Free Speech
Scott Aikin and John Casey
Everyone needs to leave Phil Robertson alone for expressing his beliefs. I think it’s so hypocritical how the LGBT community expects every single flippen [sic] person to agree with their life style.
This flies in the face of what makes America great - people can have their own beliefs and own opinions and their own ways of life.Bristol Palin
The free speech fallacy (FS) consists in thinking one’s political right to freedom of expression includes protection from criticism. Those who commit this fallacy allege that critical scrutiny is either tantamount to censorship or equivalent to the imposition of one’s views on others. The error in the fallacy is that the freedom of expression includes critical expressions.
A confusion about the nature of critical exchange lies at the heart of the FS. What the FS does is wrongly accuse others of fallacy or abuse of critical dialogue. It achieves this through two key distortions. The first distortion concerns the logical consequences of criticism. If A criticizes B for view p, it stands to reason that A thinks B should no longer hold p. The rejection of p is a logical consequence of A’s view. The FS, however, ignores the reasons given for rejecting p as essential to the exchange, treating them instead as incidental to the exchange. What really matters is that B’s view has problems, not that A has problems with B’s view.
The second distortion confuses logical implications of criticism with the criticism itself. Return again to A and B. If A criticizes B for view p, A likely implies B to have incorrectly believed p. This necessarily implies that B has somehow failed in some cognitive obligation, and so B has been superficial, lazy, or biased in believing p. B may thus feel under personal attack and so stifled or discouraged from speaking. The sting of criticism is very powerful, and so B takes this sting to be the point of A’s criticism.
The FS thus takes the personal implications, necessary though they may be, as the defining features of criticism, when they are merely incidental.Phil Robertson was a national celebrity in 2013. He was one of the stars of the reality television show Duck Dynasty. It came to light that Robertson had strong anti-gay views. In a particular sermon, Robertson said that homosexuals are “full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters” (Nichols 2014). Robertson found himself the target for a good deal of criticism. Bristol Palin, blogger and daughter of the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, came to Robertson’s defense with a version of the FS fallacy. Her case (above) ran that because Robertson is guaranteed the right of free expression, others do not have a right to hold his views to critical scrutiny and express their reasons for rejecting them. The trouble with this argument is that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from criticism.
Kanye West, a popular hip hop artist, has had a longstanding feud with another pop artist, Taylor Swift. In his song “Famous,” West muses that “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? Because I made that bitch famous.” The line is a triple-dip on misogyny. He calls Swift a bitch and implies that having sex with him is her best way to thank him for her fame. And there is the thought that it was his actions that made her famous. West quickly found himself in a swirl of criticism. In reply, he tweeted: “I did not diss Taylor Swift and I’ve never dissed her. [...] First thing is I’m an artist and as an artist I will express how I feel with no censorship” (Johnson 2016).
He follows by noting that the critics are “trying to criticize the real artist” and “want to control us with money and perception and mute the culture.” The error, again, is confusing what effects criticism may have (in that one may feel attacked and threatened) with what its ends are (namely, that of subjecting publicly shared views and actions to rational scrutiny).
It is central to FS that it focus on the personal implications of criticism rather than the criticism. Actor Clint Eastwood provides an interesting case in point. In 2009 he said he firmly believes that making jokes about other races is acceptable: “People have lost their sense of humor. [.] In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth otherwise you will be insulted as a racist” (Hall 2009).
It is indeed true that accusations of racism are particularly powerful. Their power, however, may distract from the reasons offered for employing them. In this case, Eastwood is a victim of name-calling (ad hominem: direct; see Chapter 10) by “humorless killjoys.” What is missing, and this is crucial, are the reasons for levying such a charge in the first place. The FS has obscured those.
How does one avoid the FS, and how does one criticize it when others use it? In the first place, it is good to remind everyone in a critical discussion that the point of critical discussion is to sort the good ideas from the bad. In the process, so the hope goes, we correct errors, understand more, and come closer to the truth. But for this to happen, people must be free to say what they think, those who disagree must be free to express their disagreements, and all must be willing to hear out the reasons for and against (Aikin and Talisse 2011). Etiquette often stands in the way of such critical discussions - it’s an old rule that it is impolite to discuss politics or religion. But well-run critical discussions need not be impolite so long as all involved don’t confuse their rights to say what they believe without coercion with their right to say what they believe without criticism.
References
Aikin, Scott, and Robert Talisse. 2011. “Argument in Mixed Company.” Think (27): 31-43.
Hall, Alan. 2009. “Clint Eastwood Goes Gunning for PC Killjoys.” Daily Mail, February 25. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1155360/Clint-Eastwood- goes-gunning-PC-killjoys-saying-laugh-race-based-jokes.html. (accessed October 3, 2017).
Johnson, Victoria. 2016. “Kanye Responds to the Life of Pablo Critics.” The Boom Box, January 15. http://theboombox.com/kanye-west-responds-to-the-life-of- pablo-critics-on-twitter/(accessed October 3, 2017).
Nichols, James. 2014. “New Anti-Gay Sermon from Duck Dynasty Star Leaks.” The Huffington Post, February 2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/22/ phil-robertson-anti-gay-easter-sermon_n_5372678.html (accessed October 3, 2017).