“The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”
Preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution
The party seems to have struggled with the liberty and conformity parts of that preamble for a while now. And we’ve certainly struggled with the “we will at all times defend the right to speak, write, worship, associate and vote freely” bit that comes a little later in the text.
It’s on transgenderism that the party has become most rigidly intolerant. I’ve written about this previously, though it’s Liberal Voice for Women who have best summarised the issues within the party here. There is nothing liberal about compelled thought and speech, nor in dogmatic adherence to an activism that is irrational, unscientific, and increasingly morally bankrupt. A party that cared about a ‘vulnerable minority’ would take note of the Cass Review and the closure of the Tavistock gender identity clinic and acknowledge it might have got things a bit wrong, rather than desperately attempting to prevent all discussion. When some members demand the party ignore legal advice on our transphobia definition so they can continue to discriminate against those they disagree with, it is extremely telling.
But this is not the primary focus of this article, rather it’s a fitting lead-in. Though I will note that so committed to sticking it to the ‘transphobes’, actual sitting councillors last year lauded the abuse of state power as a PCSO lectured a woman on her doorstep about a pro-women sticker in her window (after he had already complained about it to the police who said there was no issue), and cheered on the Society of Authors voting down an AGM motion that aimed to protect free speech. Just this week, we’ve also seen a pair of Scottish Lib Dem councillors proudly announce how they’ve tried to stop parents from holding a meeting in a library and helped whip up protests against it.
On issues that you might expect a liberal party to have something to say, we are found wanting. On academic freedom and the university free speech bill, we have largely failed to engage with the issues concerned – some of our activists even dismissing it as some sort of ‘culture war’ bill. Layla Moran’s Question Time appearance in 2021 in which she said of free speech on campus, “Should this be the priority? Absolutely not”, was a definite low point – even more so when the Lib Dem Twitter account thought it sensible to proudly share the clip (it was later deleted).
On the Online Safety Bill, we certainly haven’t provided much in the way of public scrutiny of this incredibly broad piece of legislation, even if some of our peers have done so – the now-dropped “legal but harmful” provision left to others to critique. On hate speech legislation, our party seems to be all in – leaving it to Suella Braverman of all people to challenge the misuse of non-crime hate incidents. Despite numerous examples of overreach and absurdity, as well as the flawed way in which hate incidents are recorded – based entirely on subjective self-perception – our party’s engagement on this remains somewhat superficial. Our MPs make the occasional banal statement or tweet about how ‘something must be done’ about supposed growing levels of hate crime, yet show little regard to what the figures actually mean or how effective such legislation is in achieving its intended purpose.
When tech companies like PayPal and Eventbrite have taken deliberate action to suppress the lawfully held views of those with whom they politically disagree and withdrawn services from them, we have been entirely silent – despite this being clearly illegal in Eventbrite’s case and deeply chilling in the case of PayPal. China controls its citizens via its social credit system, yet some of our activists have simply shrugged their shoulders at best and sniggered at worst because they don’t like the people affected.
Our lack of interest in the above is of course not indicative of illiberalism; it is, however, indicative of a lack of commitment to supposed core liberal values – things that should distinguish us from other parties. It’s also indicative of a lack of curiosity. We seem to have become intellectually shallow, with too many content in their self-satisfied echo chambers pitching themselves as virtuous arbiters of some vague notion of ‘progressivism’.
What passes for ‘progressive’ feels much akin to a cheap cover version of liberalism for the sanctimonious middle class and the permanently online. One in which an identity-obsessed left that still thinks it’s the counter-culture makes arguments not of substance but in trite ideological statements and political gesture. In the UK at least, progressive is a word that doesn’t really seem to mean anything other than anti-Tory – thus effectively used as a synonym for ‘good’ people, which is an easy but poor lens through which to see the world. Call it ‘woke’, call it ‘social justice’ – moral certainty is its defining feature. And moral certainty can be blinding.
Those who think themselves ‘progressive’ but claim the ‘culture war’ is something that only one side is playing, or that it’s just ‘consequences’ to be fired on the say-so of social media mobs for a misconstrued comment or to be threatened and stopped from speaking for having the ‘wrong’ opinion; they effectively abandon free expression as a political value to the conservatives.
Within the Liberal Democrats, beyond those who take a dissenting view to some of our most vocal activists on the conflict between trans activism and women’s rights, the way Tim Farron, David Campanale, Vince Cable, and Stephen Lloyd have been treated or spoken about for their own ‘wrongthink’ in recent years has also been quite unedifying to see. And it’s not because it’s not acceptable for them to be questioned, criticised, or disagreed with; rather that is acceptable, welcomed even – what’s not acceptable is knee-jerk denouncement that has no interest in understanding or reflection.
True liberalism values diversity of thought and freedom of speech, it embraces rationality and critical thought, and it does not think itself infallible. Yet a surprising number of members seem to base their entire philosophical foundation for liberalism on a Karl Popper meme that they’ve spectacularly failed to understand.
“As long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise”
Paradox of Tolerance – Karl Popper
That the Paradox of Tolerance is mentioned only once as a footnote in a 726-page book should probably give some indication as to its importance to Popper. A philosophical treatise it is not. But then, most who refer to it are actually just referring to the cartoon meme version they’ve seen on social media. To the right of that cartoon below is the full text of the paradox, the bits bolded are oft-quoted and the bit highlighted is always ignored.
