Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a professor of law and driving force of the long-running and widely followed blog, Instapundit, proves his fallibility in “Intolerant Society” (The New Criterion, June 2023). Reynolds (unsurprisingly) offers a rhetorically resounding defense of “free speech” on college campuses. The centerpiece of his defense consists of the following quotations from Lee Bollinger’s book The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America:
To see free speech as concerned not just with protecting the activity of speech but with the reaction to that activity, and to the personal values reflected in those reactions, changes considerably our idea of the ends served by the principle. We have already seen the range of importance to the community of learning to exercise self-restraint toward behavior found offensive or threatening. It seeks to induce a way of thinking that is relevant to a variety of social interactions, from the political to the professional. Significantly, this perspective sees the social benefits of free speech as involving not simply the acquisition of the truth but the development of intellectual attitudes, which are important to the operation of a variety of social institutions—the spirit of compromise basic to our politics and the capacity to distance ourselves from our beliefs, which is so important to various disciplines and professional roles.
It also promises a benefit we can all feel, individually as well as collectively, of avoiding the burdens that the impulse to intolerance can impose on us, or that through it we impose on ourselves. To escape its demands or, more accurately, to reduce the power of its grip, to become the master of the fears and doubts that drive us to slay the specter of bad thoughts, is an achievement of the first magnitude.
* * *
Under the general tolerance function, free speech is not concerned exclusively with the preservation of a freedom to do whatever we wish, or with the advancement of truth or democracy as those terms are generally used, but with the development of a capacity of mind, with a way of thinking.
Reynolds’s reaction?
A spirit of tolerance means that others can’t yank your chain simply by propounding ideas you don’t like.
It’s worth adding that habitual emotions and actions are self-reinforcing. Get consumed with anger at “wrong” ideas once, and you will probably be consumed more easily the next time, and the time after that. Practice self-restraint and you will likely become more capable over time. (It’s called “practicing” self-restraint for a reason.)
This is a wonderful theory, and it offers useful guidance not only for colleges and law schools, but also for society at large….
There is much for us to learn from the idea of exercising the muscles of tolerance, on both an individual and a societal level. “Use it or lose it,” as the bodybuilders say, and we have every reason to think that our societal tolerance muscles have grown rather flabby in recent years.
This is balderdash, and Reynolds the blogger would see through it. But he’s writing as a (conservative) professor of law whose knee-jerk reaction is to defend “free speech” at all costs.
Bear with me if you believe, at this point, that I’m defending the administrators, professors, and students who oppose “free speech” on campuses because it hurts their tender sensibilities. I am not defending them by any means. But Reynolds’s attack is on the wrong track.
Take the metaphor about exercising the muscles of tolerance. Why would a person tolerate ideas that could harm him? Ideas can harm as well as help. Ideas, when put into action, have consequences.
The so-called marketplace of ideas, like science, is not self-correcting. If the “marketplace” was ever a good thing, it has been corrupted almost beyond redemption.
The aim of the “free speech movement” of the 1960s was to substitute leftist dogmas for the tried and true tenets of personal responsibility, punishment for crime, and reward based on accomplishment. The name of the movement died out, but its ends and means lived on. Thus we have today’s campuses, media outlets, and orthodox (leftist) political stances — all of them against the expression of views they oppose.
Fair enough. When you have power, use it. But turnabout — though it isn’t fair play — is a consequence of the loss of power. If Republicans ever regain the White House and solid majorities of the House and Senate, my fervent wish is that they put a stop to this delusional talk of “free speech”.
Freedom of speech is beneficial only if a vast majority of the populace shares certain fundamental values:
Free markets produce the best outcomes, especially when people take personal responsibility for their economic situation.
Social comity rests on taking personal responsibility for one’s actions, not making excuses or blaming “the system”.
The last six of the Ten Commandments are the best guides to proper behavior.
Duly enacted laws are to be upheld until they are duly revised or rescinded.
Social and economic freedom come down to mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual forbearance, which describes the state of liberty. Without those things, there is no liberty.
The Framers of the Constitution could not envision a free society in which the foregoing tenets were routinely and gleefully violated. That is because there cannot be a free society where the foregoing tenets are routinely and gleefully violated.
It’s long past time to get serious about “free speech”. Glenn Reynolds and his ilk among RINOs aren’t serious. Basta!
Arsonists who burn down the buildings in which they live belong in jail. The same goes for the leftists who have been burning the Constitution for decades.
Instead of jail, let them secede. And good riddance.
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