I think you have a responsibility to tell people what you believe.
Not every thought.
Not every second.
Not in every room.
I’m not saying you should walk into work tomorrow morning, climb onto a desk and announce every political opinion you’ve ever had.
I’m talking about something much more basic.
Your actual opinions.
What you believe about your country.
Your government.
Your community.
Your schools.
Your institutions.
What you think is right.
What you think is wrong.
What you think should change.
What you think should stay exactly the same.
I think saying those things is part of your responsibility as a citizen.
Because I have been thinking all week about what happens if we don’t.
And I think the problem gets much bigger than free speech.
It gets all the way to democracy itself.
A representative democracy is supposed to represent us.
That’s the entire idea.
We have hundreds of millions of people with different lives, different experiences, different values and different beliefs.
Obviously, all of us cannot run the government individually.
So we create a system that is supposed to take all of those beliefs and somehow turn them into representation.
We vote.
We organize.
We argue.
We write.
We protest.
We speak at meetings.
We support candidates.
We criticize candidates.
We tell our neighbors what we think.
We tell politicians what we think.
We tell each other what we think.
And somehow, through all of that noise, the country gets information about itself.
That part is important.
Because democracy is not just a voting system.
It is an information system.
The government needs to know what the people believe.
Political parties need to know.
Candidates need to know.
Institutions need to know.
Communities need to know.
We need to know what one another believe.
Otherwise, what exactly are we representing?
Imagine a country of one hundred people.
Twenty of them believe something.
But the opinion has become so socially unacceptable that only five are willing to admit it.
Maybe the other fifteen are afraid of losing friends.
Maybe they’re worried about work.
Maybe they don’t want their children dragged into it.
Maybe they’re tired of being called names.
Maybe they’ve simply decided:
It isn’t worth saying anymore.
So when we look around, what do we see?
Five people.
We conclude that five percent of the country believes that thing.
Except that isn’t true.
Twenty percent does.
The other fifteen percent didn’t change their minds.
They disappeared from the measurement.
That is a completely different problem.
Because now our system is working with bad information.
The politicians think five percent believe it.
The media thinks five percent believe it.
Employers think five percent believe it.
Universities think five percent believe it.
Neighbors think five percent believe it.
Even the people who secretly believe it begin thinking:
Maybe I’m almost alone.
But they aren’t.
The country didn’t change.
Our picture of the country changed.
And I think we underestimate how dangerous that distinction is.
Because a representative system cannot represent information it does not have.
It can only respond to the country that becomes visible.
And if enough Americans stop saying what they actually believe, eventually the visible country and the real country become two different things.
Then we start hearing this sentence:
“The government doesn’t represent us anymore.”
Maybe it doesn’t.
But there is another question worth asking.
Does the government know who “us” is?
Have we told it?
Or have we slowly created an environment where millions of people have learned that certain beliefs are safer kept private?
Because if that happens, the government isn’t representing the actual values of the country anymore.
It is representing the values the country is willing to admit having.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
And I think we got here gradually.
Nobody sat down one morning and announced:
“Let’s make Americans afraid to tell one another what they think.”
It happens one little piece at a time.
One side has power.
And it looks at the far end of the other side and says:
“Come on. Surely we can agree those people are beyond the line.”
So that tail gets cut off.
Maybe those people still believe what they believe.
But they learn not to say it.
Then power changes.
Now the other side looks toward the opposite end.
“Well, if they got to draw a line, surely we can draw one too.”
Snip.
Another tail disappears.
Then power changes again.
Snip.
And again.
Snip.
Every time, the people doing the cutting tell themselves the same thing.
We aren’t suppressing normal opinions.
We’re only dealing with the extreme ones.
But there is an obvious problem.
When you cut off the end of something, there is a new end.
Yesterday’s second-most-extreme opinion is now today’s most-extreme opinion.
So eventually that becomes the unacceptable one.
Cut it off.
Now there’s another new end.
Do it long enough and the range of opinions Americans feel comfortable expressing becomes narrower and narrower.
Not necessarily because Americans believe fewer things.
Because they have learned which things they are permitted to admit.
That distinction may be one of the most important things we can understand about a democracy.
There is the range of things people believe.
And there is the range of things people will say publicly.
Those two ranges should not be assumed to be identical.
And if the second one keeps getting smaller, eventually we create a fictional version of the country.
A country where everybody apparently agrees about far more than they actually do.
A country where every institution believes it understands American values because nobody openly challenges them.
A country where every workplace thinks everybody agrees.
Every neighborhood thinks everybody agrees.
Every university thinks everybody agrees.
Every newsroom thinks everybody agrees.
Every political party thinks everybody agrees.
Until something happens.
An election.
A referendum.
A protest.
A controversy.
A new candidate.
And suddenly millions of people express an opinion that supposedly nobody had.
Then everybody asks:
“Where did these people come from?”
They didn’t come from anywhere.
They were already here.
You just didn’t know what they thought.
And maybe that should scare us more than the opinion itself.
Because disagreement we can see can be dealt with.
