In the article “The Cobbling of American Mind,” Lukainoff and Haidt pointed out that it is becoming common for university students to demand protection from words and ideas they don’t wish to hear. Since then, college campuses have begun to prevent offensive speech, particularly those that might be hurtful towards women or minority groups, by punishing students through disciplinary actions to protect their students from what they don’t wish to hear. (Lukainoff and Haidt) The term ‘offensive speech’ is subjective since any words and actions can be deemed as offensive, and by preventing offensive speech in universities certain ideas and words that are deemed offensive but are necessary when taught can no longer be said in class settings. Therefore, preventing offensive speech in universities directs students to think a certain way and are prevented from generating new thoughts and expressing their thoughts. If this is the environment that students face every day, is there still a right to free speech?
In democratic societies, such as in the United States and Canada, the people in the country are granted a right to free speech to a certain extent, but there are instances when society limits individuals to exercise their right to free speech. To begin, we will discuss the laws concerning the right to freedom of expression in the U.S. and Canada, and what it means to be granted a “right” to freedom of speech and expression. Then, we will discuss the limitations of this right and the difficulties of regulating certain forms of free speech. Lastly, we will discuss how people will limit our right to free speech.
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The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom grants their people the right to freedom of speech, which means a wide range of expressions, such as spoken words, plays, films, cartoons, videos, written words, etc… (Warburton, 5) To be granted a “right” to free speech means that the people are justly entitled to be able to express their thoughts to whatever means necessary without state interference. In democratic societies such as Canada and the U.S., free speech is valuable. Ronald Dworkin argued that a government is not democratic if people are not granted the right to express their beliefs (Warburton, 3). This type of justification is called constitutive because the freedom of speech is thought to be a valuable part of democracy as a whole (Sumner, 146).
Free speech is valuable to democratic societies because only by free speech, there is a “free flow of ideas” that gives “people access to the truth” (McGowan, 769). By sharing our thoughts and ideas with others we benefit because as we formulate opinions and thoughts and share them with others, our self-esteem and self-fulfillment increase. Others also benefit when they hear novel ideas from people, and as they gain new ideas, they can also generate thoughts that could increase their self-fulfillment and self-esteem. Sumner named this justification of free speech as instrumental because free speech itself is not valuable but they are indispensable for the values it promotes (Sumner, 145). Free speech is an indispensable means to increase people’s self-esteem and self-fulfillment but allowing a wide range of expressions could lead to consequences that are harmful to society.
In his book, Nigel Warburton raised the case of the book “Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contract Killers,” where the book gave detailed guidelines about how to kill discreetly and dispose of bodies. This case had gone on the headline when “Lawrence Horn hired a hitman to murder his wife, son, and son’s nurse.” (Warburton, 13) What’s controversial about this case is that the hitman had followed the proposed instructions in the book to commit the murder. Although publishing the book itself is justified by free speech, what about the harm it poses? For instance, where do we limit the freedom to express our thoughts and beliefs? This case demonstrates that although free speech is beneficial, some forms of speech could be harmful. It is this very reason why some forms of government such as communism censor and regulate certain forms of speech. Although the regulation of speech is not as extreme as in other forms of government, the U.S. and Canada have placed limitations on speech.
Freedom of speech is essential to a functional democratic government, but the U.S. and Canada realized that there are forms of speech that could bring harm to society, and have accepted that these forms of speech need to be prohibited. According to Sumner, the laws that regulate the right to free speech in these two countries prohibit “defamation, criminal conspiracy, fraud and “fighting words.” (Sumner, 147) In addition, Canadian law also prohibits hate speech. The regulation of what forms of speech should be allowed in the country is needed for society to be peaceful.
There are types of expressions that when it is not regulated, will create a rift in the relationship between its people; an example of such expression is defamation. Defamation is the action of damaging the reputation of someone else based on baseless accusations. If defamation is allowed, according to McGowan, it would decrease the value of free speech because defamation would cause people “to stop believing what people say about each other.” (McGowan, 771) Therefore, some forms of speech must be regulated by the government to prevent the harm it could cause to society.
Others would argue that the regulation of speech will ultimately lead to censorship and prohibition of more forms of expression, such an argument is called the slippery slope argument. In his book, the slippery slope argument, Warburton, claims that “to allow the government to prohibit some forms of free speech is to take a step down a slippery slope that will lead to totalitarianism.” (Warburton, 14) However, taking a small step to regulate some form of speech does not lead to totalitarianism since it takes great pain to pass laws that regulate certain forms of speech.
