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(#10) Ethical Justifications for Free Expression

Coming into the class, I would have mostly aligned with Meiklejohn's (private versus public speech) theory for political speech. I believed allowing the marketplace of ideas---letting ideas duke it out while the best ideas rising to the top---to flourish on its own was ideal, but I didn't consider the problems with the concept all that much. It works under specific conditions that aren't reflective of reality. For starters: not everyone can or wants to engage in rational argumentation, and also, it trusts harmful ideas to just be left alone and die out on their own (i.e. Nazi ideology). Do we trust these radical ideologies to not pose a threat to the public and simply fade away even though there are perfectly good reasons to believe they can and will harm people? To that end, I agree with Haiman's Communication Context theory; when we evaluate "where one draws the line" for free expression, we need to consider a utilitarian/"greater good" approach to political speech by asking ourselves whether the decisions we make are best for society or not. While we fiddle our thumbs, Germany decisively drew that line by taking a stand against all Nazi sentiment (Sauerbrey, "How Germany Deals With Neo-Nazis"). If violence escalates, at what point do we say the health of the public overrides the need for individual expression?
With that said, I get the risk of ambiguity/over-breadth with defining what constitutes "bad" ideas, and I don't have all that much faith in the government to be a "ministry of truth." No matter what legality issues we face or what philosophical approach to free speech we think is best, I feel it's important to remind ourselves whether we're conducting ourselves ethically or not.
We've hit on different areas/implications of the First Amendment over the semester, and this chapter was a nice wrap up to it all by getting us to think about the underlying societal justifications for free expression.

Sources:
Sauerbrey, Anna. “How Germany Deals with Neo-Nazis.” New York Times, 23 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/opinion/germany-neo-nazis-charlottesville.html.

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