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content/reading/contractarian-free-speech.md
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FREE SPEECH AS A ‘BASIC LIBERTY’ FREE SPEECH AS A ‘BASIC LIBERTY’
Unlike Mill’s On Liberty, which contains a whole chapter devoted entirely to the defence of {{< newtab title="‘the liberty of thought and discussion’," url="/reading/on-liberty-of-thought-and-discussion/" >}} Rawls’s *A Theory of Justice* offers no independent defence of free speech per se. Instead, free speech is treated as one item in a package of ‘basic liberties’. These are listed by Rawls as, Unlike Mill’s On Liberty, which contains a whole chapter devoted entirely to the defence of {{< reltab title="‘the liberty of thought and discussion’," url="/reading/on-liberty-of-thought-and-discussion/" >}} Rawls’s *A Theory of Justice* offers no independent defence of free speech per se. Instead, free speech is treated as one item in a package of ‘basic liberties’. These are listed by Rawls as,
> *roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since citizens of a just society are to have the same basic rights.* > *roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since citizens of a just society are to have the same basic rights.*
> >
@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ Rawls’s idea that there is a package of basic liberties clearly raises the que
There are two observations on the general character of Rawls’s procedure to be made here. The first is that it is unsurprising that Rawls should rely so heavily on an argument which centres upon people’s unwillingness to ‘take chances’, for it forcibly reflects his contractualist scenario with the latter’s emphasis on the necessity for cooperation. The point is this: whatever cooperation’s advantages may be, it is more than likely that there will be some things which are so important to you that you will not be prepared to abandon them under any circumstances. That is just plain common sense. Your confidential diaries, your toothbrush; these are things you will want to secure in a locker marked ‘personal’. As for your ‘religious or moral convictions’, even your diaries and your toothbrush must pale into insignificance besides these. If they don’t then, as Rawls remarks, your convictions can’t be serious. There are two observations on the general character of Rawls’s procedure to be made here. The first is that it is unsurprising that Rawls should rely so heavily on an argument which centres upon people’s unwillingness to ‘take chances’, for it forcibly reflects his contractualist scenario with the latter’s emphasis on the necessity for cooperation. The point is this: whatever cooperation’s advantages may be, it is more than likely that there will be some things which are so important to you that you will not be prepared to abandon them under any circumstances. That is just plain common sense. Your confidential diaries, your toothbrush; these are things you will want to secure in a locker marked ‘personal’. As for your ‘religious or moral convictions’, even your diaries and your toothbrush must pale into insignificance besides these. If they don’t then, as Rawls remarks, your convictions can’t be serious.
The second observation is that Rawls is following some traditional routes. He is by no means the first to connect freedom of speech with the democratic process. Nor is he alone in modelling free speech on the liberty of conscience. Mill does much the same, as we have seen. At least, he does in the sense that his ‘classic’ case for the liberty of thought and discussion began life, in earlier hands (such as Milton’s), as an argument for religious toleration. To generalise, there is no doubt that the earlier debate over toleration in religion is the direct ancestor of the modern argument about free speech, or that it was in the later half of the seventeenth century that the former began to mutate into the latter; (just as On Liberty can claim an ancestor in {{< newtab title="Milton’s Areopagitica," url="/reading/areopagitica/" >}} so can Rawls’s argument for freedom of speech and liberty of conscience in {{< newtab title="Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration" url="/reading/locke-on-toleration-of-religious-difference" >}})…. So, by according conceptual priority to liberty of conscience Rawls’s argument carries a certain echo of the historical sequence… The second observation is that Rawls is following some traditional routes. He is by no means the first to connect freedom of speech with the democratic process. Nor is he alone in modelling free speech on the liberty of conscience. Mill does much the same, as we have seen. At least, he does in the sense that his ‘classic’ case for the liberty of thought and discussion began life, in earlier hands (such as Milton’s), as an argument for religious toleration. To generalise, there is no doubt that the earlier debate over toleration in religion is the direct ancestor of the modern argument about free speech, or that it was in the later half of the seventeenth century that the former began to mutate into the latter; (just as On Liberty can claim an ancestor in {{< reltab title="Milton’s Areopagitica," url="/reading/areopagitica/" >}} so can Rawls’s argument for freedom of speech and liberty of conscience in {{< reltab title="Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration" url="/reading/locke-on-toleration-of-religious-difference" >}})…. So, by according conceptual priority to liberty of conscience Rawls’s argument carries a certain echo of the historical sequence…
