Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), is (of course) an ardent proponent of freedom of speech. I like most of what Lukianoff posts on his Substack blog, The Eternally Radical Idea, but a recent post falls short of what I expect from him.
In “Mill’s Trident: An Argument Every Fan (or Opponent) of Free Speech Must Know“, Lukianoff writes:
John Stuart Mill’s observ[es] in his 1859 masterpiece “On Liberty” that in any argument there are only three possibilities: You are either wholly wrong, partially wrong, or wholly correct — and in each case free speech is critical to improving or protecting those positions.
Why? According to Lukianoff:
If you are wrong, freedom of speech is essential to allow people to correct you.
If you are partially wrong, free speech and contrary viewpoints will help you get even closer to the truth.
If you are 100% correct (which is unlikely) you still need free speech for dissent, disagreement, and attempts to disprove you, both to check your arguments and to strengthen them.
This is an excellent example of preaching to the choir, albeit a relatively small one.
Mill’s arguments for freedom of speech omit a crucial assumption. There are people out there — perhaps a vast majority — who don’t seek the truth. They seek comfort in beliefs that they have acquired (often as a matter of belonging to the “right” group), and they seek to enforce those beliefs. Enforcement these days, is usually accomplished by laws, regulations, and the coercive use of state power (e.g., suppression of dissent from the Covid narrative by Big Tech execs anxious to retain their exemption from liability laws). Truth only gets in the way of comfort and power, the latter of which is a powerful elixir.
The truth, in short, is an inconvenience sought by the naïve, the powerless, and the increasingly rare person of principle.
As for On Liberty, it doesn’t deserve Lukianoff’s praise (or anyone else’s). See “On Liberty“, “My View of Mill, Endorsed“, and “The Harm Principle Revisited: Mill Conflates Society and State“.