Free Speech is About Power

Free speech isn’t about self-expression. It’s about power.

If you told me just a decade ago I would ever feel the need to defend free speech, I would have rolled my eyes. I always took for granted that free speech was an unquestioned American idea. Penning a defense of free speech would have felt like the rhetorical equivalent of a solemn defense of apple pie. You might as well finish the trifecta and add in support for democracy and the middle class.

And yet here we are.

To say there’s been backsliding in support for free speech of late is an understatement. It’s as perplexing as it’s maddening. I’m shocked at how many Americans feel increasingly entitled to silence and manipulate voices they don’t like. I’m stunned at how this silencing gets cheers from people I thought knew better. I incorrectly presumed anyone with a basic education, much less a few episodes of School House Rock under their belt, understood enough about why democracy works.

This isn’t a time of war and crisis of the kind that has previously led to major attacks on free speech in America. I know Congressman Vallandingham got arrested during the Civil War for giving a pro-confederate speech in Ohio. I know Woodrow Wilson jailed opponents of the draft during the First World War, including the Socialist Party candidate for president running against him. I know the Cold War had its Un-American Activities Committees and Red Scares. Ours may be a time of instability, but we have no reason to be this frightened of our own shadows.

Some think our backsliding on speech is about technological change. Social media has created disruptive bottom-up mass communication platforms that are difficult for central authorities to influence or control. The lines between foreign and domestic communication have collapsed, globalizing what was once solely national politics. This has created incentives among the sorts who improperly want to control what Americans see and say to manipulate domestic politics to try to rebuild the sorts of tools they once had in the mass-media world of three-networks and two-newspaper towns, a project that’s impossible.

I think it’s mostly about a growing and alarming ignorance. I think many Americans no longer know what free speech is for. I also think too many leaders and elites no longer understand why it’s critical for their own interests and survival to maintain and defend free speech, even when their short-term interests say otherwise.

A lot of people who think they’re clever are arrogantly playing with lighters indoors while surrounded with tanks of gasoline, at risk of accidentally burning it all down while we’re collectively trapped inside.

WHY WE HAVE FREE SPEECH

You’ve probably heard that free speech is about self-expression. It’s a nice story, but a lie. Governments and the people who influence them don’t care about whether you can express yourself.

Societies that allow people to share their ideas and express themselves are obviously better places to live. They’re also better engines for discovering truth. Personal expression helps push humanity forward and lets people lead freer, richer, more meaningful lives. Unfortunately, nobody in power—not the government, not public officials, not titans of industry, not the bosses of institutions, not movers and shakers, not oligarchs—has any inherent interest in it.

Democratic governments don’t spend a lot of resources helping citizens create art. They don’t encourage people to learn instruments. They don’t pour money into poetry. They don’t make sure people can take sabbaticals to learn to dance. They don’t even care much about discovering truth unless it helps build concrete things that create money or power. Self-expression is a nice byproduct of speech, but it’s not the reason democracies defend it.

Democracies defend free speech because speech is necessary to challenge power, and challenging power is the foundation of sustaining democracy.

FREE SPEECH IS ABOUT POWER

Another myth you’ve heard is that power in democracies comes from elections. Elections are an important mechanism to choose between candidates and ideas the system has already vetted. The problem is, long before any person or issue is presented to you in an election, someone first had to push them inside the Overton Window. Power is what moves things into the window, the force necessary to change things.

Power threatens the establishment and status quo. It proposes policies the establishment doesn’t want. It advances ideas that threaten the interests of whoever is currently on top the pyramid. Often, it means replacing the people running things with outsiders they do not like and likely fear. Power is more than just swapping presidents and congresses. It’s also pushing the heads of industries. It’s pushing bosses of big institutions. It’s pushing heads of powerful advocacy groups. It’s pushing the wealthy and influential. It’s pushing all the managers and experts and implementers who attach themselves to the powerful and execute their visions.

This power in democracies originates with speech.

Speech is power in a democracy not because it changes minds. Changing minds is nice if you can do it. Anyone who speaks, writes, dances, paints, or films hopes they might share something that allows another human to see the world in a new and brilliant light. Sharing a portion of your mind or soul is a generous and valuable gift. Unfortunately, putting notes into empty bottles and sending them out to sea has no chance of changing anything. No matter how compelling the idea, no matter how well presented, no matter how correct about the truth, if you’re speaking alone you’re mostly talking into air.

Speech is power in a democracy because it hoists a battle flag around which others can rally. When you speak, you let others know where you stand. This is what lets others of a similar mind find you and become an ally. One person speaking becomes two people working for a common cause, and two people working alone become a team. The more you speak, the more allies you attract. Eventually you become an army. An army is democratic power.

That’s what free speech actually is for. It’s the first step toward building an army to face off against the establishment.

This is also why power always wants to silence speech. The people who control things don’t really care that you disagree. They don’t even care that you criticize or mock them. What they care about is you planting seeds that can grow into an army that can oppose them, thwart them, and perhaps one day usurp them. The reason power wants to silence you is to cut down that battle flag before anyone can see it. They want to make sure no army ever forms, rendering all who might push back against them alone. Alone you’re a voice echoing across the night air, a beautiful human spirit that will never affect anything or change the world. Alone you are irrelevant.

