The Structural Necessity of Free Speech
Open communication and disagreement aren't just "rights," they're necessities for reducing error.
After yet another high-profile call to prosecute so-called ‘hate speech’ – most recently from Attorney General Pam Bondi (though quickly walked back) – I realized something: The usual political and legal arguments for free speech aren’t convincing the new generation.
The case has been made a thousand times, yet the frequency of attacks is intensifying. Each new administration brings fresh calls for government-imposed speech restrictions, just aimed at different targets. And each side now justifies its censorship by pointing to what the other side did last time.
This cycle will only accelerate unless we can deliver logical justifications for free speech that transcend partisan retaliation.
To defend the principle effectively, we need new arguments that show why free speech isn’t simply a legally-mandated luxury, but is instead structurally necessary for society to think clearly and act wisely.
Hence, this piece is not going to rehash the old familiar ground. This is instead a systems-level argument, rooted in epistemology and cognition, that entirely transcends partisan politics. In brief:
· Communication is collective cognition.
· Limiting communication is limiting cognition.
· Limiting cognition is courting disaster.
Think of any community group you’re a member of – this could be as simple as your family to as convoluted as your Homeowner’s Association (or vice versa, depending on your family).
Now imagine that no one ever discussed anything before acting: Your spouse sold your car and bought a new house while you were at work, without consulting you beforehand. Your HOA president unilaterally decided, without any board discussion, that everyone needed to run their sprinklers continuously from 8 a.m. until midnight (and actually, this proposition is on the ballot next week, so heads up).
Would that method work out well for your group?
Or would it likely end in divorce, disaster, or open revolt?
We all know the answer here, so let’s dig into why.
One unspoken problem with the idea that “we should ban hate speech” is that some will believe they agree with it. But this is primarily because the term sounds bad while remaining vague enough to allow people to insert their own ideas of what “hate speech” means. Banning “hate speech” doesn’t work in practice for many reasons, but among them: one person’s ideas of what should or should not be said will be very different from the next person’s ideas.
One person’s “plain truth” can be another person’s “hate.”
So it’s best to assume that when someone says “ban hate speech,” they don’t mean what you would mean with the term “hate speech.” Imagine they said, “We should ban poison” – but what they really meant with their use of the word “poison” was “pets.” You probably wouldn’t agree anymore.
But even if your words meant exactly the same thing: Who decides what “should not” be said? You, and people who agree with you? Me, and people who agree with me? Or someone who agrees with neither of us?
Who’s right? What if none of us are right?
Because who among us has perfect knowledge and ultimate wisdom?
I would argue none of us do – the totality of information in the world is so incredibly vast that none of us ever know more than a fraction of that information. Even the gaps in our collective knowledge are massive and intellectually fatal. Using history as our guide, plenty of things we think we know, even scientifically, are later proven wrong – just as promising ideas are often ridiculed or dismissed as “misinformation” by the ‘unbiased, expert consensus’ (see: continental drift, germ theory, Big Bang Theory, etc., ad infinitum).
Many scientific ideas we now take for granted were once roundly rejected by the consensus. Had it been “career suicide” to discuss them — or worse, had they been banned outright — we’d have locked ourselves into failed paradigms and set back technological progress by centuries.
The only way we can learn more than we know now is to expose ourselves to discussions and ideas that are currently foreign to us. We don’t know what we don’t know – until we test if our ideas survive contact with the rest of the world.
Many foreign ideas initially feel uncomfortable. Sometimes they disgust, upset, or offend us. Maybe that’s the right reaction. Or maybe it’s just bias. But think back: have you ever changed your mind and later realized your old view was foolish or naïve? Of course you have. At one time, ‘old-you’ might even have believed the very ideas you hold today were “misinformation.”
What if those ideas had been censored before you could even hear them?
Speech is how society thinks. The same way neurons carry signals across your brain, speech carries ideas across our collective brain. Silence the neurons, and the body stumbles without control. Silence speech, and society has no other choice but to act without thinking.
Not every idea that meets with consensus societal approval is good – just as not every idea you have as an individual is good – but the only way to reject bad ideas without taking destructive action is to reason through them first. That’s what debate is: externalized thinking.
So, speaking, arguing, debating – this is how our ‘collective brain’ communicates with itself and thinks. And as Alfred North Whitehead put it: “The purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying.”
Unchecked ideas become unchecked actions. Curtail speech, and society can no longer kill bad ideas before they become bad actions. Every disagreement must play out physically, rather than intellectually. Every agreement gets enacted without testing.
