Free speech and political extremism: How nasty are we free to be?
✍ Scribed by Carl Cohen
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1989
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 869 KB
- Volume
- 7
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0167-5249
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
HOW NASTY ARE WE FREE TO BE?* I want to discuss the limits of freedom in speaking and publishing: what they are, and what they should be. I want to ask you and myself about the frontiers, the extremes, the uses of speech that seem barely tolerable, about uses of freedom that are, in fact, intolerable to many.
I am not thinking merely about controversial speech. That's easy. Or agitating speech. That's not very hard. I am thinking about speech that is nasty, vicious, wrongheaded, and downright evil or at least thought to be so. I am not sure what content or manner meets that description. We all know that when two parties are in bitter, mortal conflict, each one thinks the other is evil, nasty and morally wrong.
As an example, consider the war between Iran and Iraq recently in progress. Each party finds the other utterly vicious. But, you say, that is war! Right. We want to think about freedom within a civil society, a society divided, perhaps, even angry and bitter, but still civil. How far may speech go in such a setting? What is permissible?
Consider another example, within a civil society, closer to our target. In Miami, on Biscayne Boulevard, in March of 1986, there was a confrontation between a group of anti-Contra demonstrators, and a group of pro-Contra demonstrators -groups whose members detest and revile one another, as you know. [Note: The double negative "anti-Contra" sounds silly, but in this case is not readily avoidable; I use it for the sake of accuracy.] One of the pro-Contra folks was waving a plac-* The papers in this symposium were originally presented at the first University of Miami-Southeast Banking Corporation Foundation Symposium on Ethics and Society in January 1988 directed by Professor Alan Goldman of the University of Miami. We are grateful for his assistance in arranging for the publication of these papers.