That the book in which the paradox is mentioned was written during World War II – a time of course of actual Nazis – should also provide some context to Popper’s words. The book itself, The Open Society and its Enemies, was a defence of pluralism and an argument for liberal democracy. In his paradox, Popper was thinking about how totalitarian regimes rose and silenced all voices that did not agree with them. His point being that sometimes inaction meant being complicit in violence towards others, so in very special cases it would be necessary for an open and tolerant society to compromise its values in order to preserve them. George Orwell made a similar point when writing about pacifism – which could be said to be the epitome of ‘unlimited tolerance’.
For Popper, ‘intolerance’ was only to be deployed when the ‘intolerant’ were “not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument”. Only when such people “begin by denouncing all argument” and wished to express their intolerance by “fists and pistols” (i.e. violence), may it be justified to suppress them. Popper was against those who refused to debate their ideas. So those who tend to invoke this paradox – usually when trying to shut down debate – should really consider whether they’re more like the ones engaging in rational argument or the ones who aren’t.
Because when most people invoke it, what they are really being ‘intolerant’ of is not intolerance itself, but non-acceptance of their own views. It demonstrates only an inability to step outside of one’s own views and to separate the defence of someone’s right to say something from what they have actually said. What once might have applied only to actual Nazis now appears to have broadened to simply ‘anything I disagree with’; the paradox therefore effectively used as little more than a rhetorical device – if you can label anything you like as ‘intolerant’, then you justify suppressing it by any means necessary.
For some purported liberal types, freedom of speech only applies to those they agree with and anything they disagree with is so beyond the pale that nobody should even be able to think it, let alone talk about it. Such an attitude has been present in the depressingly predictable reaction from many towards the SNP’s Kate Forbes for her personal religious beliefs – an echo of the treatment received by Tim Farron whilst Lib Dem party leader.
And for those capable of considering the parts of the world that exist beyond liberal democracies, that this a dangerous attitude to take towards freedom of conscience and expression should be clear. That people must be protected from hearing views they may find offensive, or simply challenging, or made subject to compelled belief and speech, is the same argument used by authoritarian regimes to justify the oppression of their citizens through censorship, imprisonment, and force. There’s nothing ‘tolerant’ about an atmosphere of fear in which people are scared to say what they really think or even to raise questions lest they be punished.
It’s understandable, to an extent, why those who confuse disagreement with hate or speech with ‘literal violence’ wish to censor, justifying such a response to discussion by pretending that there’s no legitimate discussion to be had. Censorship might sound great when you’re doing the censoring, but not so much when you aren’t – and you can never be sure who exactly is going to have that power. That doesn’t mean free reign for hate or bigotry – indeed there is no right to incite hate. But there is no right not to be offended either –and certainly no right not to ever even have the potential to be exposed to challenging or difficult views.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
What drives our increasingly polarised politics is an inability to accept that those who disagree may sometimes be both well-informed and acting in good faith. This isn’t unique to the left, of course, but for a side that considers itself open-minded and reasonable, there’s a growing tendency to dismiss by ascribing motive rather than engaging with the substance of what is being said. Social media plays a large part in this. Rather than enabling free and open debate, it in many ways simply entrenches views, so easy it is to block, block and block away and so comforting it is to retreat into self-reinforcing bubbles that limit discussion to those who will simply tell you what you want to hear.
We’re all susceptible to confirmation bias. Nobody can know everything and nobody can be right about everything all of the time. We’re also not always rational beings, again it’s an impossibility – but we should strive to be as often as possible. The reality of the world is that most issues are nuanced – there is often no one single ‘right’ answer. A liberalism that refuses to acknowledge this is a liberalism that closes minds rather than opens them – which is no liberalism at all.
One of John Stuart Mill’s core arguments in On Liberty is that censorship prevents us from correcting errors through critical discussion. He argues that if a forbidden opinion is true then we lose the opportunity to learn of its truth, and if a forbidden opinion is false then we lose the opportunity to remind ourselves why it is false. By only considering one side of an argument, we fail to truly understand the issue at hand. For Mill, the true liberal has to test his opinion. If not, what we have is dogma. Ultimately we’ll have only a shallow understanding of the arguments we oppose, or think we oppose, and consequently a shallow understanding of our own arguments.
It also changes nobody’s mind – Mill makes the point, something that can also be interpreted from Popper’s Paradox, that censoring someone rather than persuasive argument will guarantee that they continue to hold that belief. Stopping people from speaking doesn’t make their thoughts go away.
Even this perhaps presupposes that minds must always be changed. Whilst it’s certainly an argument I would have relied upon in the past – and will continue to make – I now also find it can sometimes sound quite sanctimonious, as if people need to be converted to the ‘correct’ opinion. Sometimes this may be appropriate and ultimately beneficial for those whose minds are changed – take hostile attitudes towards a particular race for instance, or on policy positions that may be factually wrong – but ultimately, liberalism should mean allowing people to think for themselves. Much of modern journalism could perhaps take note – people don’t need to be hand-held to the ‘correct’ moral conclusion on every issue. People can hold their own beliefs. People can advocate for those beliefs. And people can vote on the basis of those beliefs. Accepting that; that’s tolerance.
Human rights, the rule of law, democracy, social change, scientific innovation – the history of progress is a history of free speech and its consequences. We’d do well to remember.
Democracy Coma 
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