The idea on which free societies are based seems more endangered than ever.
By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451825/free-speech-america-right-to-be-wrong-endangeredThe whole idea of a free society is based on a very simple idea that is very hard to live by:
People have the right to be wrong.
This idea has ancient roots, but it was always and everywhere a minority opinion, unpopular with
both the masses and the rulers, until relatively recently . . .
. . . You might think that the current controversy over NFL players refusing to stand for the National
Anthem, the vandalizing or removal of statues — not just of Confederate generals, but of any real
or alleged historical villains — and the P.C. firestorms erupting across American campuses aren’t
about religion, so this history doesn’t have much relevance for today.
But you would be wrong.
The religious conflicts of the past were ultimately about which values, rituals, customs, and ideas
should be imposed on everybody. Traditional religion may be receding in many parts of American
culture, but politics is taking on a decidedly religious flavor — and religion is becoming increasingly
politicized.
People are growing intolerant of any dissent from their idea of what everyone should believe. Agree
with me and you’re one of the good guys; disagree with me and you’re not just wrong, you’re my
enemy, a heretic, a traitor, a bigot. Opportunists recognize that exacerbating this polarization
redounds to their own benefit, because at least for now, doing so helps raise money, ratings, clicks,
and poll numbers.
We are a long way off from putting beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword, but that is the
logical destination of the path we are on, because we have lost faith in the utility of upholding the
right to be wrong.
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I only wish Mr. Goldberg had recalled Frank Chodorov (a remarkable essayist whose thought,
William F. Buckley, Jr. (who was once a Chodorov protege, at the founding of the original Inter-
collegiate Society of Individualists, long since re-named the Intercollegiate Studies Institute)
once reminded people, "turned on a single spit: all the reasons one should be suspicious of State
activity") on the subject of the right to be wrong, about which Chodorov wrote specifically in
1949:
Whenever I choose an idea and label it "right," I imply the prerogative of another to
reject that idea and label it "wrong." To invalidate his right is to invalidate mine. That is, I must
brook error if I would preserve my freedom of thought. When I presume to be in possession of
"absolute truth," and maintain that those who disagree with me not only are in error, but are
wickedly or sinfully so, I lay myself open to similar judgment; in the end, then, the "absolute
truth" becomes a matter of power to constrict thought.
If there is anything characteristic of America, and for which Americans can be thankful, it is
that it is an area in which thought has been permitted to run riot. To be sure, our history is
not free of political efforts to put limits on what people may think . . . Somehow the citadel
of thought has held firm, and the right to be wrong has added something to human dignity.
Even the President of the United States has the right to be wrong, and God knows how many
American presidents have exercised that right in my near 62 years, but we also have the
right to say he (or she, in due course) is wrong. And when a president decides someone is
not just wrong but ought to lose a job for being wrong, that goes beyond his own right to
be wrong and into very dangerous waters---waters
just as dangerous as they were when
Theodore Roosevelt was stupid enough to say that criticising a president is "not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