FREE SPEECH AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE FREE SPEECH AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE

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content/reading/miscellaneous-free-speech-arguments.md
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--- ---
* {{< newtab title="In Defense of Wholly Free Speech" url="https://therevolutionaryact.com/defense-free-speech/" >}} * {{< abstab title="In Defense of Wholly Free Speech" url="https://therevolutionaryact.com/defense-free-speech/" >}}
* {{< newtab title="The Two Clashing Meanings of ‘Free Speech’" url="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/" >}} * {{< abstab title="The Two Clashing Meanings of ‘Free Speech’" url="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/" >}}
* {{< newtab title="The ACLU Position Paper on Freedom of Speech" url="https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu-position-paper" >}} * {{< abstab title="The ACLU Position Paper on Freedom of Speech" url="https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu-position-paper" >}}

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content/reading/there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-speech.md
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Lately, many on the liberal and progressive left have been disconcerted to find that words, phrases, and concepts thought to be their property and generative of their politics have been appropriated by the forces of neoconservatism. This is particularly true of the concept of free speech, for in recent years First Amendment rhetoric has been used to justify policies and actions the left finds problematical if not abhorrent: pornography, sexist language, campus hate speech. How has this happened? The answer I shall give in this essay is that abstract concepts like free speech do not have any “natural” content but are filled with whatever content and direction one can manage to put into them. “Free speech” is just the name we give to verbal behavior that serves the substantive agendas we wish to advance; and we give our preferred verbal behaviors that name when we can, when we have the power to do so, because in the rhetoric of American life, the label “free speech” is the one you want your favorites to wear. Free speech, in short, is not an independent value but a political prize, and if that prize has been captured by a politics opposed to yours, it can no longer be invoked in ways that further your purposes, for it is now an obstacle to those purposes. This is something that the liberal left has yet to understand, and what follows is an attempt to pry its members loose from a vocabulary that may now be a disservice to them. Lately, many on the liberal and progressive left have been disconcerted to find that words, phrases, and concepts thought to be their property and generative of their politics have been appropriated by the forces of neoconservatism. This is particularly true of the concept of free speech, for in recent years First Amendment rhetoric has been used to justify policies and actions the left finds problematical if not abhorrent: pornography, sexist language, campus hate speech. How has this happened? The answer I shall give in this essay is that abstract concepts like free speech do not have any “natural” content but are filled with whatever content and direction one can manage to put into them. “Free speech” is just the name we give to verbal behavior that serves the substantive agendas we wish to advance; and we give our preferred verbal behaviors that name when we can, when we have the power to do so, because in the rhetoric of American life, the label “free speech” is the one you want your favorites to wear. Free speech, in short, is not an independent value but a political prize, and if that prize has been captured by a politics opposed to yours, it can no longer be invoked in ways that further your purposes, for it is now an obstacle to those purposes. This is something that the liberal left has yet to understand, and what follows is an attempt to pry its members loose from a vocabulary that may now be a disservice to them.
Not far from the end of his {{< newtab title="Areopagitica," url="/reading/areopagitica/" >}} and after having celebrated the virtues of toleration and unregulated publication in passages that find their way into every discussion of free speech and the First Amendment, John Milton catches himself up short and says, of course I didn’t mean Catholics, them we exterminate: Not far from the end of his {{< reltab title="Areopagitica," url="/reading/areopagitica/" >}} and after having celebrated the virtues of toleration and unregulated publication in passages that find their way into every discussion of free speech and the First Amendment, John Milton catches himself up short and says, of course I didn’t mean Catholics, them we exterminate:
> I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate . . . that also which is impious or evil absolutely against faith or manners no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw itself. > I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate . . . that also which is impious or evil absolutely against faith or manners no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw itself.