In the first chapter of “On Liberty”, published in 1859, philosopher John Stuart Mill states:
“…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant… The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
Know as the “Harm Principle, in Mill’s context it means the only purpose of the exertion of coercive power or force over another, whether in the public or private spheres (including social, economic, governmental, or even interpersonal coercion), is to prevent harm.
I admit being alternatively fascinated and horrified at how the political left conceives of rights and how they redefine “harm” to negate any constitutional right they find troublesome. Nothing exemplifies those attempts more than their open assault on free speech, an assault now including defining certain speech as “harmful”. We have all seen the pendulum swing between “Silence is Violence” and seeing conservative speakers who have been denied university audiences because they are “too controversial”. Elements of the left have advanced the theory that there can be tangible damage to an individual due to bigoted, aggressive, or harsh speech. They have even proposed that speech is the abettor of “systemic” and “institutional” racism.
Justifiably, one wonders what constitutes “harm” these days.
No surprise that there are already defamation laws on the books, encompassing both spoken (slander) and libel (written) defamation that does tangible, provable harm. To prove that the material was defamatory, the plaintiff must show that at least one other person who saw or heard it understood it as having defamatory meaning. Even if the defendant contends that the communication was a joke, if one person other than the plaintiff took it seriously, the communication is considered defamatory, creating a legal burden of proof – words alone are not considered defamatory; the target of the alleged defamation must prove that someone other than them believed the statement were true, were in context, and the negative statement(s) caused tangible harm.
The left argues that is not enough, that there should be no burden of proof, that certain words should just be off limits. Merely speaking these words should immediately be considered defamatory and the speaker must be assumed to be guilty of nefarious intent. They want to split Mill’s “Harm Principle” into classifications of “harmless” and “harmful” speech. Applying Mill's ethical framework with this contemporary notion of harm, they conclude that while social coercion (i.e., social media bans, speech codes, etc.) is not justified to restrict any “harmless speech”, no matter how offensive - certain forms of speech, such as bigoted insults, are both harmful and fail to express a genuine opinion, and therefore do not deserve free speech protection.
This concept is ridiculous on its face because the speaker or writer can only be responsible for what they say or write, not what someone hears, reads, or understands. Perhaps there is no more powerful example than the use of the “N” word (that I feel compelled not to write the word in full when speaking of it as an example indicates what I mean). Blacks can use that word in any context, in conversation, in music, and even in a defamatory mode without penalty.
While not illegal, the “moral coercion of public opinion” requires that there are certain words, when uttered by a white person, are prima facie evidence of immediate guilt, even if the word is used in a clinical sense (as an example). Context is no defense; college professors and members of the news and sports media have lost jobs for the mere utterance of the word.
Who gets to be the judge? In today’s world, it is often the ignorant or the most vindictive. Case in point was the tragically stupid 2017 case of ESPN tennis analyst Doug Adler.
Adler’s broadcast career ended abruptly based on the utterance of one word. Adler was serving, as the New York Post put it, “as a B-team analyst at the Australian Open”, live streaming a match between Venus Williams and Stefanie Voegele, when he commented that Williams was “putting on the guerrilla effect on, charging.” It was a compliment. “Guerilla” is a common word to describe any “ambush” style tennis strategy – like poaching at the net. The word “guerrilla” means “small war” and came into common usage around 1807 to describe the military tactic of using small groups of irregular combatants to harass a much larger, more powerful force through hit-and-run attacks and sabotage.
But because “guerilla” and “gorilla” are homophones (different words that sound alike), that is not what Ben Rothenberg, a freelancer covering for the New York Times, heard. Rothenberg, claiming that Adler, live on ESPN, had just called Venus Williams a “gorilla” and that obviously that meant Adler was a virulent racist, tweeted: “It’s horrifying that the Williams sisters have to be subjected to this in 2017.”
As things go in the Age of Maximum Wokeness, a shamefully gutless tennis world and news media stood by as Adler’s defense (based on the clear context of the broadcast) fell on deaf ears. Adler was summarily fired, then defamed and ruined, his career lost due to this ridiculous and toxic claim. Adler was shunned and suffered a heart attack from the stress. He later sued ESPN for wrongful termination and after two years of legal wrangling, won an undisclosed settlement from ESPN – but Adler is still on the outside. He stated:
“I’ve been told by people in the tennis business that I will never be hired again. I’ve been blackballed as a racist by a ludicrous claim. They all know I didn’t call her a gorilla - it’s crazy to think I would - but here I sit. It’s surreal, a bad dream.”
There you go - a career ended by an idiot with a Twitter account but not a thesaurus - because it is impossible to be responsible for the ignorance, malice or motivations of others, preemptively dividing language in to harmless and harmful categories is an unnecessarily dangerous exercise. Truly damaging speech already has a remedy. Violating Mill’s “Harm Principle” represents the death of free speech.