I know my take is largely opinion here, but I remember when I was a kid and the case was made more vigorously and still many didn’t get it. They seemed just unable to reason through second and third order effects. All they cared about was if their preferred group or policy won, and if second order effects came up, the response was often that it “just” wouldn’t happen because no one would do those things once their preferred thing was enacted.
So to be clear, I say this because I think bedrock liberalism requires understanding second and third order effects. The whole reason to buy these ideals is because you understand them, because liberalism inevitably means letting people you disagree with sometimes get their way, and understanding why that’s necessary and good.
Controversial ideas need to be defended bravely, clearly, and often to keep them in the Overton Window. A persistent drip of timely examples and anecdotes combined with a simple interpretation is much more effective. Ideas like “free speech” are very easy to defend in a simple way. Just pointing out that “in Britain, they just put someone on trial for calling someone a Karen” is a fine way to argue for continuing to protect free speech, without needing to get into any abstractions.
The free speech issue is not that simple, I think a lot of people agree on free speech with exceptions ™ , the fight is often about which free speech ™ should be the norm. It’s similar to how people can have different notions of fairness. I am not sure what would act as an intuition pump for most of people to agree with more fair and liberal notions of free speech.
The distinction I’m driving at is between making an in-depth intellectual argument about liberalism (which is what you and Gordon are focused on) and a winning emotional appeal (which is what I’m focused on).
My claim is that support for liberalism has been eroded by too few winning emotional appeals for it, and that they’re actually easy to make. It’s not necessary to address the ambiguities. Just share anecdotes that stir up positive feelings in the right direction.
Let me reiterate why your original comment seems to be downplaying how difficult it is to intuition pump the ideas of liberal free expression.
For a case study, take Modi’s India which also emotively endorses free speech[1][2]— but the activist groups have been screaming left and right about how his government has been steadily eroding liberal free speech norms[3].
Extrapolating from the case in India, at this point around the world it’s mostly a debate surrounding which exceptions people want do they want people criticising the government when they’re doing perceived good policies? Or insulting certain groups of people? People don’t feel strongly about liberal notions of free speech in good parts of the world, and the people who do—western classical liberals— are struggling to get their intuition pumps out there.
I can see the developing economy and cultural differences objections to the former example, so let’s take, case study of Trump, he uses the Applause Lights of free speech even more so than others. He even passed an executive order to restore free speech[4] , where his admin seems to be disagreeing on the same exceptions ™ . They think misinformation-by-outgroup shouldn’t be under free speech, others who disagree think misinformation-by-outgroup-2 shouldn’t be covered. Trump admin curbing on press freedom[5] from outgroup yet inviting —fringe and online activist— internet personalities from their own[6], which is to say their free speech policy seems to be amounting to “free speech for me not for thee”.
It would be difficult to rescue the banner free speech with “In britain they put you in jail for calling people karen” , without also engaging with “Destiny should be prosecuted for mocking on the retired firefighter who died during first trump shooting”.[7]
I think other way would be to play the information and Dark Side Epistemology game better than the illiberal side, but it would be a constant battle as evident from short-lived success of western liberal free speech advocates from prior generations and the difficulty adapting to populism,cancel-culture favoring social media environments.
When I became Prime Minister, I especially invited Pakistan to my swearing-in ceremony so we could turn over a new leaf, yet every noble attempt at fostering peace was met with hostility and betrayal. We sincerely hope that wisdom prevails upon them and they choose the path of peace. I believe even the people of Pakistan long for peace. Look, regarding what you said about criticism and how I deal with it. If I had to summarize in one sentence, I welcome it. I have a strong belief that criticism is the soul of democracy. I want to tell all the young people the following. No matter how dark the night may seem, it is still just night, and morning is bound to come.
A free press makes a stronger democracy! Today on #WorldPressFreedomDay, let us reaffirm our commitment towards steadfastly supporting a free press. It is the multiplicity of ideas and human expression that makes us more vibrant as a society.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference. Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
RSF notes that the range of threats presented by the incoming Trump administration is without precedent in modern American history. For instance, Trump has:
Issued at least 15 separate calls to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks in political retaliation;
Vowed to investigate media outlets that are critical of him;
Insulted or threatened journalists hundreds of times on the campaign trail;
Formed an alliance with anti-journalism tech mogul Elon Musk;
Threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with jail time in an apparently successful effort to extract concessions on content moderation; and
Sued multiple media outlets for coverage he disliked.
