Many of us familiar with a chinese superapp WeChat — a browser for the local chinese internet, consisting of one government host and often presented as something beautiful. The idea of government censorship of all messages and tracking all the user activity is a privacy disaster. I suggest we reflect on the principle of:
No freedom to the enemies of freedom.
Let me start with a brief historical tour. The ideas of freedom of speech such as: assembly, press, entrepreneurship, non-representation of taxes, the right to protect life and property comes from the “modern era” (approximately from the 16th century) to early liberalism. During this period there was a collapse of the old medieval feudal and serfdom systems, and a freer system of relations was just emerging and was not obvious. Thinkers such as John Locke or Adam Smith expressed something truly new that had not been accepted before. So when they came up with the idea of freedom of speech, however they didn’t think too much about a simple thing - how could freedom of speech be protected? It seemed too early to think about it.
Private businesses and freedom of speech have brought prosperity to many countries. Only then the society first encounter the so-called paradox of tolerance. Supporters of the world revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, communists, actively used the right to freedom of speech to promote their ideas, while stating directly that they would take this freedom away from all members of the “wrong classes” when they came to power. Everyone knows how this ended - with “enemy of the people” tags and concentration camps. In China, almost the same thing is happening now, but with the use of modern digital technology and surveillance, which the Bolsheviks could only dream of.
Let’s take a closer look at this issue. We all agree that hitting people is bad. But what about the man who beats up people on the street? Should we humbly wait for him to kill us? Then the concept of self-defense is born:
Beating people is bad unless we protect our lives from physical attack.
This simple thought is called the non-aggression principle. By default, we are in a state of peace and we have no right to physically harm each other. However, when there is a person among us who does not recognize our agreement and is the first to attack, we can apply physical force to him. Why? Because the attacker himself withdrew from our agreement, rejecting the non-aggression principle, remained outside its scope.
Most legal systems integrate this concept as exception for self-defence. This means, for example, that you will not go to prison if you shoot armed robbers who break into your home. So why shouldn’t we apply the same principle to free speech?
When a person says, “I suggest that your freedom of speech should be taken away from you,” he should not be offended, that in return the freedom of speech will be taken away only from him. That’s what the phrase “no freedom to the enemies of freedom” really means.
I’m not proposing to censor an attacker on human freedom at the state level. But the owners of forums and blogs have their right to limit statements, in accordance with their private rules. If someone resents them, they are free to publish anywhere else or even open their own blog (hosting is cheaper than a beer bottle).
- “No freedom to the enemies of freedom” is an obvious statement.
- Advocates of censorship should campaign for censorship on their own: they should not be allowed in the media.
- The fighters against capitalism should not have their own business.
- Parties promoting a monopoly single-party system should not be allowed to participate in elections.
And so on.
With all that said, taking a cheater out of the table who was caught with an extra ace from his sleeve — is not discrimination against the cheater.
The publication is inspired by this article.