speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

4. Taking Sides
I began these lectures by analysing controversies over pornography,
hate speech, and blasphemy as struggles for respect between status
groups. Contemporary western societies respond by oscillating
between the extremes of liberalism and authoritarianism, uncritical
tolerance and perfectionist control, idolatry of the market and fealty
to the state. Liberalism demands faith that truth and justice will
triumph in the long run; but Keynes reminds us that in the long run
we will all be dead. Politicians court fickle publics by promising the
quick fix of more laws and heavier penalties. Both sides construct
moral panics. Liberals warn that any restraint on speech is a step
down the slippery slope toward fascist and communist totalitarianism;
governmental partisanship revives memories of state religion
and agitprop. Prohibitionists justify bans on pornography and hate
speech by raising the spectre of physical attacks on women and
racial, religious and sexual minorities. In the second and third
lectures I criticised both extremes: civil libertarianism cannot inform
a principled stance toward speech, yet state regulation inevitably
invites excesses and errors. This final lecture attempts the formidable
task of charting a path that reduces one harm of speech—the
reproduction of status inequality—while minimising the harm to
speech from state regulation. I begin by arguing the need to take
sides, drawing lessons from other particularistic experiments. I
briefly consider efforts to liberate and amplify silenced voices but
focus on responses to harmful speech. Although I do not claim to
have eliminated the inescapable tension between freedom and
authority, I am hopeful that modest steps to redress status inequality
will enlarge our vision of the just society and lead us toward it.
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