From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 30 2003 - 13:17:44 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> People /do/ spread those kinds of lies, and worse, every day. And the
> remedy for bad speech is /more/ speech, not supression by force. The
> day I recommend using the force of law against speech of any kind is
> the day I will have surrendered my right to call myself a free man, or
> to live in civilized society. It is the very definition of
> civilization. If those believers go beyond the point of speech and
> actually take forcible /actions/ against my freedom, such as passing
> laws against cloning or some other technology, /then/, and only then,
> am I justified in using force to defend myself against their first
> use of force. But if all they do is speak, all I can do is speak in
> return, and hope that humans with reasonable minds judge us both
> reasonably.
>
> Your contention that any kind of speech must be supressed is typical
> of left-wing hopeless pessimism that humans are weak and ignorant and
> can't possibly judge ideas for themselves, so they must have the
> "right" ideas forced upon them, and be "protected" from dangerous
> ones. I for one have a bit more respect for human minds than that.
### I tend to agree with you, Daniel, that judgment should be applied
instead of force in matters of speech. The current system, allowing a party
to extract damages from a slanderer, is in my opinion wrong. However, there
are some circumstances where human judgment may be prevented from acting.
One such situation is when a large organization, possibly in control of a
media conglomerate, deliberately spreads lies about a smaller party, perhaps
a person, perhaps an unpopular minority. There may be a significant
imbalance in their ability to reach public opinion, and a substantial
positive feedback could come into play - a lie becomes much more credible if
enough people start believing it, as the success of the green movement
shows.
While I agree with you that the use of force to suppress speech, even
malicious lies, is probably counterproductive, I think that there is a way
of evening out the odds, without suppression of speech - "Audiatur et altera
pars". If a jury finds a statement to be materially false, to a sufficient
standard of certainty, then the aggrieved party should have the right to
demand from the slanderer the publication the jury's findings, in a medium
commensurate with the medium where the slanderous material initially was
placed (but not as a retraction, merely as an opinion of a respected third
party). In this way the credibility of the slanderer would be diminished,
without suppression of speech. This would discourage malicious lying as well
as current law, but without the same chilling effect on e.g. speech directed
against the Scientologists. A better balance would be possible.
Rafal
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