professor and have taught logic for forty years. Here’s a true story from an ethics class many years ago. I stated a claim I believed to be true. A student said, “That’s your opinion.” I responded, “Is everything an opinion? How do we distinguish a mere opinion from truth?” The kids thought about it for a minute, and then one answered, “You back it up.” “Correct,” I said. “Back it up with what?” “Facts,” the kid said. “Exactly,” I said. “You back it up with evidence.” I referred to Law and Order and other TV shows they’d seen where prosecutors must present evidence of the defendant’s guilt and defense attorneys get repeated chances to respond.
Logic is the field that teaches us how to provide evidence in support of a conclusion—which factual claims are relevant and which are not, how much evidence is needed, how to avoid logical fallacies in presenting evidence, how to ensure all factual claims are accurate and the reasoning valid, and so forth. Regarding intractable issues, logic is an indispensable tool for establishing the truth.
As a contemporary example, let’s take the controversial claim of human-caused climate change. US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island—and others—have at different times proposed criminalizing denial of dangerous man-made warming.
Further, former Vice President Al Gore has been saying for years that we are in a climate crisis and that there is no time to debate but only to take remedial action. If he is right about a possible climate emergency (and I think he is not), then he is emphatically mistaken regarding his conclusion. The truth is: We must debate. Evidence on both (or all) sides of the issue should be presented; rational human beings then honestly analyze and assess the evidence; they decide in the rigorous tribunal of their own minds where the preponderance of the evidence lies—and who among the opposing sides has the strongest case.
We must debate, because if there truly is an emergency (or the possibility of an approaching one), it might be life and death to get it right. We need to examine all the evidence, even if a hearing is done relatively quickly. Criminalizing or suppressing the right to speak ideas on any side of a controversial issue establishes major roadblocks to the pursuit of truth regarding that issue. There are two closely related points here: 1) Freedom of speech must be protected. 2) Free inquiry and open debate must be supported.
Truth, Debate, and Human Flourishing
Freedom of speech means freedom of the mind. It is not a social luxury. It is a matter of life and death, because the free pursuit of evidence and the open debate regarding controversial issues are indispensable methods for establishing truth—and the truth regarding any number of important issues promotes human life.
Individuals who are confident that they have the evidence to establish their conclusion support freedom of speech because they know that in free and open debate, they will prevail. And if they are honest, they will learn something if proven mistaken.
Who opposes open discussion and debate of controversial issues? Those who are committed to a conclusion on emotional, not evidential grounds, who realize that their opponents, not they, have the stronger case, and are therefore desperate to ensure that the opposing argument does not get a hearing.
To support freedom of speech is to support a quest for truth and, consequently, to advance human life. To oppose free speech is to oppose both.
Additional Reading:
Free Speech Authoritarianism Is Not the Answer to Censorship by Jess Gill
Free Speech Is Not Safe, but It Is Good by T. K. Coleman
Historic Figures Who Recognized That Speech Is Freedom’s First Line of Defense by Lawrence W. Reed
