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

The Poverty of Civil Libertarianism
examples of oppression in the name of absolute values. The history
of religion is a narrative of parochial intolerance justified by appeals
to the transcendent: the persecution of early Christians, the Crusades,
the Inquisition, medieval religious wars, anti-Semitism, missionary
zeal, communist attempts to extirpate religion, Muslim
fundamentalism, Catholic orthodoxy, the religious right. Communist,
fascist, and anti-communist repression in the present century
are merely the latest manifestations of millenia of state efforts to
silence dissent. Campaigns for cultural hegemony are a source of
unrelieved embarrassment: patriarchy, racism, agitprop, Nazi fulminations
against "degenerate art," and sexual repression running
from the Puritans through Victorian prudery to Mary Whitehouse
and Jesse Helms.
Yet civil libertarianism raises more questions than it answers. Is
our ethical relativism really absolute? Haven't the horrors of recent
centuries forged a consensus about the evils of slavery, colonialism,
racism, anti-Semitism? Even patriarchy hides behind "family
values," and homophobia barely dares to speak its name. Do the
advantages of free speech always outweigh its costs—which we are
learning from the previously silenced voices of women, people of
colour, and homosexuals? Does the state refrain from regulation?
Can it maintain neutrality? Is speech truly free in the absence of state
intervention?
//. The Costs of Speech
Most discussion of free speech emphasises the costs of prohibition—
the subject of my third lecture. Recently, however, racial and
religious minorities, women, and gays and lesbians have born
witness to the pain inflicted by slurs, graffiti, threats, and stereotypes.
2 Let me begin with some examples.
In 1990 Russ and Laura Jones and their five children fled the drugs
and crime of downtown St. Paul, Minnesota to become the only
black family in Mounds Park, a working-class neighbourhood.
Within two weeks their tyres were slashed. Soon thereafter they were
awoken at midnight by a cross burning in their small fenced-in front
garden. Mrs. Jones described her terror: "If you're black and you see
a cross burning, you know it's a threat, and you imagine all the
church bombings and lynchings and rapes that have gone before,
not so long ago. A cross burning is a way of saying 'We're going to
get you.' " Reported hate crimes had increased 21 per cent in
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