Matthew Yglesias Does Not Understand Free Speech

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

 

Matthew Yglesias tweets:

This is nonsense. There’s no conflict between defending free speech and deciding what speech you wish voluntarily to consume (or you wish your minor children to consume). On the contrary: the ability to determine what speech to engage with and what speech to avoid is, itself, a key part of free speech.

 

Conservatives who object to cancel culture are not bothered by the existence of people who dislike — or, even, who are mortally offended by — figures such as Dave Chappelle. Conservatives who object to cancel culture are bothered that a significant number of the people who dislike Dave Chappelle seem to believe that, because they do not like Dave Chappelle, he should be banned, de-platformed, rendered unemployable, or even physically hurt. Or, to put it another way: The conservative objection to cancel culture is not that its adherents wish to make decisions for themselves and their children, or that they wish to persuade others to their viewpoint, it is that that they wish to bypass all that and make decisions for everyone else in the name of the “greater good.”

 

Is this what Ben Shapiro is doing? No, it is not. In the tweet to which Yglesias is responding, Shapiro has offered up a sharp criticism of Disney and its new movie, and he has proposed that parents should “keep that in mind before deciding” — note the word deciding — “whether to take their kids” to see it. That isn’t an attack on “free speech”; it is free speech. You can tell this because, at no point has Shapiro made any claims on anyone except for himself. He hopes to persuade, yes, but he leaves it at that.

 

There is nothing in small-l liberalism that requires small-l liberals to like everything. The demand is that they say their piece, and then agree to live and let live. For example: Small-l liberalism demands that I respect Matt Yglesias’s right to run his blog, and it encourages me to disdain those who would pressure his host, Substack, to summarily expel him from their platform. It does not require me to read Matt Yglesias’s blog, to like Matt Yglesias’s blog, to pay for Matt Yglesias’s blog, or to recommend that others do any of those things, and it certainly does not require me to agree with Matt Yglesias or to decline from criticizing him (as I am now). To say, “If I were you, I wouldn’t pay for Matt Yglesias’s blog” would be a position consistent with the broad support of free speech. To say, “Matt Yglesias should be arrested or fined or fired or canceled or deplatformed or marginalized” would not.

 

When making their decisions as to whether to listen to Matt Yglesias, parents should keep that in mind.