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The Price of Free Speech
Ask most people why free speech is a good thing and they’ll tell you it’s the best way to get to the truth. Some problems have counter-intuitive solutions. If people aren’t free to advocate unpopular ideas, the counter-intuitive solutions never get an airing, and the problems never get solved. All of this is true. But it is not why we need free speech.
The problem with the “search for truth” argument is that the counter-intuitive solution frequently fails to win public support. As H.L. Mencken famously observed, there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong. Thanks to free speech, bad, popular solutions get stated and amplified and too often win the day. Thus, the real price of free speech is not exposure to hateful stuff, but acceptance of stupid stuff.
Way before radio and TV — much less, social media — Jonathan Swift observed that falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it. Anton Chekhov wrote about how rumors become perceptions, and perceptions drive actions. But, as people liked to say during the dotcom boom, the Internet changes everything. With the rapid advance in targeted communications, too many of us are buying what the demagogues are selling.