You can argue with it.
You can challenge it.
You can organize against it.
You can vote against it.
You can bring evidence.
You can persuade.
You can say:
“I think that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life, and here is why.”
That is democracy working.
I don’t know what you do with an opinion nobody admits having.
You can’t persuade a hidden belief.
You can’t debate a hidden belief.
You can’t understand a hidden belief.
You cannot even accurately count it.
All you can do is pretend it isn’t there.
Until it becomes impossible to pretend anymore.
And this is where I think we’ve confused freedom of opinion with freedom from criticism.
You are allowed to have an opinion.
That does not mean anybody owes that opinion respect.
If you say something stupid, I can tell you it’s stupid.
If your facts are wrong, I can correct them.
If your argument is terrible, I can tear it apart.
If I think your belief is immoral, I can say that.
If I think you are completely out of your mind, I can say that too.
You don’t get freedom from my opinion because you expressed yours.
That’s the deal.
But the deal has to work both ways.
My criticism cannot magically become proof that your opinion should disappear.
Otherwise, we’re not exchanging opinions anymore.
We’re competing for the authority to decide which person gets to have one.
And we already know how that ends.
Power changes.
It always changes.
Republicans win.
Then Democrats win.
Then Republicans win again.
Movements rise and fall.
Cultural majorities change.
Institutions get new leaders.
Generations replace one another.
Whatever group currently believes it has enough authority to define the limits of acceptable opinion should remember something:
Eventually, somebody else gets the authority.
And when that happens, you are going to discover very quickly whether you believed in the rule or merely enjoyed being the person enforcing it.
If an election can change which opinions are considered acceptable, then “acceptable” was never synonymous with “true.”
Truth did not change on Election Day.
Logic did not change.
Reality did not wait for the vote total.
The people holding power changed.
That’s all.
Which means we were never actually determining who was right.
We were determining who currently had enough power to call the other side wrong.
That is a very different thing.
And that is why I think protecting somebody else’s ability to say something you think is completely stupid is not some act of generosity.
It is self-interest.
Eventually, you will be the person with the unpopular opinion.
Eventually, something you believe will fall outside whatever the current cultural majority considers acceptable.
Eventually, somebody will look at you and think:
How in the hell could a functioning adult believe that?
And when that day arrives, you are going to hope the rule was never:
Only acceptable opinions may be expressed.
You are going to hope the rule was:
Tell us what you actually think.
And then we will deal with it.
That is the country I would rather live in.
Not because it would be quieter.
It would probably be louder.
Not because people would be nicer.
Some of them wouldn’t be.
Not because every opinion deserves admiration.
A lot of opinions are terrible.
I would rather live there because at least the country could see itself.
I would rather know that my neighbor thinks I am completely wrong than live next to a person who has learned to smile, nod and hide what he believes.
I would rather have the argument.
I would rather hear the bad opinion.
I would rather know where the disagreement actually is.
Because once I know, I can do something.
I can ask why.
I can challenge it.
I can learn.
I can persuade.
Maybe I change your mind.
Maybe you change mine.
Maybe neither one of us moves an inch.
And then tomorrow your truck breaks down and I still come over to help you.
That should not be an impossible relationship.
It used to be one of the most ordinary relationships in America.
You’re wrong.
I’m right.
Pass me the wrench.
Maybe we need more of that.
Because democracy does not require agreement.
If it required agreement, we wouldn’t need democracy.
We would just do whatever everybody already agreed to do.
The entire system exists because we do not agree.
The disagreement is not the malfunction.
The disagreement is the reason the machine exists.
But for that machine to work, it needs honest input.
It needs to know what the citizens actually believe.
Not what they are supposed to believe.
Not what their employer would prefer they believe.
Not what their political party tells them to believe.
Not what gets the fewest angry comments online.
Not what is safest to say at dinner.
What they actually believe.
And that is why I think expressing your opinion is more than a right.
In a democracy, I think it is a civic responsibility.
You owe the country accurate information about who you are.
You owe your neighbors the opportunity to disagree with the real you.
You owe yourself the right to be persuaded instead of merely silenced.
And you owe the people you completely disagree with the same thing.
Say it.
Let them tell you you’re wrong.
Let them say it’s stupid.
Let them challenge every word.
Then answer them.
That is a much healthier country than one where everybody has learned the approved vocabulary and privately believes something else.
Because the moment enough people become afraid to tell the truth about what they believe, something fundamental breaks.
The beliefs do not vanish.
The country simply loses the ability to see them.
And once the country cannot see what its citizens actually believe, its institutions begin responding to a population that does not exist.
Then its leaders represent assumptions.
Its policies represent assumptions.
Its culture represents assumptions.
Its elections surprise everybody.
And eventually its citizens look at their own government and say:
“That doesn’t represent us.”
Maybe they’re right.
Maybe it doesn’t.
But representative government can only represent the country it can see.
And if we stop telling one another what we actually think, we haven’t protected democracy from bad opinions.
We’ve hidden the country from itself.
And then we ask why nobody seems to know who we are.