“F**k it, f**k the dude, the firefighter guy. F**k Trump, f**k the people that support him. I just want you to know, right? In case you are confused or whatever, if one of you were in the crowd and you are a conservative fan of mine and you get blown up or whatever, I am making fun of you the next day on Twitter.”
“Donald Trump incited an insurrection and then was granted full criminal immunity for possibly all of his involvement. I have zero sympathy for anything that happens to him or anyone who supports him. I will argue this position against any and all conservatives of reasonable size, but there’s a reason none of you spineless hacks step outside of your echo chambers.”
Most of the current debates about liberalism are debates about how to trade off between competing liberal priorities. I would regard these debates about exceptions to free speech—whether any are tolerated, and which ones—as debates within a common liberal framework. Typically, proponents of each site, all of whom are taking one liberal view or another, cast their opponents as illiberal (in the theory sense, not the American “progressive-vibe” sense). Opponents reject this label because they genuinely don’t perceive themselves that way.
I think the whole debate would be better if we recognized that there are exist high-stakes tradeoffs between competing liberal priorities, and that it’s these competing visions of liberalism that are at the heart of contemporary political discourse in America.
I only partially agree, I wouldn’t be surprised if “free speech” is now on the road to suffering the same fate as the word “democracy”—china calls itself a democracy,they too have the word “free speech” in their constitution . I think trump’s admin definition and aspiration for free speech— the legal animosity towards media, academics— is not what past US liberals would recognise as such and is departure from that tradition. What use is free speech if your critics are indirectly being suppressed? Even authoritarian governments give citizens enough “free speech” to not arrest them in day to day lives, people self censor on certain topics similar to them being taboo. I have seen some public intellectuals reacting to this mess by embracing free speech absolutism—because they get accused of being biased towards one side and disregarded if they’re partial— but those positions are very hard to get intuitions for.
I think a lot of politicians only pay a lip service to so called “liberal principles” and in the end do realpolitik.
It sounds like what you are hoping for is to avoid illiberal backsliding by making everybody crystal-clear on what liberalism is and giving them a deep understanding of why they should support it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s tractable. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s necessary. How successful have China and Myanmar been in convincing the world they being run on liberal principles?
My view is that most people are pretty clear on the concrete facts of life that matter for liberalism.
Am I being persecuted for my beliefs?
Is my life at risk due to my identity?
Can I say what I want?
Is my property secure, and am I free to transact?
When people debate politics, I contend they typically are debating over tradeoffs inherent in liberal ideas, or between values orthogonal to liberalism. Examples of the latter include dealing with externalities such as pollution, environmental destruction, or public aesthetics. Note that a liberal society can still care about things other than liberalism, and sometimes that will result in tradeoffs with liberalism-maximalism. Making a democratic choice for non-liberal maximalism is still a position compatible with liberalism.
China probably has convinced it’s own populace that it’s democratic—a government run by the people for the people. I contend a lot of people practically against liberal principles will answer in order no,no,yes,yes to those questions in good parts of the so called backsliding or authoritarian world,maybe the last question would be more controversial depending on how it’s framed. Liberalism doesn’t impact majority of people’s life as directly as one might think in the short run, most people just want to get by, and majoritarianism is not the same as liberalism, but the people who’re part of the majority are likely to have more positive experience with the system.
I agree on the tradeoffs, rorty’s patchwork metaphor seems to fit quite well here.
Agreed. Perhaps a better test of a society’s relative liberality is to examine its worst examples of infringements of liberal views—its worst censorship, persecution of demographic groups, limits on property rights, and so on, defining these terms broadly.
I think that the tradeoff between allowing people to pursue their cultural and aesthetic agendas through legal means and preserving a basically liberal government and intercultural framework in which those agendas are pursued is an extremely difficult one to get right. It tends to produce a sense of paradox and hypocrisy. It’s also very hard to figure out when we’re facing a slippery slope into illiberalism or a non-preferred implemention of the tradeoffs inherent in liberalism.