Speech is the buffer – our error correction layer. If you’re designing a plane, you don’t just build it, fill it with passengers, then cross your fingers while accelerating down the runway. You engineer and test it mentally, on paper, before it’s embodied.
Remove that correction layer, and society has no choice but to act first – and suffer later.
That’s the deeper danger.
So my core thesis, stated plainly, is this:
Banning hate speech is epistemically dangerous. It disables the mechanism through which society processes information, evaluates ideas, and avoids rash, untested action. Speech is thought externalized; curtailing it cuts society off from its own ability to think before it acts.
Speech isn’t just a right. It’s cognition at scale – the only safeguard that lets a pluralistic society reason instead of react.
Because of foundational differences in worldviews, open communication will often lead to those on opposing sides taking some degree of offense; therefore, “hate speech” is not a separate category, it is an expected component of free speech. To ban it is to lobotomize the collective brain.
The Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing when they placed Freedom of Speech as first in the Bill of Rights. They understood something many today have forgotten:
Without speech, there is no collective thought.
Without thought, only action and reaction remain.
And a society built on thoughtless action is always one catastrophic leap away from disaster.
Objections and Replies in Brief
Objection 1: Fraud, threats, libel
Objection: “But we ban fraud, threats, libel. Surely we can ban hate speech too?”
Reply: Those other bans rely on demonstrable harm tied to falsehood or intent, while “hate” is always subjective and shifts with political winds.
Objection 2: Hate speech vs. disagreement
Objection: “But still, isn’t hate speech categorically different than just disagreement?”
Reply: “Hate speech” is always a slippery category, because what you consider hateful depends entirely on your worldview. And we’re all convinced our own views are the right ones… but we can’t all be right. That’s why ideas have to be tested verbally. Otherwise you’re not just banning the possibility of being wrong, you’re banning the possibility of learning. Think of something you once believed but now reject. Do you want to freeze your current beliefs into law – as if you’ve already reached perfection and will never need to change your mind again?
Objection 3: Psychological fallout
Objection: “But certain speech can cause genuine harm.”
Reply: Speech can hurt – but action hurts more. The real choice is binary: restrict speech and risk externalized societal damage, or allow speech and teach resilience. In a perfect world, everyone would be kind. In the real world, resilience is safer than censorship. The better question is not “how do we stop harmful speech?” but “how do we build psychological resilience?”
Objection 4: Fundamental dignity
Objection: “Hate speech isn’t just about disagreement! It’s about fundamental human dignity: denying rights, dehumanizing people, creating unsafe spaces.”
Reply: Each of those definitions depends on the worldview that supplies them – and that worldview itself may be mistaken. Imagine your friend is addicted to fentanyl and has already overdosed twice. To save his life, you must confront him, creating an “unsafe space” in his mind and denying what he thinks are his rights. He may feel rejected and call it hate, but in truth it’s love. Sometimes love requires denial, even offense.
Which brings us full circle: It all depends on your worldview. Even one person’s love can be another person’s hate; truth cannot be subordinated to subjective feelings of harm. Even the most seemingly-offensive thing someone can say, may, in fact, be to your benefit. If we judge based on subjective feelings, we are forced to protect feelings, not reality. And when feelings get enshrined as policy, then society cannot help but become stagnant and irrational.
Objection 5: Rhetoric and violence
Objection: “Some forms of speech can actually increase the likelihood of harmful action; certain rhetoric can radicalize or coordinate violence.”
Reply: “Incitement to violence” is already illegal speech. Beyond that, we’re back to the same question: who decides what qualifies as “dangerous rhetoric”? Ultimately, it will always be government serving as the final arbiter – which means that who gets prosecuted will depend entirely on who’s in power. And when the other side inevitably takes power, suddenly your rhetoric becomes the danger. Any power you give your team will eventually be held by the people you fear most. The only safeguard is to give no one that power. Not because “they'll retaliate” - but because once it's law, there's no escape when they turn it on you.
Objection 6: Misinformation
Objection: “But what about misinformation? Surely that doesn’t help society think better!”
Reply: You’re right, misinformation doesn’t help. But the problem, again, is definition: my “misinformation” may be your “proven fact.” Whoever holds power will define the facts to match their ideology. There’s no way around this asymmetry, so unless you want your own beliefs treated as misinformation, you can’t hand that power to anyone.
Whatever power [i.e.- laws] you give your side will one day be wielded against you.
And in the end, both sides may be wrong – I’d like to have the freedom to determine that for myself. Wouldn’t you?