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Quote of the Day – Speech
Speech is not violence. Words cannot injure or compel a person to hate or riot. Consequently, the state has very little business policing it, and the outcomes are usually dire when it tries. – Institute of Economic Affairs
“Speech is violence” is one of those phrases straight out of 1984‘s Newthink and Newspeak, along with “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.” When I was young, everyone knew speech was not violence. As children, we would say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It was true. Words cannot do physical damage.
In my 20s, when I wanted to eject someone who was obviously lying from a message board I was on, an older colleague and friend counseled me, “The answer to bad speech isn’t to ban it. It is to respond with good speech.” I saw that he was right. The way to deal with liars is to expose their lies and then mock the liars. More words, not less, are the answer.
So how and from where did the lie that speech is violence emerge? I cannot say for sure, but I have a theory on the impulses that drive it. The first is the impulse to control people. The second is an impulse to lie and do so with impunity.
Words may not be violence but words have power. They have power to persuade, to educate, to motivate. Whoever has a command of language controls that power. Lying is convenient. It allows people to shape arguments without being burdened by truth. Inconvenient (and sometimes painful) facts can be ignored, replaced by a seductive word picture.
The easiest way to refute a lie is through counterargument. It is so easy to refute lies that way, liars have no defense against it. None. Instead they must work to prevent the expression of counterarguments — and the truth. So create another lie as a counter: speech is violence. Your words are capable of causing physical harm. Therefore your words must be controlled, and the government must prevent harmful words, especially “disinformation” — words that undercut the lies.
Persuade enough people of that and you have control of ideas, and the ability to lie with impunity. It is irresistible to tyrants at every level.
Published in Group Writing
Indeed. Truth liberates. The reason that lies control so much is that people fear to speak the truth under threat of violence.
Actual violence in the form of physical injury or economic deprivation – not “speech” violence.
I think when the Democrats make their campaign theme “freedom,” they are using the Orwellian definition and counting on their voters not to understand.
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This post is part of the Ricochet Quote of the Day project to encourage members to get in the game. If you feel motivated, there are still some days left in August to sign up by clicking this link. I’ll post a signup sheet for September and the end of the week.
When you do, put me down for the Saturdays in September. I’d appreciate that.
I think another impulse that drives it is the over coddling of children and the obsession over their self-esteem. When everyone gets a participation trophy, kids don’t learn how to deal with negative feedback. When a child’s self-esteem is paramount, anyone saying anything to damage that becomes a threat.
I suspect another aspect is the ongoing feminization of society. Females tend use words to do battle with each other, and so are more likely to see speech as something like violence. Males used to have the option of settling disputes with a good, old-fashioned fist fight, but we’ve declared that “violence never settles anything,” and so even men and boys are largely constrained to verbal (feminine) battle. Zero-tolerance for bullying in school is only directed toward physical (masculine) bullying. The “mean girl” type of verbal bullying gets a pass. Is it any wonder that younger generations confuse this with violence?
Multiple factors driving this, but I think one of them is that so many jobs now primarily involve the manipulation of words and images. If you’re a farmer or a machinist or even a mechanical engineer, the difference between words and actions is pretty clear–if you’re a lawyer or a humanities professor or an advertising copywriter, words *are* your form of action, at least in your professional life.
“Our Democracy(TM)” is not a matter of governance ratified by majority rule. It is about a set special truths that could only be rejected by hate-filled monsters. There is no moral right to disagree with special truths. Since submission to the special truths without dissent or “denial” is all that protects us from the violent horrors the haters want to inflict, and because the special truths are shallow, often contradictory ideological pablum, being separated from their effects them is itself an injury and an attack on the entire construct. Even the word “violence” is itself changed under the rubric of the special truths.
Combined with the left’s mantra that “violence is speech” (at least, THEIR violence is), it’s much worse.
Speech = persuasion. Persuasion = power. Power = (end result of) violence.
Factor out the repeated terms.
Speech = Violence.
You and I may not agree, but that’s how the left sees it.
Maybe acceptance of the permissibility of speech that one strongly disagrees with is a skill that needs to be learned. See your brain thinks disagreement will kill you.
In many societies and sub-societies, it was (is) expected that a personal insult would be responded to with a duel or at least a fistfight.
A sociologist, whose name escapes me at the moment, has written about a transition: From societies in which people are expected to personally avenge an insult To societies operating under the ‘words will never hurt me’ principle To societies in which people expect the Authorities to protect them from any speech they view as hurtful.
Wow! This essay and comment thread has the most informative succinct analytical points of why and how government can be a danger to the people it is created to serve. There is obviously a good reason why this is addressed in the very first sentence in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
This comment,
illustrates in a logical or thinking form exactly why speech is not violence
Violence results in physical harm/damage to property or persons and this happens in the one step that is the physical cause of that result.
The multiple steps shown in the above comment do not meet this definition.
The Left gets away with too much changing the definitions of words.
On the other hand, if individuals are not taught and learn to think, the precursor of intelligent speech, for themselves, a mass psychosis derangement syndrome can emerge.
Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning were the sociologists I referenced above. See Honor, Dignity, Victim.
I was so impressed with the overall tenor and potential for discussion here I overlooked this in your comment.
It seems to me the last two steps are out of natural order when natural order advances based on reason rather than emotion. Or maybe some of America’s founders could already see the emerging societal treatment of restrictive speech emerging and decided to avoid it. We have regressed when we adopt restrictive speech..
I apparently messed up the link, here it is: Honor, Dignity, Victimhood Cultures.
Intra-Stellar has a post on the psychological factors that are inhibiting rational political debate.
I agree with this and I don’t have the stats but I would venture that the percentage of women in the three fields you note and many other fields is far higher today than it was 50 years ago. That may account for some of the feminization effect noted by a previous commenter.
On the other hand, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and getting rid of 80% of the employees – most of them women – shows that many of those fields dominated by women can likely just be eliminated and nobody will notice the difference. If anything, they might think it an improvement.