rekrunner wrote:
I would argue that free speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of your speech.
rekrunner wrote:
With rights comes responsibilities. The purpose of doling out consequences to harmful speech is not to rehabilitate the speaker, acting on his primal urges so that they don't escalate, but to create a broadly civilised society, where everyone can feel safe from aggression and hatred.
Everyone who is opposed to free speech always comes up with some variation of your argument. It always starts with, "free speech is great, but...." What you're describing here--penalizing people who express the "wrong" ideas so that such ideas are no longer expressed, thereby making other people comfortable--is actually the opposite of free speech.
Free speech is all about evil, wrong, and harmful speech. Otherwise it would be a meaningless concept because people only want to silence speech that they find reprehensible. And of course, when they silence speech, it's almost always through the use of "consequences" rather than through prior restraints.
On a very general level, you're obviously right that all speech has consequences, and it's unavoidable. Nobody would bother to speak in the first place if it weren't for "consequences." The problem is that "consequences" is too broad a term. We should distinguish between "consequences" that are a natural result of the speech at issue and "consequences" that are specifically intended to impose a penalty and so discourage further such speech. The latter is inconsistent with any commitment to the values of free speech. This isn't always easy to do, but it's essential. For example:
(1) If I were hosting a party and one of my guests started spewing racist bile, I would kick him out. Not because I'm using my party as a tool to motivate him to say the right things (regardless of what he feels), but because neither I nor my guests would enjoy spending time with such a person, and my purpose in hosting a party is for people to have a good time. As a social host in a private space, I do intend for people to feel "safe."
(2) On the other hand, if I learned that the proprietor of a local business is opposed to gay marriage--perhaps because I was able to view his political donations online--I would not boycott or encourage others to boycott his business. The only purpose in doing so would be to punish him and demonstrate to others that expressing support for certain ideas is not acceptable. Any sort of commitment to the values of free speech should lead one to reject such an attempt to enforce conformity of views in a truly public sphere.
(3) A harder case would be learning that one of my employees is a racist in his private life. If his private life were sufficiently "public" on social media, and if he had a consumer-facing job, then I would probably be inclined to fire him because I would be worried about how his views might affect his interactions with customers. If he were in IT or something, then I would let him stay as the quality of his work warranted.
The key question for me is motivation. We should not be directly attempting to punish the expression of "incorrect" or even "hateful" views and speech. Nor should we readily accede to the pressure from others to do so (such as in a secondary boycott, for example). But we should feel free to consider whether an individual's expressed views suggest that they may be unqualified for a particular role. And we should feel free to disassociate ourselves with people who we dislike and with whom we disagree--just as we (all) voluntarily associate with people who do think like us. These motivations can bleed into each other, and there are tough cases, as I said. But if you have a clear idea of what your commitment to free speech really means, then you at least have something to aim at when it comes to daily application.