The Free Speech Enigma

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy.” We know this because Elon Musk told us exactly that on at least 4 occasions, and that’s as reliable a source as you can have today. Extending Musk’s principle, it can equally be claimed that democracy itself is the bedrock of Western Civilization. Not in the simplistic notion of majority rule—a proposition anathema to our Founders—but in the tradition of a limited representative government that exists primarily to safeguard individual rights. Today, that bedrock has been corrupted into a treacherous quicksand that threatens to consume the last vestiges of Western Civilization. So, what went wrong?

The most obvious explanation is that, in the last few years, speech has been under direct assault. Without it, Western Civilization cannot survive. Throw Western Civilization the lifeline of unrestrained, unchecked, absolute free speech, and it will lift itself up by its bootstraps. But while returning true free speech to America is a very compelling argument, does it survive scrutiny?

There can be no doubt that we have witnessed some of the most egregious attacks on speech in the nation’s history—suppressing news of the Hunter laptop, scrubbing dissents contrary to the COVID narrative, Amazon literally pulling the plug on Parler, and throwing a sitting president off social media. However, these assaults only started to occur in the last few years and, while shocking, for the most part, speech has remained overwhelmingly free—unless, of course, you have the grievous misfortune of attending Harvard.

But even more troubling, the degringolade [NFA says, French for downfall] of Western Civilization has been unfolding for decades, starting long before these recent brazen assaults on speech. Well into the early 21st century, Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s timeless anthem still rang true: “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” It wasn’t for want of free speech that the bankrupt ideologies of diversity, multiculturalism, and climate change clawed their footholds in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, but rather, because of it.

The true believers of free speech find it difficult, if not impossible, to condemn speech; they’re absolutists ready to fall on their swords. Their remedy for destructive speech, they argue, is more speech.

Well, how’s that working out? Where was the resounding chorus of dissent to challenge diversity, multiculturalism, and climate change as these ideologies permeated the societal zeitgeist from the 1960s to Obama? Nowhere. Leftists, paradoxically, hijacked Western Civilization’s “bedrock” principle of free speech and employed it to destroy society.

Free speech is immensely powerful. An alluring message—the promise of free healthcare, free tuition, and universal basic income—delivered by a charismatic speaker can spread perverse ideologies like the plague. Disturbingly, two-thirds of Millenials and Gen-Z’ers said they’d be somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist. Five percent of children consider themselves trans. If you look at where we are, and we are honest, it’s hard not to conclude that, for a liberal democracy, unlimited free speech is suicide.

Western Civilization has not always championed complete, unrestrained free speech. From democracy’s earliest adoption in Athens during the 5th century BC, speech had its limits, especially when it challenged the core values of the state. Famously, Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock for corrupting the minds of the youth against the city’s traditions and beliefs. That decision wasn’t the work of a DC jury and a corrupt judge but the will of thousands of his fellow citizens comprising the Athenian Assembly. Add this to the growing list of lessons unlearned from the sacred scrolls of antiquity.

So, we have reached a contradiction on our “bedrock” principle, and, as Ayn Rand not so subtly warned in Atlas Shrugged, “To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.”

So, to avoid eviction “from the realm of reality,” we are forced to reject Musk’s assertion as an absolute and agree that some reasonable limits on speech are necessary. Surely, few of us would object to squelching speech aimed at coercing children to mutilate their genitals wrapped in the bromide of “gender-affirming care” or empowering cross-dressing cheaters like Will Thomas to destroy women’s sports.

But that leaves us in an untenable position. Who is to decide what is and what is not permitted speech? And even if we could agree, granting enforcement power to the corrupt leviathan that is our government, as are all governments, is surely a cure worse than the disease. So, are we forced to maintain the contradiction? Or must we confess “an error in one’s thinking?”

On closer inspection, I must confess an error: it is a mistake to think we have had free speech since the 1960s. While you cannot point to per se government censorship of speech until very recently, speech has not been free. Not even close. The government has used its enormous taxpayer-funded powers to put its thumb on the scale of speech without directly controlling it.

As early as 1973, federal contractors were mandated to implement affirmative action plans. More than half of research grants going to universities originate with the federal government, giving bureaucrats immense control over what is and what isn’t researched.

John Hopkins, for instance, received a staggering $830M in a single year from the NIH alone, making it no surprise it didn’t object to forced lockdowns, masking, and vaccination. Over two-thirds of the population receives some form of government check, with more than 20% directly employed by the government—meaning neither group is likely to speak out against its benefactor.

The government isn’t overtly censoring or penalizing speech. Rather, it’s exercising a pernicious and pervasive form of control that permeates every facet of society. The government’s overwhelming influence on speech gives it de facto command over the national narrative, even if not complete outright control.

With this error in one’s thinking corrected, there is no contradiction, and the free speech absolutists appear to be right: the answer to problematic speech may indeed be more speech. However, to genuinely restore free speech, a crucial prerequisite emerges: The necessity to drastically limit the size and scope of both the federal and state governments.

Government’s role must be limited to providing only its essential services: functioning, unbiased state and federal court systems, state police forces to protect us from domestic threats, and a federal government that provides a military to protect us from international threats and ensures free trade and travel between the states.

In the past, I would have made the same case about limiting the government because whatever it does, it does poorly, as it has no competitive pressures and never goes out of business. After all, our courts are dysfunctional at best and weaponized at worst; our police have been emasculated, allowing thugs to terrorize our cities; and after the humiliating capitulation to the Medieval Taliban in Afghanistan, there have never been more grave threats to the nation, not to mention the tsunami of illegal migrants invading our southern border.

Those practicalities, though, are no longer the primary reason for limited government: Instead, it is that the power of free speech to right the wrongs of a faltering society is smothered by the power of the state, both directly and, insidiously, indirectly.

Free speech may be the bedrock of democracy, but limited government is the bedrock of free speech. The former cannot exist without the latter.

Huck Davenport is a pseudonym.