Tim Worstall

Freedom of Speech

So terribly old fashioned, don’t you think? Cath Elliot:

Freedom of speech is an idealistic notion born out of naivety and a
commendable but misguided faith in the capacity of people to think for
themselves and to reason. Time and time again history has shown us that
this just isn’t the case, that man’s ability to be indoctrinated and
influenced by the more charismatic and powerful among us knows no
bounds.

Aren’t we lucky that we’ve got such clear thinkers to do all of that hard work for us?

The only slight problem is that the same argument can (and probably is) be used against democracy itself, indeed any freedom. We don’t know what we’re doing so therefore other people, those who think the right way, should do it for us.

And to think, Ms. Elliot would probably describe herself as a liberal.

In

10 responses

  1. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    Shorter Cath Elliot: “You proles shut up about free speech and just listen to your betters at the ‘Guardian’, we’ll tell you what to think.”
    To be fair, though, that’s the subtext of a lot of the ‘Guardian’s’ output. At least she’s up front about it….

    Reply
  2. Chris White Avatar
    Chris White

    “The only slight problem is that the same argument can (and probably is) be used against democracy itself, indeed any freedom.”
    That had just occurred to me too, and I was going to add it to my comment on the article, but frankly I can’t be bothered.

    Reply
  3. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    “that’s the subtext of a lot of the ‘Guardian’s’ output”
    No no no no no. It’s not spelled ‘Guardian’. It’s spelled ‘Gordian’.

    Reply
  4. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    It’s nurdGaia, Kay.

    Reply
  5. OB123 Avatar
    OB123

    One thing’s for sure: there’s no freedom of speech on this blog..

    Reply
  6. Larry Teabag Avatar
    Larry Teabag

    In slight fairness to Ms Elliot, she pitches her article at (straw) “free speech absolutists”, and says in her reply to your comment:
    “Look, I haven’t advocated introducing new laws to further curtail free speech, I’m just saying that it doesn’t exist completely and nor should it.”
    As neither you nor I nor anyone remotely sane would disagree with this, it’s possible that you’ve misfiled her article under “fascist” when it more properly belongs under “so obvious as to be not worth saying at all, written for the sake of writing something, phrased poorly”.
    Maybe.

    Reply
  7. Kay Tie Avatar
    Kay Tie

    “misguided faith in the capacity of people to think for themselves and to reason”
    By and large, people are stupid and they don’t think for themselves and certainly don’t reason. However, the argument for free speech isn’t based on people thinking for themselves, it’s based on the ability for cogent people to shed light on bad arguments and bad ideas so that the majority can say “oh yeah, that’s stupid”.
    Shedding light requires free speech because otherwise we need the benign Gordian to tell us who are the cogent people. Given that the current Gordian would say “Polly Toynbee” I think we can see why we need a plurality of cogent people.

    Reply
  8. Surreptitious Evil Avatar
    Surreptitious Evil

    Larry,
    “Confused and muddled writing is normally a sign of confused and muddled thinking”?
    S-E

    Reply
  9. Larry Teabag Avatar
    Larry Teabag

    Sure. But confused and muddled thinking does not equate to fascism. Necessarily.
    But I think I’ve defended this dreadful article enough now!

    Reply
  10. The Ranting Kraut Avatar
    The Ranting Kraut

    Hitler and FreeSpeech

    The Grauniad has received some attention with a pro-censorship propaganda piece in a ‘comment is free’ column by some Cath Elliot. She argues the by now familiar line that principled support for free speech causes people to commit hate crimes. Natu…

    Reply

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