No Debate for Degenerates
Free speech and the fall of the West
I used to believe J. S. Mill’s idea in On Liberty that there is no way "we can be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion." Instead, we must let the so-called marketplace of ideas decide. But that is a delusion and based on the deluded liberal view of human nature. Truth does not necessarily win out among men. Pride, greed and lust, for example, often make false ideas far more appealing than true ones. Even among the angels, truth wasn’t enough: a third still fell, knowing with certainty they were rejecting Truth Himself for eternity. And man is no angel.
Should paedophilia be promoted in schools? How about Satanism? Maybe they’re true, says Mill.
This is ridiculous. He’s saying we can’t ever be certain anything is false. Indeed, he claims, “All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility." No doubt the word “infallibility” is rhetorically powerful, evoking the papacy as the boogeyman of liberalism.
But of course it’s logically nonsensical. Infallibility applies to an entire subject: the pope is infallible only when defining faith and morals to bind the Church. Certainty, however, need not apply to an entire subject. A child, despite being very fallible when it comes to maths, for example, can be absolutely certain that 1+1=2. And there is absolutely no need for him to be taught — or to hear — anything to the contrary.
This also applies to morality: murder is wrong, for example. So is lying. So is sodomy. And so on. There is no need for “free discussion” on these topics. Even among philosophically trained adults, it’s dangerous. Peter Singer, for example, thinks bestiality isn’t such a bad idea. But especially for the average person, unable to defend himself effectively against sophistry and easily led astray by his prejudices and passions, it’s even more dangerous. And not only for himself but for society.
If we have a right to free speech, it’s because we have a duty to society. And that duty is to speak the truth. Free speech has only instrumental value. Its purpose is to benefit the common good. But secular liberalism has no concept of the common good. Free speech then becomes severed from any sense of duty. It’s simply whatever any given individual wants to say and can even be weaponised to suppress the good. In fact, the truth — especially religious truths — can be dismissed as ‘hate speech’ since nobody has any duty to say it.
Free speech is one of the fundamental flaws of liberalism. Of course a man is free, as far as the State is concerned, to harbour in his heart all kinds of evil thoughts. God alone will judge him for that. The State will even allow him to hold seditious opinions. But this is not the case regarding what he is allowed to publicly express because the State has a duty to safeguard social order and public prosperity.
Ideas, as Richard Weaver pointed out, have consequences. Men should be deterred from crime, for example. And if they lose any concept of sin, this deterrent is impaired. But without God, there can be no sin. The propagation of atheism in schools and the media, therefore, is injurious to the common good. And the same goes for the subversion of marriage and the promotion of promiscuity. These, too, are ruinous ideas.
Most people rely heavily not on discussion but on the wisdom of tradition. The average UK reading age is 9. The Guardian readership, despite probably thinking of itself as terribly smart, has a reading of age 14. Rather than illuminating intellects, debate about morality is far more likely to awaken evil. Who knows? Maybe Peter Singer is right, they start to wonder. Or maybe murder isn’t always wrong. Or suicide. And then the euthanasia clinic starts looking appealing the next time they’re depressed.
To be effective, censorship must be done early before the error gains momentum and corrupts minds. As Elizabeth Anscombe said, ‘corrupt minds cannot be reasoned with.’ Sin makes people so stupid that eventually they can no longer see it and are reduced to the state of the madman smearing excrement on himself and enjoying it. Nobody has the right to say what is untrue or injurious to society.
As Pope Leo XIII explained in his encyclical Libertas, putting truth and error on an equal footing means the first “the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed.” And then “the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority.” Losing “the empire of God over man and civil society” means the loss of “that true liberty which alone is worthy of man.”
Ideas have consequences. And evil ideas have evil consequences. The State must prevent the subversion of social order and public morality. LGTBQ ideology is one example of this. Children’s minds should be protected from this. Many lives will otherwise be ruined. The State approval of “gay marriage,” too, undermines the institution of the family. Error has no rights, and it must not be propagated.
Theoretically I agree with you. I think we can be certain that some ideas are bad for society. And such ideas should be kept out of schools. But I don’t trust any politicians enough to be comfortable with giving them the power to take away the rights of individuals to express their opinion publicly. This of course doesn’t apply to blatantly criminal conduct like calling for terrorist attacks and sharing pedophile content but we already have laws for things like that. Going any further than this can create a slippery slope. Desantis used the terrorism excuse to ban student groups that criticised the Israeli government for example. Maybe I’m mistaken about the specifics of that but it’s not hard to imagine a situation where the government starts doing things like that. Using the excuse of the greater good to censor criticism of themselves and their policies. And their allies.
Anyway, theoretically, if there was a politician who I would trust with that sort of power, I still think it would be counterproductive because it would give the left strong ammunition to build a strong counter movement. People like being victims, aren’t always rational and are fuelled by emotion and the fascist censorship of speech will give them plenty of ammunition. It would be very easy to demonise such a politician and turn people against them. I think it’s more productive from a political standpoint to just use our speech to ridicule and destroy their ideas and turn people against them. If this was done effectively, I think the whole movement would lose its legs but conservatives have completely failed so far to do so. Nowhere near enough backbone has been showed.
I think lgbt ideology needs to be defeated ideologically. If I was a politician, I’d use my free speech to attack it and wake people up. I’d ban it in schools. But I don’t think I’d take away people’s speech rights to disagree with me publicly. That would make me look and feel like a fascist. Once you give the government the power to ban speech, it’s very easy for them to abuse that power. And the worst kinds of people tend to be attracted to politics. And the more you centralise their power, the more they tend to abuse it. That’s why I’m uncomfortable with the idea of giving government the ability to do something like that. Not because I don’t agree with you. But because I think that power will be abused. In some kind of utopia where all politicians are benevolent and share our morality, it would work. But we live in a world that’s very far from that reality. They’d restrict lgbt speech. But then at the same time, they’d restrict other speech like our ability to question their abuses of power. What if they banned discussing the Epstein saga? As soon as you centralise power and give them the ability to ban speech, it’ll be abused I think. This is also why I’m uncomfortable with the Catholic Church. Because power is very centralised which makes it much easier for corrupt people to abuse their power. The more power you give people, the more they tend to abuse it. Interesting conversation though. Conservatism vs classic liberalism.
Sorry for the poor wording. Just woke up and only had 2 minutes. Ideally would edit that so I repeat myself less because i rambled a bit but got the point across nevertheless.