January 11, 2024

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy.” We know this because Elon Musk told us exactly that on at least 4 occasions, and that’s as reliable a source as you can have today. Extending Musk’s principle, it can equally be claimed that democracy itself is the bedrock of Western Civilization. Not in the simplistic notion of majority rule—a proposition anathema to our Founders—but in the tradition of a limited representative government that exists primarily to safeguard individual rights. Today, that bedrock has been corrupted into a treacherous quicksand that threatens to consume the last vestiges of Western Civilization. So, what went wrong?

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”); } }); }); }

The most obvious explanation is that, in the last few years, speech has been under direct assault. Without it, Western Civilization cannot survive. Throw Western Civilization the lifeline of unrestrained, unchecked, absolute free speech, and it will lift itself up by its bootstraps. But while returning true free speech to America is a very compelling argument, does it survive scrutiny?

There can be no doubt that we have witnessed some of the most egregious attacks on speech in the nation’s history—suppressing news of the Hunter laptop, scrubbing dissents contrary to the COVID narrative, Amazon literally pulling the plug on Parler, and throwing a sitting president off social media. However, these assaults only started to occur in the last few years and, while shocking, for the most part, speech has remained overwhelmingly free—unless, of course, you have the grievous misfortune of attending Harvard.

But even more troubling, the degringolade of Western Civilization has been unfolding for decades, starting long before these recent brazen assaults on speech. Well into the early 21st century, Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s timeless anthem still rang true: “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” It wasn’t for want of free speech that the bankrupt ideologies of diversity, multiculturalism, and climate change clawed their footholds in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, but rather, because of it.

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”); } }); }); }

The true believers of free speech find it difficult, if not impossible, to condemn speech; they’re absolutists ready to fall on their swords. Their remedy for destructive speech, they argue, is more speech.

Well, how’s that working out? Where was the resounding chorus of dissent to challenge diversity, multiculturalism, and climate change as these ideologies permeated the societal zeitgeist from the 1960s to Obama? Nowhere. Leftists, paradoxically, hijacked Western Civilization’s “bedrock” principle of free speech and employed it to destroy society.

Free speech is immensely powerful. An alluring message—the promise of free healthcare, free tuition, and universal basic income—delivered by a charismatic speaker can spread perverse ideologies like the plague. Disturbingly, two-thirds of Millenials and Gen-Z’ers said they’d be somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist. Five percent of children consider themselves trans. If you look at where we are, and we are honest, it’s hard not to conclude that, for a liberal democracy, unlimited free speech is suicide.

Western Civilization has not always championed complete, unrestrained free speech. From democracy’s earliest adoption in Athens during the 5th century BC, speech had its limits, especially when it challenged the core values of the state. Famously, Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock for corrupting the minds of the youth against the city’s traditions and beliefs. That decision wasn’t the work of a DC jury and a corrupt judge but the will of thousands of his fellow citizens comprising the Athenian Assembly. Add this to the growing list of lessons unlearned from the sacred scrolls of antiquity.

So, we have reached a contradiction on our “bedrock” principle, and, as Ayn Rand not so subtly warned in Atlas Shrugged, “To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.”

So, to avoid eviction “from the realm of reality,” we are forced to reject Musk’s assertion as an absolute and agree that some reasonable limits on speech are necessary. Surely, few of us would object to squelching speech aimed at coercing children to mutilate their genitals wrapped in the bromide of “gender-affirming care” or empowering cross-dressing cheaters like Will Thomas to destroy women’s sports.