Thinking about the Geert Wilders matter, it occurred to me that, once you abandon the principle of untrammeled free speech, there’s no particular reason you couldn’t make laws “self-defending”. For instance, you could pass a statute like this:
- Every adult American citizen must adopt one tarantula
- It shall be illegal to advocate the alteration of this statute
A silly example, sure, but I can’t see anything logically wrong with it. This occurred to me because Wilders is apparently charged with “incitement to hatred and discrimination” — a pretty broad claim. Could an argument be made that advocating the repeal of laws against “incitement to hatred and discrimination” is, itself, “incitement to hatred and discrimination”?
I don’t see why not. Once you criminalize the advocacy of X, it seems but a short step to criminalizing the advocacy of any action obviously tailored to promote X, such as the repeal of laws against X, or against the advocacy of X.
The Law: “You can’t incite hatred!”
Some Dude: “I hate C# programmers! Everyone knows they use spaces instead of tabs!”
The Law: “Hey, you’re going to jail.”
Other Dude: “We’ve got to change the law! It’s interfering with our ability to bash C# programmers!”
The Law: “Hey, you just incited hatred. You’re going to jail.”
Yet Other Dude: “We’ve got to change the law! It’s interfering with our ability to speak in vague ways that I can’t go into!”
The Law: “Look, the law only interferes with your ability to incite hatred. The only reason you’d need to change it is if you wanted to encourage hatred. In fact, repealing the law would encourage hatred, so arguing for its repeal is tantamount to incitement. You’re going to jail.”
This is, of course, a far-fetched and ridiculous scenario and line of argument. But since I believe that people mostly construct intellectual arguments to justify pre-determined emotional conclusions, the ridiculousness of the argument does not reassure me that it will never be employed.
The right to free speech must be jealously guarded.
