Thread by @asymmetricinfo

The cancellation of Roseanne gives me an unfortunately perfect peg to tweetstorm my lengthy weekend column on principles for doing free speech better. washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par…

As always, I am not going to recapitulate the column--you will have to go to my employer's site, and read it, if you want to benefit from all the gorgeous turns of phrase and scintillating ideas I have hand-crafted specially for them.

This tweetstorm will only contain new material, specifically, remarks on questions or comments that readers had about the AWESOME, THOUGHT-PROVOKING column they had just read.

First question: You say you support free speech. And yet, here you are offering rules for free speech! You obviously don't get what free speech means!

I think you are confusing the possession of a right, and the exercise of a right. I believe Americans do, and should, have very broad rights to do all sorts of stuff. That doesn't mean that I think they should do everything they have a legal right to.

You have a legal right to cheat on your spouse, share secrets told to you in strict confidence all over town, tell your subordinates that they are worthless curs who will never amount to anything, and do all manner of other horrible things that you should never, ever do.

I will strenuously advise you not to do those things, even as I strenuously object to any attempt to criminalize them.

A number of commenters on the column sort of tentatively said "I don't think she's proposing to make these principles law?"

They have gotten me somewhat wrong. I am not only NOT proposing these things as laws, but would vehemently protest any attempt to make them law.

(Sorry: still editing my column for tomorrow. We resume.)

I actually think that this confusion is the result of an increasing inability of anyone to imagine any space between what people should do, and what the law should require or allow them to do. Being a libertarian, I think that space should be huge.

The law is a sledgehammer. It's just too large and destructive for most societal needs.

Comments 2 & 3 are going to be combined in my next tweet, for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

"This column is all just making digs at liberals and urging them to let conservatives win!"

"This column is all just making digs at conservatives and urging them to let liberals win!"

I'm just going to let you guys work this one out between yourselves.

Question #4:

"How dare you even suggest that I have to curb my speech when talking about [insert cause of great importance to the reader, and arguably, to America]?"

Well, I'm a columnist. "Where angels fear to tread" is part of the job description.

On a more serious note, we're having an is/ought problem here.

Most of these commenters spent a great deal of time asserting that their cause was just, the provocation terrible, which is very important to whether you should fight a rhetorical battle, and nearly irrelevant to how

This column is all about "how?". It doesn't tell you what fights to pick. It tells you the best way to conduct those battles, for yourself, for your cause, and for your country more generally.

So a lot of these people seemed to feel that because they were reacting to something horribly unjust, and therefore naturally felt very angry, that they had a right to express their anger in as explosive a fashion as possible. And yes, you certainly do.

But they also seemed to believe that expressing their anger in that fashion would also naturally be the most *effective* way to change the thing they are angry about. And I'm afraid that does not follow.

I completely understand why people were saying, effectively "Something horrible has been done to my people, and when I'm communicating that, I shouldn't have to take care to to offend the delicate feelings of the very perpetrators of that injustice."

In fact, I agree with you: in a just universe, no one who had been wronged would ever have to worry about offending the people who victimized them.

I'd just point out that if we lived in a just universe, you wouldn't have anything to be angry about in the first place.

Since we self-evidently *don't* live in a just universe, you should at least consider the possibility that repairing injustice will require you to pay attention to the feelings of people who you feel to have done you grave wrong. It's not fair. The world isn't.

Sometimes you have to endure lesser injustices in order to erase larger ones.

Specifically, in a democracy, you're going to have to placate the feelings of your fellow citizens quite a lot. Even if you think they're behaving like utter pigs. I will omit the de rigeur Winston Churchill quote on Democracy, because you can already hear it in your head.

Question #6: Select quotations from Letters from a Birmingham Jail, implying that I don't understand how controversial successful protests were in their day.

Answer: actually, I do get that.

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't say things that other people will disagree with! Even vehemently! What's the point of speech no one disagrees with?

(I mean, in the public square. Speech no one disagrees with--like "I love you"--is appropriate in many other contexts).

But in fact, the early civil rights movement under MLK Jr was vigilant about policing the *manner* of their protest, precisely because what they were asking for was so revolutionary. (Shouldn't have been, obviously; should have been utterly non-controversial. But it wasn't)

That was the phase of the movement that achieved the greatest gains. The later phases, which focused more on expression of righteous anger, got much less in the way of political or social support for their aims.

Now, in part that's because the early movement picked relatively "low-hanging fruit". Legal change isn't easy, *wasn't* easy--it took heroic efforts from many heroes. But you can describe legal change pretty simply. You can know when you've achieved it. Social change is harder.

But it's also true that violent protest undercut support for civil rights. And whatever your opinion of the *right* to protest violently in the face of such grave injustices, I think it's fairly clear that those who engaged in it actually hurt their own aims.

Now, I think that someone could honestly say "I don't care, I'm so angry, I have to do this very angry, disruptive, provocative thing that will make most voters dislike me and my cause". And you know what? Fair enough. I see that.

I'm just saying, think hard about just how much you're willing to give up to enjoy the cleansing catharsis of fully expressing your anger. And don't cheat by pretending that being angry and offensive will definitely gain you more than you lose.

This is the left-wing political activist's version of the Laffer Curve--an enjoyable delusion that allows you to wish away tradeoffs, at great ultimate cost.

Question #7: What about the Vietnam War protests?

Answer: Well, as I understand it, the protesting peaked in 1967 or 1968. The war actually ended 7 or 8 years later. So I'm not sure that this is great proof that large, obstreperous protests work very well.

But that's sort of tangential to my point, which is not "Never protest" but "In public, choose the forms of protest and speech which are most likely to *change the minds of other people*, not the forms which *you* most enjoy."

And that brings us to the end of another exciting Tweetstorm. Don't forget to tip your waiters, or read the column:

washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par…