Caleb Anderson: The Limitations of Free Speech

British psychiatrist, neuro-scientist, philosopher and writer, Dr Iain McGilchrist, is worth listening to.

Recently he commented as follows ...

1. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing

2. But if pushed too far it results in anarchy

3. And anarchy always results in tyranny

This is worth thinking about.

While it seems utterly paradoxical that this should be the case, history bears ample evidence to what Dr McGilchrist is saying.

So, if there were to be boundaries to free speech, what would these be, who would decide them, and who would police them?

I suspect that when the free speech of some, impedes the free speech of others, allowing for only a very few exceptions, and when this becomes a matter of course, the tipping point may have been reached.

Ultimately, in the absence of any sort of recalibration, tyranny is a distinctly likely outcome.

It does seem paradoxical that free speech is self-sustaining only for as long as, in its purest state, the free speech of some is bounded by the free speech of others, and that insight and potential lie only in good faith engagement at the interface between opposing ideas, and not beyond them.

The concept of hate speech, with its pathological preoccupation with the silencing of others, is thus, by its very nature, antithetical to free speech.

Every psychotherapist worth their salt knows that most dysfunction arises, at its root, from a war between two opposing voices, and that only in the integration of both, not anihilation, of one or another of these opposing voices, can a person be reconciled.

Such with society at large.

The price paid when one idea (or set of ideas) can be advanced only at the expense of another idea (or set of ideas) is huge, perhaps immeasurably huge.

When this is standard practice within our universities, as it is, when it is practised by self interested politicians, as it is, and when it is enabled routinely by the mainstream media, as it is, we should be concerned.

And there can be no doubt where this ultimately ends.

Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.