Curtailment of speech is rather difficult to obtain since there are safeguards that protect this basic freedom. According to McGowan, the justification for the regulation of speech involves the “balancing of harm approach.” This approach, states that “to pass laws that restrict certain forms of speech, the harm associated with failing to regulate it must outweigh the harms when it is not regulated.” (McGowan, 771) Sumner states that any restrictive policy must pass a harm test, that is, the government must be able to show that such a form of speech must pose a significant risk of harm to the people or its targets, and the policy must satisfy three conditions before it gets passed. First, is efficacy, which means the policy must propose that it will be successful. Second, minimal impairment, which means the policy must not be intrusive. Lastly, proportionality, which means the expected benefits of the restriction must balance and justify the cost of passing the policy (Sumner, 149-150). Debates about the censorship of pornography and the prohibition of hate speech are great examples of how difficult it is to pass laws that restrict speech.
To pass a policy that prohibits the distribution of pornography, it must pass the harm test. What are the arguments that oppositions propose that pornography is harmful? Legal moralists argue that societies have the right to protect themselves from things that destroy, thus harm, their traditional, shared values. As Gruen argues, preserving traditional values inflicts more harm to society than prohibiting pornography since traditional values may not necessarily be correct (Gruen, 158-159). Proponents against pornography also argue that women are harmed during the production of pornography; although this argument is valid, sexual assault during its production is an entirely different case prosecuted by the law. The most important argument that they propose is that pornography subordinates and silences women. However, this is not the case since consuming this material itself is like watching action movies which do not make a person tend to be violent to others, rather this behavior depends on the audience’s personality. Therefore, as Gruen argues, censoring the distribution of pornographic materials does not alleviate the cultural changes necessary for gender equality, but education and changes to social conventions are needed to achieve it. (Gruen, 165)
Several harm arguments have been proposed against the distribution of obscene materials, but none of them can pose a significant risk; therefore, any policies that restrict obscene materials are unlikely to be passed. Hate speech, on the other hand, passes the harm test since such forms of speech humiliate, exclude, and inflict self-hatred on its target. If this is the case, then not regulating such speech loses its value justified by instrumental means; however, policies that restrict this form of speech still need to satisfy three conditions: “efficacy, minimal impairment, and proportionality.” (Sumner, 150) Policies that restrict hate speech are stuck at this stage because the efficacy of the policies they propose can be easily destroyed by an underground market or the Internet (Sumner, 150).
Debates about pornography and hate speech demonstrate the difficulty of curtailing speech; therefore, the argument that passing one policy that restricts freedom will go down to totalitarianism is invalid. There is still the need to regulate some form of speech, but arguments are necessary to determine whether such policies are beneficial or harmful to society, and such arguments are generated because we are granted a right to free speech by the government.
Our right to free speech is granted by the government, but our society itself limits our capability of exercising our right to free speech. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states “Congress shall make no law…” (Warburton, 1) This means that in the U.S. Constitution, the right that people claim only ensures that the state cannot enforce punishment for expressing their beliefs, but this law does not limit those who have authorities that are outside the jurisdiction of the government. These authorities that claim legitimate power are schools, employers, management in social networking sites, parents, etc…
Parents, for example, have the legitimate power to coerce their children to do something for their good. Parents raise their children with certain values and beliefs that set the foundation for their children’s cognition. There are parents whose parenting method is authoritative and restricts their children from speaking and expressing their thoughts. Although some might argue that such methods are needed to raise children because children are naive this method could lead to the child growing up without having the courage to speak their thoughts.
Some might argue that children are also exposed to the community, and this community could encourage the children to express their thoughts when they are restricted in their homes. Children can indeed be encouraged to express their beliefs but there is also a danger when the school will not permit children to act and express their beliefs in certain ways, and not only elementary school children, but universities are also in danger of such methods.
As discussed at the beginning of this essay, college campuses begin to prevent offensive speech, particularly speech that is harmful to women, minorities, or target specific groups. This prevention dictates professors to issue trigger warnings when discussing speech that could cause a strong emotional response. The goal of this implementation is to protect their students from emotional harm inflicted by such speech. However, implementing such rules creates an environment in which “everyone must think twice before speaking up,” (Lukainoff and Haidt) which limits an individual to exercise their right to free speech. Society has created societal norms and tacitly expects people to follow such norms; as a result, the social norms inevitably limit novel ideas that could be generated by the younger generations. According to Mill, we must protect the right to free speech not just from the government but also from society (Warburton, 25) which threatens to limit them from exercising this right.
Is there a right to free speech? At least in democratic societies, people are granted the right to free speech, in which people are allowed to express their beliefs in various ways to a certain extent. Free speech is regulated since there are forms of speech that could cause harm to society, but regulation or curtailment of speech is difficult to attain since barriers must be overcome for such laws to be implemented. Freedom of speech needs to be protected not only by the government but also by societies that have established norms that potentially limit individuals from exercising this right. [2110]
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