Should the Government Punish Some Ideas?

On the state of free speech in Romania

A Romanian public figure makes a series of statements in a TV interview. Responses are quick to come from different parts of society, largely critical of what was said. The author responds but does not seem to change many minds. Meanwhile, business partners start distancing themselves from the statements and stop their collaboration altogether, more reactions and perspectives pour in. The person eventually apologizes.

So far things seem to follow the natural course in a liberal democracy, where the best ideas are the last ones to stand after intense disputes in the public arena. The apologies are the least important part of the process. The debate in newspapers, on social media platforms and comments, among ordinary people, is the most important element. 

If the story ended there, your author would have chosen an entirely different topic to write about this week. But events continued with an institution of the Romanian government, taking the matter into its own hands and deciding, after a unanimous vote, to punish the author of the remarks with a fine of €4.000 (for reference, the average salary in Romania at the time of writing is about €800). The reason? The opinion expressed constitutes discrimination and undermines the human dignity of a legally protected group.   

I’m describing a recent incident in the Romanian media, but the people and ideas involved are less important than the principle at stake, namely the role of the government in punishing certain ideas expressed in public.

How do we establish what is true

Banning certain views may seem like a good idea at first glance. Incitements to hate, calls for violence, or racism have no place in modern society. The practical issue that arises is who will decide what constitutes an idea that should be prohibited. If the government is in the business of policing opinions, history shows us that the ideas you approve today to be banned are inevitably followed, when your opponents come to power, by censorship against the ideas you support. 

As a practical matter, supporting free speech means defending someone’s right to share ideas with which the majority or the ruling class disagrees. Ideas that may be outrageous, plain wrong, or immoral. Why? Because those are the only ones that need protection so they can be heard in the public arena, the rest can just be shared and discussed openly. Ion Rațiu nicely expressed this idea in a debate from the first Romanian presidential campaign after the 1989 revolution: I will fight to my last drop of blood to protect your right to disagree with me.

You don't have to agree with the ideas in order to support a person's right to say what they believe without fear of being punished by the state. On the other hand, free speech does not mean that someone must listen to what you have to say or offer you a stage to speak on. You cannot claim that you are being censored because a TV station does not give you airtime. Each individual and organization is free to decide who to associate with and what ideas to share. However, a healthy society will encourage a diversity of perspectives in public arenas.

Freedom of expression, like any other right, has some limits. Best expressed by the saying your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. Through the law, the state imposes certain penalties when other rights are violated. Misleading advertising, inappropriate content distributed to minors, false accusations against a person, introduce limitations on speech to protect consumers, children, or the right to reputation. But that doesn't change the fact that the state's active role in sanctioning opinions remains a dangerous game to play. 

The answer to what is permissible and what isn’t lies between words and behavior

Let's do a simple thinking exercise. A man reads the Old Testament story in which Cain kills his brother, Abel, and as a result, kills his own sibling. The reasonable conclusion is not to ban the Bible because it contains dangerous ideas, but merely that the man in our example is a cretin. We can repeat this exercise almost endlessly with other religious texts and controversial books, but in the end, the basic principle is that we punish the criminal not the ideas in his head. If we agree that the government should sanction books or opinions that are considered dangerous, then we agree to lower the quality of debate to the level of cretins in society. 

In On Liberty, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill explained 150 years ago why all ideas must be heard. For one thing, an opinion may be correct and it is in everyone's interest to hear it. Secondly, even if an opinion is wrong, it might contain a glimmer of truth, and through direct contact with opposing views it might develop into a complete version of reality. By contrast, even if we knew with certainty that an opinion was true or false in its entirety, it is still important to distribute it, because such ideas need to be presented with a fresh vocabulary and energy to each generation if they are to remain relevant.

There are many definitions of democracy, and I prefer to leave the subject to political scientists, but one of the clearest characteristics is a system in which changes of leaders and the resolution of conflicts is consistently achieved without violence. The reason this is possible is based on the principle that no person, institution, or idea is above criticism and debate. In other words, we kill assumptions and ideas instead of trying to kill each other.   

A myth of liberal democracies is that debating ideas in the public arena is pleasant, like a respectful discussion between a teacher and a well-prepared student. In real life, the culture of debating ideas is intense, disorienting, harsh, and often offensive to those involved. There are winners and losers, ideas accepted en masse while others are actively marginalized, along with those who continue to support them. We can think of those who believe that the earth is flat or that our planet is physically at the center of the universe. These are both absurd positions today, but represented the mainstream understanding of the past. 

We continue to defend this system of seeking the best ideas through active, uncomfortable debates because the alternatives are far worse. Fundamentalism, extremism, and authoritarianism are the other options we can choose from. So the very premise that certain ideas must be sanctioned so as not to offend is incompatible with a society that depends on an open debate of all ideas to determine what is true.

You cannot stop extremism by outlawing it, the only way is to defeat it in the voting booths. Racism will not be stopped by the thought police, but by a significant public response against such behavior. We must make our voices heard publicly as often as is necessary if we want to fight discrimination. The solution to toxic speech is not banning it, but a vigorous response in opposition, debunking bad arguments in the public arena of ideas premised on the belief that sunlight is the best disinfectant. The price of freedom is the continued vigilance required to defend it, and the resources of the government are better used to address a different set of problems.

This essay was originally published in Romanian for Adevarul.ro - source.