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Free Speech in the Nominal Democracy
 “Freedom
of speech is the right to be wrong, basically. Sometimes I’m wrong.”
These words were reportedly
spoken by the historian David Irving in an interview from his Austrian prison,
where he is doing time — years of his life — for “Holocaust
denial.” Austria and a few other Western  democracies still maintain the position that some opinions are
crimes.
So, in its way, does democratic
Afghanistan, where a few weeks ago a man narrowly escaped a death
sentence for converting to Christianity. He was spared only because of
Western pressure, notably from President Bush. There has been no such
pressure for Irving, whose prosecutor thinks he was dealt with too leniently.
The idea (if you can dignify it with
that word) behind the law under which Irving was convicted is that some
opinions can “incite hate.” And Irving’s opinions certainly
do that, in a way. So the people who hate him have, naturally, stripped him of
his freedom. But what kind of fanatic says, “Sometimes I’m
wrong”?
Welcome to the twenty-first
century. It’s not so different from many other centuries, really
— centuries we pride ourselves on being different from.
If you want to make enemies,
speak your mind on a controversial topic. Works like a charm. You’ll
soon hear from people who will let you know they would, if they could, give
you the same treatment Irving got. They may be incapable of coining a fresh
phrase, a witty epigram, or an original thought of their own; they may prefer
insults and obscenities, which are often the limit of their eloquence, or they
may just be mighty indignant that you would say whatever you said.
A man uses the best arguments
he can think of, and some men can’t think of a better argument than
a curse or a threat. This is their perverse way of agreeing with you when
they can’t bear to admit they do. They might as well come right out
and announce they can hope to prevail only by shutting you up with brute
force, not by superior reason. They are ceding reason to their opponents.
![[Breaker quote for Free Speech in the Nominal Democracy: 'Shut up,' they explain.]](2006breakers/060420.gif) In
a brilliant twist on Voltaire’s
famous (though apocryphal) words, the playwright Tom Stoppard has one of
his characters declare, “I agree with every word you say, but I will
fight to the death against your right to say it.”
Stoppard perfectly catches the
root of the urge to censor opinion. His formulation is hilarious because if a
would-be censor could express himself so well, he’d have no need, or
urge, to censor. He’d be content to oppose words with better words.
Censorship is a confession of failure.
In other words, Stoppard endows
his would-be censor with all the qualities such people tend to lack: candor,
humor, self-confidence, and self-respect. We expect them to be sneaking
prigs.
“Most men quarrel because
they do not know how to argue,” wrote Chesterton, who loved to argue
and hated to quarrel. He debated Bernard Shaw on the two subjects most
men quarrel about — religion and politics — and the chief result
of their sharp disagreements was a warm friendship that ended only when
Chesterton died.
Rarely is the world overrun with
men like Chesterton and Shaw, whose numbers seem to have thinned as
democracy, we’re told, has spread. But then, most so-called
democracies are really overgrown bureaucratic states, as Robert Frost
suggested when he sneered at “the bureaucratic regimenting
love / With which the modern world is being swept.” And that bureaucratic
regimenting “love” is quick to detect “hate” and
even “hate crimes” in any independent thought. In
Orwell’s nightmare state, the most feared agency of all is the Ministry
of Love.
With that sort of love in the air, I
wouldn’t predict a great future for free speech in the nominal
democracies. Not that there will be a formal announcement when it’s
abolished; the process will be gradual, attended as always by reassuring
expressions like voluntary compliance until everyone is voluntarily
complying.
Oh, now and then there may be a
cranky holdout such as Irving who won’t comply voluntarily, but the
free press, following the voluntary guidelines, won’t draw much
attention to him. If you yearn to be back in the twentieth century, just
remember the great progressive adage: “You can’t turn back
the clock.” Especially when people in high places are always turning it
ahead.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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