Politics and free speech

Jim Kalb has an interesting article at Turnabout on political correctness and its opponents.

Mr Kalb points out that right-liberals support politically incorrect free speech more than left liberals because they are less concerned with results than with principles.

Since left liberals believe that liberal principles such as non-discrimination need to be translated into less discrimination in terms of real world outcomes, they are willing to override traditional reasons for defending free speech, such as a concern for establishing the truth or countering corruption, through legislation like hate speech laws.

For example, in the left-liberal view, if free speech makes a particular group, such as women or muslims, feel alienated or insulted, then it is acceptable to restrict freedom of speech.

In contrast, right-liberals are generally opposed to introducing laws to enforce people to conform to liberal principles, as they believe in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

Hence, while right-liberals believe people should respect liberal principles of equality, they don't believe they should be restricted from saying things which violate such principles.

Subsequently, the defence of free speech has been a lot stronger in the United States than in many European and Commonwealth countries, where elites have a greater concern with equality in practice rather in theory.

Among the various liberal groups in the U.S, libertarians have been the strongest supporters of free speech and are well represented on the Internet, which has a disproportionately high percentage of libertarians.

However, those groups which stand to lose the most from the censorship of free speech, are not libertarians but particularists like traditional conservatives and ethno-nationalists, who wish to directly challenge liberalism over key liberal concepts like the malleability of human nature.

So although particularists and libertarians don't have a lot of common in terms of political ideology (with most, but not all libertarians shying away from the topic of equality) particularists seem to be somewhat dependent on libertarian support in getting their message across to the public.

Kalb says that the popular and intellectual appeal of libertarianism is growing, and its growth appears to be influenced by the growth of new technologies such as online business, which appeals to the laissez-faire/individualist ethos of libertarians.

If libertarianism does continue to grow, it will be interesting to see if particularism does also, and whether the two forces will move closer together, as in some form of paleo-libertarianism, or drift further apart.

British fascism, Italian democracy

How times change, 70 years ago most people would have associated suppression of speech with totalitarian states like Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union.

However, Italy showed how far it's come in defending democracy this week when it allowed entry to controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

Earlier Mr Wilders was barred from entering the UK by Home Secretary, and leading liberal fascist, Jacqui Smith.