This is why it’s incorrect to call free speech a liberty. Free speech isn’t a gift. It isn’t the state being nice. It’s no benevolence to be parceled out from compassion and generosity. Free speech is a non-optional, essential component of democracy. For democracy to work, you can’t limit it, carving out the parts you find icky. You can’t draw lines according to what you like, what you believe is true, what you think is reasonable, what you think is dangerous, or what you think is kind. People must be allowed to organize against power for democracy to work.

This is because of legitimacy.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMACY

Every society relies on some mechanism of legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the reason a society gives for why citizens ought to listen to the people ordering them about. It’s more than a myth to justify the state through noble lies. It’s also more than a mechanism of coercion through which the state makes people obey. Legitimacy is the reason people buy into the system even when it doesn’t always benefit them. It’s the reason people choose to voluntary work hard, hold up the system, and obey, based on their own beliefs about right and wrong, duty, honor, and choice—even when selfishly they shouldn’t.

In democracies, the most important mechanism of legitimacy is consent. Democracies promise that you control the government. You choose your leaders. If they do something you don’t like, you can pressure them to obey you and even replace them with someone else you like. You don’t just have the power to choose your leaders, you also have the power to demand laws that control and punish other powerful interests—bosses, employers, rich industrialists, media titans, and powerful industries too. Consent means the people at the bottom can grab anyone, anywhere, with any amount of power, and pull them down from their perch into the mud.

Democracies claim there are no rulers. When the people collectively want something, those in power must obey. Power cannot act on you without your consent. This is why people in democracies willingly work hard, cooperate, and sacrifice even when they don’t like their position or the rewards they’re likely to get by doing so. America is rich and powerful because hundreds of millions of Americans buy into the American project and cooperate to make it rich and powerful without anyone having to ask. They’re willing to work hard even when most of what they produce goes to someone else. They’re willing to die in wars. They’re willing to accept a lower position on the ladder instead of just grabbing the nearest gun and shooting whoever is at the top. The foundation of this is speech.

Speech is the mechanism through which consent turns into reality. When people are unhappy, democracy lets them speak out. In speaking out, they spread ideas of opposition and raise a flag. This attracts others, creating a democratic army. That army pressures officials, forms political parties, demands laws, elects candidates, punishes elites, and forces things to change. All of this starts with the freedom to speak. Speech is why the lowest in a democracy are content with their position on the ladder—working hard, obeying laws, producing wealth they don’t enjoy, and cooperating with a system that does not always benefit them directly.

When establishments silence speech, they break this mechanism of consent. It may seem a good deal to them in the short term because it allows them to operate without challenge. They can do what they think best and protect their interests without the frustrations of democracy pushing back. However, as soon as the people see they no longer really have unfettered freedom to challenge power without consequence, they stop buying in, and then the system starts to come apart. Authorities can continue on for a while through inertia, fear, and coercion. They can abuse the power to reward and punish to cling to control for some time. Eventually, however, people no longer work hard, sacrifice, or put up with commands to which they did not consent. They no longer have a sense of duty or honor to cooperate with a system that’s illegitimate. Society gets poorer, weaker, and less stable. It begins to stagnate and die.

This is why a smart democracy allows unfettered speech. It selfishly knows speech is necessary for its own survival. Without free speech, democracy will collapse and with it all the wealth and power democracy creates—wealth elites live off and power they command. This means it’s in their interest to allow speech, even when it’s inconvenient or even threatening to their position or goals.

ELITES WANT TO MAINTAIN DEMOCRACY

The powerful in a democracy always face a terrible choice. Either they can seek more authority at the helm of a poorer less powerful machine, or they can subject themselves to the discomfort of speech but lead a vastly richer and more powerful machine. The powerful machine obviously is better.

Autocrats might have more direct power, but it’s a bigger piece of a smaller pie. They have more of less. They may not face dissidents speaking and organizing against them, but their positions are hardly secure since they still face internal rivals employing tools like bureaucratic infighting, violence, and corruption. Worse, dictators of weaker nations aren’t in control their owns destinies, since more powerful nations push them around as pawns to manipulate and sacrifice in larger games. They’re as likely to end up deposed as dead. It’s obviously better to be the elite in a rich democracy than a dictator or oligarch in the alternative. You’re richer, safer, and more powerful even in the face of dissent. To erode a system feeding you so much wealth and power in exchange for an inferior position is unwise.

Free speech, in other words, isn’t just better in some idealistic sense. It’s better for the people in control most tempted to compromise it. Allowing people to speak out and push back against power, or even to replace it, is still better for the establishment and elites than the alternative. We don’t just defend speech because we’re idealistic and nice. The cynical and selfish should defend it because they’re cynical and selfish. Silencing those who say things you don’t like is for short-sighted fools.

Democracy requires the freedom to challenge power with speech. It must extend to not just candidates and parties but any power seeking to silence critics—the state, your employer, activists, or tech companies— and include both official censorship and unofficial censorship, in which the powerful scheme to coordinate behind the scenes to accomplish with private power what the state isn’t directly allowed to do. There’s no excuse for our current backsliding on this obligation. Those who cheer for restricting speech aren’t making a kinder, better, and more efficient nation. They’re not bolstering stability by eliminating “misinformation,” whatever that even means. They’re not protecting good by disempowering opponents they believe are evil. They certainly are not, as too many of the naïve believe, protecting democracy. They’re destroying its foundation. If they win, they’ll regret it as will we all.

I’ll have more to say about the importance of democratic legitimacy in the future, and what we must do to restore this core promise of democracy and America.

Why do you believe free speech is critical to defend? Join the community in the comments.