I’ve thought long and hard about this problem, but apparently not hard enough, because I haven’t come up with a solution to it, and I’m beginning to despair that I ever will.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, your freedom of expression isn’t about you. It’s about me. It’s about my right to hear what’s on your mind, conditional, of course, on your willingness to share it with me. But that requires that I can hear what’s on your mind. And that in turn requires there be a time and place reserved for my being able to listen to what’s on your mind. That is, a time and place when and where others are not free to share what’s on their minds, at least not at that time and at that place. Others are free to protest against what you’re saying, including your having said it. They can even reserve a time and place to do so. But not at the time and place at which you’re saying it, since then I couldn’t hear what it is they’re protesting against.

So wherein lies the problem? Well, you might think, if you don’t honour my reservation I needn’t honour yours. So either both sides on an issue get heard or neither gets heard. That’s fair, is it not? Fair yes, but so is an eye for an eye. What we want is to be able to see. Or in our case to hear.

So why don’t we agree to take turns remaining silent so each can be heard? Because there’s almost invariably an asymmetry in our willingness to abide by this agreement. It’s easy to say I’ll let you claim the earth is flat. But you draw the line at denying the Holocaust. Are there enough of us prepared to deploy the heckler’s veto against the flat earther? There are not. Are there enough of you prepared to deploy the heckler’s veto against Holocaust denial? More than enough.

Imagine a university administration fining or expelling its Jewish students for deploying the heckler’s veto against a Holocaust denier invited on campus. It’s not going to happen. And railing against the injustice of it all isn’t going to make a particle of difference. And that’s the problem. Since any prohibition against the heckler’s veto is unenforceable, all we can hope for is education. But the administration won’t educate for the same reason it won’t enforce. It’s politically suicidal. So it’s back to the drawing board. At which I’m drawing a blank.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy