When discussing the topic of free speech, one of the key schools of thought that we have to deal with is the Biblical Restorationists. These people believe that at one time the country was totally founded on Biblical values that were somehow lost. They sell videos like America’s Godly Heritage which provide a variety of quotes from the Founding Fathers which purportedly support the notion that we are somehow a Christian nation founded solely on the principles of the Bible. But even if these quotes are totally accurate and within context, they have not proven their case for a theocratic Christian state.
This country, so the narrative goes, was totally dependent on the laws of God and the Bible. However, starting in the 1960’s with the SCOTUS ruling striking down organized school prayer, America in a few short decades denigrated from being a Christian nation to a country that had no respect for God, family, and country. The chief evidence of that lay in the hippie rebellions, promiscuous sex, the growing drug culture, Bill Clinton, and the rise of alternative religious faiths.
The Biblical Restorationists are among the same people who would censor various such books such as Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter, and other such books that they say promote witchcraft or are not compatible with Christian values. They argue that nobody but bad men would want to pervert traditions that made our country great. We continue our discussion of John Stuart Mill to rebut these arguments.
The problem with the preceding argument is that it begs the question. It assumes that the topic of whether we were a Christian nation or not has already been decided. But the problem, as Mill points out, is that if the belief that we were not is really so bad, then why shouldn’t it be given a hearing? If that were the case, then everybody would see for themselves what a horrible doctrine the secularist view would be.
The suppression of speech, as pointed out by Mill, is really the act of deciding what other people can and can’t listen to. The problem with the restorationists’ line of thinking is that they do not trust you to make your own decisions about whether, say, Harry Potter is an appropriate book. This is borne out in statistics – Massachusetts has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country, while the Southern states, hotbeds of fundamentalist activity, have some of the highest divorce rates of the country. I suggest part of this reason is because many restorationists have less trust than usual for people, and trust is an essential ingredient of marriage.
And what if the person challenging the doctrines in question turns out to be the next Socrates? Socrates, remember, was convicted and sentenced to death for atheism and impiety for supposedly corrupting the youth of Athens. Incidentally, this conviction was handed down right after Athens had lost a destructive war and their civil liberties had significantly eroded as a result. The parallels to today are chilling – 9/11 was followed by a massive assault on our civil liberties starting with the massive detentions of Muslims and the Patriot Act.
And not only that, the fundamentalists are shooting themselves in the foot – another victim of the very kind of censorship that they are guilty of themselves was none other than their founder, Jesus. So, they have thus pronounced judgement on themselves by allying themselves with the very people they claim not to like – the Scribes and the Pharisees, whom Jesus delivered woes against.
So, concludes Mill, those who would advocate the suppression of free speech would have participated in the killings of Socrates, Jesus, and Stephen. And not only that, the same kind of people who killed these people would have participated in the brutal beatings of a gay man in New York by four homophobic teenagers. And the fundamentalists would have at least looked the other way.
One of the chief examples of an otherwise enlighened man who rationalized persecution was Marcus Aurielius, regarded by Mill as one of the most enlighened men alive. He was not only the Emperor of Rome, he was a strong philosopher in his own right. But he rationalized the persecution of Christians by saying that mankind was falling apart, that the worship of the gods was needed more than ever to keep the empire together, and that therefore, the Christians needed to be persecuted because they were fundamentally opposed to the Greek gods.
But this rationale was simply not true – the empire lasted another 300 years, and Marcus Aurelius’ persecutions did not succeed in wiping out Christianity. This gives an insight into the minds of people who would persecute others. They see themselves as on a self-righteous mission against what they see as the huge evil scapegoat who is threatening our cherished way of life. They develop strong views of right and wrong in which `the other’ is out to destroy your cherished views of right and wrong. There is very little attempt by the persecutors to actually engage in dialogue with the persecuted.
In some people’s twisted reasoning, persecution is actually a good thing because it would destroy error and make the truth manifest. But that is based on a factual error. Mill notes 20 different instances which reformists were wiped out by the Roman Catholic inquisitions. He gives the following examples:
–Arnold of Brescia.
–Fra Dolcino.
–Savonarola.
–The Cathars.
–The Vaudois.
–The Lollards.
–The Hussites.
Another problem pointed out by Mill is that persecution and censorship increases crime. For example, back in the 19th century, a robber could rob an atheist and get away with it because an atheist was presumed to be liars because they did not swear any kind of allegiance to any kind of god. Thus, persecution leads to the creation of an unequal legal system in which people are treated unequally because of their beliefs. This is the same sort of prejudice that leads to the disproportionate application of the death penalty to Blacks.
And finally, persecution and censorship defeats the very purpose for which the fundamentalists purport to stand for – the proclamation of the truth. The problem is that when a government engages in the suppression of free speech, people will usually fall in line. But the problem is that people will fall in line not because they want to, but because they have to. This means that people will be totally unprepared for if someone actually comes with contrary opinions and confronts them with it. Thus, fundamentalists will be totally unprepared to defend their own belief systems.