In the context of a basically liberal society, like the USA where I live, I tend to perceive most of the flaws in liberalism as stemming from human nature rather than capture of power centers by committed illiberal ideologues. Conservatives and liberals in the USA both see themselves as basically sticking up for what we’re here referring to as “liberal” values, and I think most members of both parties, even the far left and far right, see themselves as generally presenting contrasting versions of “liberalism.” So I think we have a case here where most US citizens see their nation as less liberal than it really is, in contrast to the example you give of China, a nation where most Chinese citizens may see their nation as more liberal than it really is.
I know my take is largely opinion here, but I remember when I was a kid and the case was made more vigorously and still many didn’t get it. They seemed just unable to reason through second and third order effects. All they cared about was if their preferred group or policy won, and if second order effects came up, the response was often that it “just” wouldn’t happen because no one would do those things once their preferred thing was enacted.
So to be clear, I say this because I think bedrock liberalism requires understanding second and third order effects. The whole reason to buy these ideals is because you understand them, because liberalism inevitably means letting people you disagree with sometimes get their way, and understanding why that’s necessary and good.
Controversial ideas need to be defended bravely, clearly, and often to keep them in the Overton Window. A persistent drip of timely examples and anecdotes combined with a simple interpretation is much more effective. Ideas like “free speech” are very easy to defend in a simple way. Just pointing out that “in Britain, they just put someone on trial for calling someone a Karen” is a fine way to argue for continuing to protect free speech, without needing to get into any abstractions.
The free speech issue is not that simple, I think a lot of people agree on free speech with exceptions ™ , the fight is often about which free speech ™ should be the norm. It’s similar to how people can have different notions of fairness. I am not sure what would act as an intuition pump for most of people to agree with more fair and liberal notions of free speech.
The distinction I’m driving at is between making an in-depth intellectual argument about liberalism (which is what you and Gordon are focused on) and a winning emotional appeal (which is what I’m focused on).
My claim is that support for liberalism has been eroded by too few winning emotional appeals for it, and that they’re actually easy to make. It’s not necessary to address the ambiguities. Just share anecdotes that stir up positive feelings in the right direction.
Let me reiterate why your original comment seems to be downplaying how difficult it is to intuition pump the ideas of liberal free expression.
For a case study, take Modi’s India which also emotively endorses free speech[1][2]— but the activist groups have been screaming left and right about how his government has been steadily eroding liberal free speech norms[3].
Extrapolating from the case in India, at this point around the world it’s mostly a debate surrounding which exceptions people want do they want people criticising the government when they’re doing perceived good policies? Or insulting certain groups of people? People don’t feel strongly about liberal notions of free speech in good parts of the world, and the people who do—western classical liberals— are struggling to get their intuition pumps out there.
I can see the developing economy and cultural differences objections to the former example, so let’s take, case study of Trump, he uses the Applause Lights of free speech even more so than others. He even passed an executive order to restore free speech[4] , where his admin seems to be disagreeing on the same exceptions ™ . They think misinformation-by-outgroup shouldn’t be under free speech, others who disagree think misinformation-by-outgroup-2 shouldn’t be covered. Trump admin curbing on press freedom[5] from outgroup yet inviting —fringe and online activist— internet personalities from their own[6], which is to say their free speech policy seems to be amounting to “free speech for me not for thee”.
It would be difficult to rescue the banner free speech with “In britain they put you in jail for calling people karen” , without also engaging with “Destiny should be prosecuted for mocking on the retired firefighter who died during first trump shooting”.[7]
I think other way would be to play the information and Dark Side Epistemology game better than the illiberal side, but it would be a constant battle as evident from short-lived success of western liberal free speech advocates from prior generations and the difficulty adapting to populism,cancel-culture favoring social media environments.
https://lexfridman.com/narendra-modi-transcript/
https://www.themirrority.com/data/press-freedom-index
2021 onwards
2010-2020 (with ranking)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/
https://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-inauguration-set-trigger-period-unprecedented-uncertainty-press-freedom
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/05/politics/laura-loomer-donald-trump-meeting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer
https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/streamers/news-he-s-gotta-hate-farming-viewers-call-kick-streamer-destiny-controversial-opinion-donald-trump-s-assassination-attempt
Most of the current debates about liberalism are debates about how to trade off between competing liberal priorities. I would regard these debates about exceptions to free speech—whether any are tolerated, and which ones—as debates within a common liberal framework. Typically, proponents of each site, all of whom are taking one liberal view or another, cast their opponents as illiberal (in the theory sense, not the American “progressive-vibe” sense). Opponents reject this label because they genuinely don’t perceive themselves that way.
