Maverick Philosopher

There are two issues here that need to be distinguished. One concerns the consistency of application of a free speech principle, whatever principle we decide upon. To apply a principle consistently is to apply it equally to all like cases. Suppose the principle agreed upon allows the mocking of religious figures and their religions. It would then be inconsistent in point of application to allow the mocking of Islam but not the mocking of Judaism, or vice versa. So I agree with Dr. Hodges that free speech should be supported consistently if what that means is that the principle of free speech embraced ought to be applied equally to all like cases.

One issue, then, concerns consistency of application of a free speech principle. The other concerns the principle itself, its content and coverage. One could construe the injunction to support free speech consistently to mean that all types of speech should be allowed, that freedom of expression ought to extend to every type of expression. Or one could take the view that some types of expression ought not be allowed.

It is obvious that one who denies that freedom of expression extends to every type of expression can nonetheless support free speech consistently in the sense that he applies his principle equally to all like cases.

Now I will state my view. I support consistency of application of any free speech principle we adopt. But I find the notion that free speech, or free expression generally, ought to extend to every type of expression to be extremely dubious and in need of very serious examination. And I of course invoke my own right to free expression in pursuit of this politically incorrect question.

In this post I will consider only the case of lying. One has the right to publish but not the right to lie. To lie is to state a falsehood with the intention to deceive. Suppose David Irving is lying about the Holocaust. Why should he have the right to propagate his lies? Why should freedom of expression be taken to include freedom to express lies?

I bring up Irving only as an example. I am interested mainly in the principle, not in this case. And of course there is a serious question about how one could know that a person is lying. Essential to a lie is the intention to deceive; but how could one know what a person's intentions are? But suppose one knows that a person is lying. My claim is then that the person's lies ought not count as protected: there is no moral right to lie derivable from the right to free speech. Why not?

Lies ought not be protected since lies are violations of truth, and thus violations of that which makes free speech valuable in the first place. Free expression is valuable, even when it is upsetting and offensive to many, because it is conducive to the discovery of truth and thus conducive to enlightement and progress. The propagation of lies, however, impedes the discovery and dissemination of truth. It is an offense against truth. As such, it is an offense against the very thing for the sake of which we value free speech.

If we recognize a right to propagate lies as derivable from the right to free expression, then we assume the correlative duty not to interfere with the liar's propagation of falsehoods. But a duty to not interfere with the propagation of lies would conflict with our duty to respect truth -- a duty which is at the root of our toleration of free speech even when this speech is contentious and offensive to many.

My argument, then, is that it it incoherent to suppose that the right to free expression extends to every type of expression. For if it has this maximal extension, then it extends to lying. But if a right to lie is derivable from the right to free expression, then so is the obligation to tolerate lying. But any such obligation would conflict with the duty to respect truth -- which duty is at the root of our argument for tolerating free expression even when it is deeply upsetting and offensive to many people.

Steve,

Thanks for your comment. What the illustrious Chris doesn't seem to grasp is that the Ten Commandments are formulated and numbered in different ways. What I had in mind while writing my post was the old Baltimore Catechism version that I memorized as a child. The First was: "I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have false gods before me." Here is the formulation and numbering in a more recent version:

1. I am the LORD your God: you shall not have
strange Gods before me.
2. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
3. Remember to keep holy the LORD'S Day.
4. Honor your father and your mother.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.

See here.

The above is a Catholic catechism style formulation. Now anyone who can count can see that in the above formulation and ordering only the first three invoke God. 10 - 3 = 7. Ergo, 7 of the Commandments are a-theistic in the sense that their content as set forth in the above formulation logically requires neither the existence nor the nonexistence of God.

A lot of you people here don't know how to make comments. Don't say: You are WRONG!! Or, you haven't read this or that. Say something like this: I see what you are getting at, Mr Scruton, but it seems to me that there is a second reason for homeschooling, one that you fail to mention. Or: I don't see how how you arrived at the number 7 in your claim about the theologically neutral commandments. Care to explain that?

When one makes comments in this style, one issues a definite and trenchant challenge, but without appearing churlish and without setting oneself up to have to make a retraction later.

Finally, has any leftist here answered the question I raised at the beginning of my post?


Posted by: Bill Vallicella at May 2, 2005 06:50 PM

Note first that there are at least four references to God in the Declaration. In the opening paragraph we find the phrase, “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God....” And in the second paragraph, we are told that it is a self-evident truth that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights....” (In case it is not obvious, a reference to God is not the same as an occurrence of the word ‘God’ since God can be referred to in ways that do not use ‘God.’ For example, one achieve the reference in question using a definite description.) In the final paragraph, there are references to God via the phrases, “Supreme Judge of the World,” and “divine Providence....” Given these obvious references to God as God of Nature (and thus as distinct from nature), as creator, as supreme judge, and as provider (in the two-fold sense of one who foresees (pro-videre) and one who supplies our needs), how can the extreme ACLU-type liberal countenance the posting of the Declaration in any public place?

The Establishment Clause reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion....” Now it ought to be completely opaque to any rational person how the posting of the Ten Commandments, say, by a judge, say, in his chambers, could be taken to be an establishment of any particular religion as the state religion. First of all, a judge is not the Congress. Second, the mere displaying of an ancient document does not suffice to establish a religion. Third, the Ten Commandments are not specific to any one religion: they are common to the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. To my astonishment, I have encountered leftists who think that the Decalogue is specifically Christian. It is not. The Commandments are stated in two places (Exodus 20.1-17 and Deuteronomy 5.6-21) in what Christians call the Old Testament. Fourth, seven of the Ten Commandments say nothing about God. One is positive, enjoining respect for parents, while the others express prohibitions against killing, lying, stealing, adultery, and coveting the property and spouse of another. One might even call these seven a-theistic since their content is logically independent of the existence/nonexistence of God. Would a Buddhist disagree with them? A Hindu? Any reasonable person?

So I ask again: what does the posting of the Ten Commandments have to do with the establishing of any particular religion as the state religion? And given the predominantly a-theistic content of the Decalogue, is not the ACLU assault on it a veiled assault on morality itself?

But let that all pass. On the present occasion I am arguing ex concesso: I concede the extremist interpretion of the Establishment Clause in order to raise a question of logical consistency, namely, how is it logically consistent to uphold the extremist interpretation while not applying it to the public display of the Declaration? If the references to God in the Ten Commandments
disallow its posting in public, why don’t the references to God in the Declaration have a similar effect?

What I am saying to the ACLU-type liberal is this. Be consistent: either apply your extremist interpretation of the Establishment Clause to the Declaration and argue for the latter’s removal from public places, or give up the extremist interpretation. Of course, a conservative will opt for the second disjunct and take the first as a reductio ad absurdum of the liberal position. But the conservative cannot expect the liberal to follow him in this. But what one can expect, and indeed demand, is that the liberal be logically consistent. Making this demand, one does not impose one’s views on him, one merely demands that he be consistent in the views that he chooses to hold.

But what if our dear liberal rejects the Law of Non-Contradiction? Such a person should be simply ignored. For such a person, as Aristotle remarks in his classic defense of LNC in Metaphysics, Book Gamma, is “no better than a plant.”(1006a15)