Matthew Healy at the Atlantic, one of the few remaining liberal anti-censorship magazines, offers a disingenuous counterpoint to the debate over political correctness.
The attempts to silence dissenting points of view are counter-speech, according to Healy. And counter-speech is an important form of free expression.
"When students hold protests or marches, launch social media campaigns, circulate petitions, boycott lectures, demand the resignation of professors and administrators, or object to the invitation of controversial speakers. Even heckling, though rude and annoying, is a form of expression."
There is a fundamental difference between "You're wrong" and "You have no right to speak".
The latter is a form of protected speech. So are a variety of totalitarian ideas. Nazis and Communist rallies can both be protected forms of expression. But there's nothing "free" about them.
For that matter, despite court rulings, it may be that burning a cross is a protected form of speech. However its message isn't "free". It's inherently oppressive. So is the "counter-speech" on campus.
Furthermore, heckling, as it's often practiced on campus, prevents a speaker from speaking. That's not free expression. It's taking away someone else's ability to speak. But that's what all these measures are about.
Silencing your opponents is not free speech.
"In other words, much of the social pushback that critics complain about on campus and in public life—indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness—can plausibly be described as counter-speech. And because counter-speech is one of the mechanisms Americans rely on as an alternative to government censorship, such pushback is not only a legitimate part of our free speech system; it is indispensable."
This is the kind of argument that progressives love because it reverses reality while appearing to be clever.
Invoking a phantom specter of government censorship is not an argument for crowdsourcing censorship. Both are variant forms of the same thing. If three government men come to your house or three hundred angry protesters, if the government forces a college to fire you or three hundred protesters, if you receive death threats from a government agency or protesters, the outcome is remarkably similar.
Now much of this is beyond the scope of government. It's a matter for society. The question is how do we handle disagreement.
If one side makes a concerted effort to silence the other, not to debate it, but to simply silence it, then a kind of civil war erupts. This is exactly what having civil spaces is meant to prevent.
Healy reaches the depths of cynicism toward the end of his piece.
The problem with this argument is that all counter-speech has a potential chilling effect. Any time people refute an assertion of fact by pointing to evidence that contradicts it, speakers may be hesitant to repeat that assertion. Whenever opponents challenge an opinion by showing that it is poorly reasoned, leads to undesirable results, or is motivated by bigotry or ignorance, speakers may feel less comfortable expressing that opinion in the future.
Put bluntly, the implicit goal of all argument is, ultimately, to quash the opposing view.
Once upon a time any college student could have pointed out the logical fallacy of this argument.
There is a fundamental difference between, "This is why you're wrong" and "I don't want to hear what you have to say because you should not be allowed to speak". Healy's slippery slope is meant to legitimize the latter.
And that is the root of the problem.
Radical students have always existed on campuses. But liberals have become the protectors and defenders of totalitarian agendas. They find clever ways to whitewash them.
We're all trying to win an argument. What difference does it really make if I prove you wrong or just shout you down every time you try to speak? What difference does it make if I write a rebuttal article or burn your book?
It's a train going to the same station. The ends are the same. Why quibble over the means?
This is how liberals descended into a civil liberties sewer. Having agreed on the ends (a society without people with bad views) it followed that the question of how to get there was purely tactical.
"It would be naïve to insist that individuals adhere to some prim, idealized vision of public discourse," Healy sneers.
But what Healy, like most leftists, fails to grasp is that the kinds of speech he likes least are likeliest to proliferate when that "prim, idealized vision of public discourse" is murdered by his leftist allies. Social evolution breeds hardier responses leading to escalation. If the goal of speech becomes overt suppression, then violence quickly appears on the scene.
How better to "quash" your opponent's argument than by punching him in the face?
After all there are plenty of historical precedents for it. And then in the non-prim public discourse, rioters pepper spray, burn and beat each other. That's why we let people speak. Even if we disagree with them. Censorship quickly escalates. When the entry bar to public discourse becomes so high that only the most extreme voices can get in, free speech vanishes. All that's left is a brutal power struggle.
Liberals understood that once upon a time. Now they've become little more than the spinmeisters of the radical totalitarian left. And it's a despicable sight.