Free Speech

 I understand the argument that free speech is an essential part of any democracy. I'm 100% in favor of free speech. Can't live without it, really. At the same time, I'm also very much aware that free speech provokes—or rather "encourages," a more neutral term—response, which is equally free in its expression.

Such responses are sometimes very sharp, but they are always framed by social expectations, which is to say whatever has become standard social practice. Once upon a time it might have been hilarious to make a "cripple" jokes, and for some people it might still be ok to laugh at them. But the consensus seems to be that such jokes are reprehensible, so that when dearleader mocked the reporter, Serge Kovalesk, who suffers from arthrogryposis, most people, dearleader's minions aside, were at least disgusted by the then presidential candidate's behavior.

There was pushback. To be sure, dearleader and his epigones shrugged off the pushback. But there has not been a recurrence of such "joking," so perhaps the pushback had an effect.

That's the way that free speech works. You say X, which provokes me to say Y and elicits Z from Joe Blow, and X' from . . . . In the interaction of statements arises the very soul of democracy. As Milton says in "Areopagitica," "Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making." Milton puts a great deal of weight on the optimistic idea of "desire to learn" and of the beneficence of "good men," an optimism limited to Protestants since he explicitly excluded Catholics from the orbit of free speech.

We might find such an exclusion ridiculous—although certainly it was still a crucial aspect of American culture when JFK ran for office. But given the religious wars of Europe in the 17th century, excluding Catholics in a Protestant country was as expected as excluding Protestants in a Catholic country. So too Milton's use of "men" to mean "humans," since "men" in 1644 meant all sexes. Given the standard social practice of the 17th century, no one found the term offensive, as people might well do in the first third of the 21st century.

Sometimes the standard social practices of a period get formalized in "speech codes," as they're called. Milton's exclusion of Catholics might be a "speech code" of sorts. In 17th century England, the exclusion of Catholics also had the force of law. But in the 21st century, speech codes have no legal force, so that Milton's use of "men" to denote all human beings, offensively patriarchal though it might be to a great many people nowadays, is still in use by a great many other people, and there is no law to proscribe such usage.

The same thing goes for a great many other offensive terms and practices. No one with the slightest sense of decency would use the "n-word" to denote people who are not of European descent. But people still use that word, and although there is much much pushback against such usage, there is no law that prohibits it. Instead, as one of the benefits of free speech, the usage of the term by some people defines the character of those people. If under the license of free speech you use the n-word, and so tell me who you are, I will believe that you are that person. And I will speak against you.

The issue becomes more complicated when institutions are mixed into the equation. Dave Chapelle got a great deal of pushback for his "jokes" about gay and transexual people, for instance. That pushback from people is part of the normal interaction of free speech with other free speech. But then institutions got involved and, in Chapelle's own terms, he got "canceled," caught in the web of "cancel culture."

I realize that comics are particularly at risk in the give and take of free speech. Freud argues that the best, in the sense of the most laughter-provoking jokes are what he calls "tendentious," attack jokes. Aristophanes attacks male arrogance in "Lysistrata," philosophical arrogance in "The Clouds," and dramatists' self-importance in "The Frogs," and so on. They are hilarious plays. The objects of attack no doubt responded to Aristophanes. Still, I imagine that Socrates would have preferred "The Clouds" to the glass of hemlock that the state of Athens required him to drink.

My sense is that "cancel culture" responds to the pressure of standard social practices, fair or unfair as those practices may be. Chapelle says that corporate entities are more responsive to the pressures of the LGBTQ+ community that they are to the experience of Black people, so that Black entertainers who mock the LGBTQ+ community are "canceled" while Black citizens get shot. There may be some truth to the influence of the LGBTQ+ community, but nonetheless I think Chapelle is mixing oranges with apples. Killing people requires a legal response, whereas making jokes evokes the pushback of free speech in response to free speech. Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and Daunte Wright, and so many many others are martyrs. Chapelle is not.

"Cancel culture" is what happens in the give and take of free speech when it's a corporate entity that participates in the exchange of speech. Al Franken's "molestation" photograph led to his resigning from the US Senate, for instance. Sarah Silverman's black-face episode led to her disappearing from screens. Is it legitimate for corporate entities to "speak" as individuals might? The SCOTUS asserts that corporate entities have free speech rights, so legal practice makes it perfectly acceptable for corporations to respond to free speech in whatever way they wish. To my mind it would make better sense for the corporation to speak and argue rather than to silence and "cancel." But that's not the way corporations seem to want to respond.

We do not have an Athenian jury condemning comics or philosophers to death. "Cancel culture," unfortunate as I think it to be, is an effect of free speech countering free speech. To be sure, we do have efforts to substitute state power for free speech. All you have to do is consider the laws promulgated by the Florida state government. Unlike Chapelle, whose "cancellation" followed from his "joking" about the LGBTQ+ community, a teacher in some public school in Tampa or Jacksonville or Pensacola can end up in jail were they to say "gay." That is not quite a glass of hemlock, but certainly it is cancellation with a vengeance. When state power intervenes, free speech ends.