Fragile Free Speech
Under the [Irish] law, which went into effect Friday, a person can be found guilty of blasphemy if “he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.” The penalty is a fine of up to 25,000 euros, or more than $35,000. … Nugent, who estimates that there are a quarter-million atheists in Ireland, said the new law is “silly” and “literally medieval.”
More here. Such free speech limits have a straightforward efficiency rationale – the gains of the few who enjoy saying outrageous things are plausibly outweighed by the harm to the many who are outraged. The best consequential argument against these limits is the long run innovation gains from free speech; outrageous speakers sometimes change our minds, to our great benefit. But this innovation rationale for reduced regulation applies pretty well to most regulation; regulation usually hinders innovation. So why don’t we apply the same argument as eagerly there?
Our cultural heritage is that “modern” nations had freer speech while “medieval” ones did not, so of course nations now prefer freer speech to gain status. We make up rationales as required to get the high status policies we want. If in the future a low-free-speech nation becomes higher status, nations will instead copy that policy, and make up reasons as needed for that.
Remember there is another option which is even more efficient, helps everyone get what they want and preserves innovation: people be allowed to blaspheme and say offensive things, but only in situations where others voluntarily consent to hearing them.
That doesn't make even make sense much less produce a workable policy. As long as we live in a shared visual/auditory space it's simply impossible for people to contact those who might be interested in their idea/issue/etc without that message impinging on some people who definitely don't want to receive it. Indeed until we develop decent algorithms for understanding language we couldn't even do this in an online world. Without an AI to prescreen all the media you see to block undesired content you'll have to look at some unwanted speech if only to filter it out.
Maybe looking back at history we find that restrictions on freedom of speech, particularly protecting religion, foreshadowed bad consequences more than other such regulations.
What makes you think this is true?
I mean if it's based on sampling from modern western history books or cultural lore it's almost totally useless. Our culture encourages us to take it for granted that speech restrictions presage other more direct forms of oppression and decline thus in describing a fall or stumble of a civilization/nation new restrictions on speech will naturally seem salient where the same restriction in the context of a citilization/nation that has a long prosperous future it will seem an irrelevant curiosity about the religious practices (which tend to always include things about god's name). There are plenty of civilizations who even at their zenieth were executing people for saying the wrong things.
Sure, I'll agree that there is a strong correlation between extreme speech restrictions and the collapse of a government/society but only for the same reason that there is a correlation between extreme curfews, high taxes and other measures likely to be adopted as desperate attempts to retain power.
The outraged can also change how they feel about such speech, and simply stop becoming outraged. The potential gains from people becoming more understanding of others’ opinions and lifestyles seems massive in comparison to negative harm of outrage.
Of course the people who are outraged aren't (they inevitably claim) seeking to restrict speech because it makes them outraged but because they think it's actually bad. Bringing up the gains from tolerance is fruitless here since we only think tolerance of things that aren't (too?) bad is valuable. We certainly wouldn't want to increase the tolerance for plots to do murder, contracts to commit murder, or other grave harm even though they are speech.
Moreover, I'd even quibble about the claim that outrage itself is never a compelling justification for restriction of free speech. Certainily I agree for those restrictions substantial enough that we are apt to actually call them out as censorship but there are tons of smaller scale instances of 'censorship' that are similar in kind and yet often justified to protect people from outrage.
I think a perfect example here is the outrage created by the Phelpsian protests of soldier's funerals with signs about god hatting fags and soldiers deserving to die. The outrage these familiesand those who empathize with them feel causes a substantial amount of suffering. True, I strongly support the right of these groups general right to speak and think it's foolish to alter long standing legal precedent for such a group.
However, there is a much more subtle kind of restriction on free speech used against these groups. The local police and empathetic judges shave the rights and privleges of such an emminently offensive group just a little bit narrower. On account of the content of their speech the towns are given latitude that would raise an immediate firestorm if deployed against speech with republican/democratic content. If a town dusted off an old law and only applied it to conservative leaning organizations or enforced laws requiring parade permits only against liberal organizations people would rightly scream.
However, I'd argue that this is exactly the appropriate balance between the outrage induced harm of the Phelpsians and the importance of free speech. Especially when it is of such obvious lack of value and implemented in ways that lack lasting precedential impact (individuals bending the rules).