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Hadley Arkes joins Mark to discuss why it’s a mistake for conservatives to adopt an absolutist position on free speech.
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I take Dr. Arkes’ point about obscenities. But I don’t see why banning them (or giving in to the “speech-as-violence” gobbledygook) would help conservatives win the campus censorship wars. Speech codes and “safe spaces” would remain an unconstitutional abomination. The left–right split would remain exactly as it is. Progressive moralists would continue to silence debate, and conservatives would continue to defend it.
And, for what it’s worth, support for robust speech protections and belief in objective truth aren’t incompatible. When a conservative takes an absolutist First Amendment position, he’s not thinking, “Well, there’s no such thing as truth, so censorship is wrong.” Rather, he’s thinking, “I believe that the responsibility to discover and defend truth lies with the speaker, and not with some bureaucrat or politician, and censorship grants power which could be used against truth. For this reason, I oppose censorship.”