I think the whole debate would be better if we recognized that there are exist high-stakes tradeoffs between competing liberal priorities, and that it’s these competing visions of liberalism that are at the heart of contemporary political discourse in America.
I only partially agree, I wouldn’t be surprised if “free speech” is now on the road to suffering the same fate as the word “democracy”—china calls itself a democracy,they too have the word “free speech” in their constitution . I think trump’s admin definition and aspiration for free speech— the legal animosity towards media, academics— is not what past US liberals would recognise as such and is departure from that tradition. What use is free speech if your critics are indirectly being suppressed? Even authoritarian governments give citizens enough “free speech” to not arrest them in day to day lives, people self censor on certain topics similar to them being taboo. I have seen some public intellectuals reacting to this mess by embracing free speech absolutism—because they get accused of being biased towards one side and disregarded if they’re partial— but those positions are very hard to get intuitions for.
I think a lot of politicians only pay a lip service to so called “liberal principles” and in the end do realpolitik.
It sounds like what you are hoping for is to avoid illiberal backsliding by making everybody crystal-clear on what liberalism is and giving them a deep understanding of why they should support it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s tractable. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s necessary. How successful have China and Myanmar been in convincing the world they being run on liberal principles?
My view is that most people are pretty clear on the concrete facts of life that matter for liberalism.
Am I being persecuted for my beliefs?
Is my life at risk due to my identity?
Can I say what I want?
Is my property secure, and am I free to transact?
When people debate politics, I contend they typically are debating over tradeoffs inherent in liberal ideas, or between values orthogonal to liberalism. Examples of the latter include dealing with externalities such as pollution, environmental destruction, or public aesthetics. Note that a liberal society can still care about things other than liberalism, and sometimes that will result in tradeoffs with liberalism-maximalism. Making a democratic choice for non-liberal maximalism is still a position compatible with liberalism.
China probably has convinced it’s own populace that it’s democratic—a government run by the people for the people. I contend a lot of people practically against liberal principles will answer in order no,no,yes,yes to those questions in good parts of the so called backsliding or authoritarian world,maybe the last question would be more controversial depending on how it’s framed. Liberalism doesn’t impact majority of people’s life as directly as one might think in the short run, most people just want to get by, and majoritarianism is not the same as liberalism, but the people who’re part of the majority are likely to have more positive experience with the system.
I agree on the tradeoffs, rorty’s patchwork metaphor seems to fit quite well here.
Agreed. Perhaps a better test of a society’s relative liberality is to examine its worst examples of infringements of liberal views—its worst censorship, persecution of demographic groups, limits on property rights, and so on, defining these terms broadly.
I think that the tradeoff between allowing people to pursue their cultural and aesthetic agendas through legal means and preserving a basically liberal government and intercultural framework in which those agendas are pursued is an extremely difficult one to get right. It tends to produce a sense of paradox and hypocrisy. It’s also very hard to figure out when we’re facing a slippery slope into illiberalism or a non-preferred implemention of the tradeoffs inherent in liberalism.
In the context of a basically liberal society, like the USA where I live, I tend to perceive most of the flaws in liberalism as stemming from human nature rather than capture of power centers by committed illiberal ideologues. Conservatives and liberals in the USA both see themselves as basically sticking up for what we’re here referring to as “liberal” values, and I think most members of both parties, even the far left and far right, see themselves as generally presenting contrasting versions of “liberalism.” So I think we have a case here where most US citizens see their nation as less liberal than it really is, in contrast to the example you give of China, a nation where most Chinese citizens may see their nation as more liberal than it really is.