Liberalism for and Against Censorship

When all Westerners became liberals, not all learned to oppose censorship.

The intensity of the debates over disinformation and censorship in the United States and Europe arises from “a fundamental divide not merely between Republicans and Democrats, but between two philosophies of human nature that both trace their lineage to the Enlightenment” (the intellectual revolution that began in the seventeenth century and sought ever-greater human control over nature and human social organization), argues Northwestern University law professor John O. McGinnis, writing at Law & Liberty.

Both sides of the debate rest on ideas from the 18th century philosopher John Locke, McGinnis notes:

This debate brings into relief two contrasting currents of Enlightenment thought. On one side stands the view that man, like other elements of nature, can be scientifically molded for his own good. Richard Pipes, in The Russian Revolution, traces this idea to John Locke, who saw human understanding as fundamentally shaped by sensory experience. According to Locke, our knowledge—and by extension, our choices and actions—are determined by the inputs we receive. Man’s will, therefore, is not an exercise of autonomy but a reaction to external stimuli. This radical empiricism laid the groundwork for a deterministic view of human behavior, suggesting that if one could control the sources of input, one could ultimately direct human action.

One thinker who fully embraced the political implications of Locke’s theory was the eighteenth-century Frenchman Claude Helvetius. He argued that if human actions are the results of sensory input, then the path to a better society lies in controlling those inputs. Social engineering, then, becomes a logical project of this view. The notion is straightforward but sweeping: by directing what surrounds man, one can mold his thinking, even his moral character. The mission of politics, therefore, is not merely to govern but to educate and, if possible, to remake the citizens. In Helvetius’s hands, Locke’s epistemology transformed into a radical program for societal redesign.

That is a very important observation. The commitment to democratic processes conflicts irreconcilably with the assumption that human beings merely react to external stimuli (and thus that there are no natural limits on human malleability): if people are free to exchange ideas without interference, it may (indeed surely will) be possible for them to receive messages that stir them toward destructive notions and to entertain thoughts that do not bend the “arc of history” toward justice and all other good things. The public will not be able to reach common consent on what is best for all.

Thus, the public must be steered by those who know best, and the “stimuli” people receive—the information they get—must be regulated (fully) by those who know better. That requires restrictions on “bad” ideas and so-called misinformation: censorship. The intellectuals who qualify to guard the public flow of information (i.e., to censor) are political activists, journalists, social activists, artists, writers, and the like, whom the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge dubbed the “clerisy.” Together, McGinnis notes, “they wield substantial power over the direction of society’s beliefs and values.”

Under these Enlightenment premises, censorship is not only acceptable but in fact necessary for the good of the people. (Those who do not like censorship have obviously been listening to bad ideas and require reeducation.) If you are going to have democracy (or some system you are passing off as it), you must ensure that the public has the right ideas, which of course are whatever ones the intellectuals hold at the moment, lest the public choose wrongly.

Rights, then, must give way to what is right—as defined by those in power. McGinnis writes,

This pivot to regulation reveals a deeper truth about the clerisy’s philosophy: under the Helvetian view, the First Amendment serves as an instrumental right—useful insofar as it advances the collective good, rather than [a] fundamental individual liberty. Free speech, in this view, is valuable only as long as it educates the public in a way that aligns with the clerisy’s version of reason. When free speech no longer serves as an instrument for educating society in this way, the clerisy’s commitment to it wanes.

It is ironic, of course, that this fundamental premise of the Enlightenment directly contradicts the quest for human autonomy and power that we have always been told was at the core of that intellectual movement. Freedom of speech fits much better with the Enlightenment project, and Locke was the basis for this, too, McGinnis notes:

By contrast, free speech has a sturdier foundation in a different strand of Enlightenment thought. Oddly enough, this perspective also originates with John Locke, though it stems from his political philosophy rather than his epistemology. For Locke, individuals possess natural rights to property and liberty, and the government’s purpose is to protect these rights. This Lockean framework shaped James Madison’s approach in drafting the First Amendment, as Madison justified free speech as a “property” in one’s opinion. While Locke did allow for the restriction of property rights to prevent harm to others, the First Amendment was born from a profound fear of government overreach in political speech. The concern was not simply potential harm but the greater threat of governmental suppression in the name of public good, making it dangerous to grant government broad authority to stamp out “digital misinformation” it deems harmful.

Advances in individual liberty and technological change unleashed by the Enlightenment have continually threatened the ability of the clerisy to control the flow of information to the public. Media technologies such as newspapers, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, broadcast television, cable TV, the internet, social media, and now large language models, aka AI, have successively opened channels of communication that allowed ever-greater freedom to disseminate information. The intellectuals and the state have continually fought back, always co-opting and regulating the new technologies in any way they could.

Today’s battles over misinformation and disinformation continue that long conflict between the two Enlightenment visions, McGinnis notes:

Those advocating government suppression of disinformation believe that individuals are products of their environment, molded by the inputs they receive. Confident that society can be perfected by carefully controlled influences, they envision a government capable of shaping an informational landscape that fosters collective well-being. Opponents, however, see this ambition as profoundly misguided. They believe in the individual’s capacity for self-direction and doubt the wisdom [of] giving the state the authority to impose or encourage such controls. This clash is not just political; it is philosophical, reflecting a deep-seated disagreement about man’s potential and his autonomy.

As McGinnis points out, freedom of speech aligns better with the Enlightenment project and with Locke’s observations on individual rights and the just limits of government authority. That is a “dangerous” idea to those who are sure they know what is best for everybody and insist on bending the “arc of history” toward their personal vision of perfection.