Free speech

Free speech is the right to express ideas without interference by physical force. Objectivism treats it not as a separate right but as an application of the right to life to the specific case of communication, and holds that it is violated only by the government, since only the government can silence a person by force while claiming to act lawfully.

“The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one's own antagonists.”
~ Ayn Rand, "The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'", Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Why morality requires it

The forum's sharpest version of the question is this: if some opinions are false and destructive, and if there is a correct moral standard, why should the false ones be protected?

The answer is not that all opinions are equally good, which Objectivism denies. It is that a mind cannot be forced to think. Physical force can compel a body, extract a signature, or silence a voice, and it cannot produce understanding in anyone. Force and thought are alternatives, so what a rational being needs from other people is precisely that they not initiate force against him. See Initiation of force and Rights.

That derivation gives the answer to the enforcement question. Suppressing a false idea does not replace it with a true one; it removes the process by which anyone could tell the difference. And the power to suppress falsehood is the power to suppress whatever the holder of the power calls falsehood, which is why the question "who decides?" is not a debating trick but the substance of the issue.

Free speech is therefore not a concession to error. It is the political condition of reason operating at all.

It is a restraint on government

Rand insisted that only the government can censor. The word describes an action taken by an entity with the power to imprison and to fine, and applying it to a private refusal to publish, employ, listen, or associate destroys the concept.

This has consequences that cut in every political direction, and the page states them all:

A newspaper that declines to print your article is exercising its own rights over its own property. So is a publisher, an employer, a club, and a forum.
Being criticised, refuted, ignored, boycotted, or thought badly of is not a violation of your rights. The right is to speak, not to be agreed with, listened to, or left unanswered.
A right to a platform would be a claim on somebody else's press, airtime, or hall, and no right can take that form. See the argument at Rights about claims that require another person to act.
Compelling a person to fund speech he opposes is a violation of his rights, not an exercise of anyone's. This is the answer to the forum's question about union dues used for political advertising: the wrong is the compulsion to pay, not the speech that follows.

Censorship

Rand's essay "Censorship: Local and Express" argues that censorship advances by ambiguity rather than by open prohibition. A law that is vague about what it forbids does not need to prosecute often; it produces self-censorship in everyone who cannot afford to find out where the line is.

She also treated as censorship the government's control of a medium it claims to own or license, because a licensor decides who may speak. See Antitrust for the parallel argument about regulatory power exercised through vague standards.

What is not speech

Objectivism does not treat "it was words" as a defence, because some acts performed with words are not expressions of an idea.

Threats. A credible threat to initiate force is itself the initiation of force. It places a person under duress and alters what he may safely do, which is exactly what a gun does. The line is not drawn at the volume of the words but at whether a reasonable person would take them as an announcement of intended violence, and drawing it in a particular case is a question for objective law. See Initiation of force.

Fraud. Obtaining value by deliberate misrepresentation is an indirect use of force, not a protected opinion.

Libel and slander. These are assertions of fact, not expressions of opinion, and knowingly false factual assertions that damage a person are on this account a species of fraud rather than speech. Objectivism therefore treats defamation as properly actionable in principle. What the standard of proof should be, and how much latitude public figures should have to accept, are questions of legal implementation on which Objectivists differ.

Incitement to a specific crime. Directing others to commit a particular act of force is participation in that act.

Breach of contract. Disclosing what you agreed not to disclose is a contract question.

None of these are exceptions to free speech. They are cases where the thing being done is not the communication of an idea.

Speech and property

Many of the hardest cases on this forum dissolve once the property question is asked first. Who owns the ground the speaker is standing on, and what did the owner agree to?

Protesters at a funeral, demonstrators on a campus, a display on a company's website, a speech in a shopping centre: in each case the owner sets the terms, and an owner who says no is not censoring anybody. The cases that seem intractable are almost always cases of public property, where there is no owner to decide and the question becomes which faction's preference the state will impose. Objectivism regards that as an artefact of public ownership rather than a genuine conflict of rights. See Property rights and Government.

Common misunderstandings

That free speech means freedom from consequences. It means freedom from force. Other people responding to what you said, including by refusing to deal with you, are exercising their own rights.
That defending the right to say something implies approving of it. The right is what makes disagreement possible, and Rand defended the legal protection of ideas she regarded as vicious.
That a private company suppressing speech is censorship. It is an owner disposing of his own property. Whether it is wise or contemptible is a separate question from whether it violates rights.
That corporations and unions cannot have speech rights because only individuals have rights. A group acting jointly is individuals acting jointly, and they do not lose their rights by cooperating. The genuine objection in the union case is to compelled membership and compelled dues, not to the association speaking.
That "hate speech" is a category the philosophy recognises. It does not. An idea does not become an initiation of force by being contemptible, and a law against offensive expression hands the government the power to define offence.
That the right is absolute in the sense of covering any act performed with words. It is absolute as a right, and threats, fraud, and defamation are not exercises of it.

Discussion

References

Rand, Ayn. "The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'". Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New American Library, 1966.
Rand, Ayn. "Censorship: Local and Express". Philosophy: Who Needs It. Bobbs-Merrill, 1982.
Rand, Ayn. "Man's Rights" and "The Nature of Government". The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.

External links