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Shouting Fire: The Mythical Free Speech Absolutist
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” —Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948
Defenders of censorship have a beloved bogeyman, the free speech absolutist who shouts “fire!” in crowded theaters. This absolutist insists we have a right to threaten and lie. He demands a right to rant about anything anywhere and force everyone to listen. He would destroy our trust in our neighbors by imposing a right to deceive and terrify. To protect us from the free speech absolutist, censors say they must regulate what we may say. Since good people believe in honest, civil discourse, censors want us to let public and private authorities decide what is true and respectful. If we do not, the free speech absolutist will make speech impossible for us all.
But their bogeyman has never existed. He is an exercise in reductio as absurdum. No one who is famous for supporting free speech has called for any of those things.
Free speech is the right to say what we believe is true in places where others may say what they think is true. The proper consequences of free speech are more speech in…
