Here is the part I can’t make work logically.
Let’s say your side is in charge.
Whatever “your side” means.
Your party won.
Your people have the cultural power.
Your ideas are popular.
The institutions around you mostly agree with you.
And there is some opinion on the other side that you think is completely beyond the line.
Not merely wrong.
Unacceptable.
Fine.
So while you have the power, your side gets to decide:
That opinion is unacceptable.
Now let’s have an election.
The other side wins.
Power changes hands.
And the people you completely disagree with are now sitting in the seats you were sitting in yesterday.
They look at one of your opinions and say:
“That one is unacceptable.”
Well, hold on.
Yesterday you believed the people in power should be able to determine which opinions were outside the boundaries.
Today different people are in power.
Do they get the same authority?
This is where the whole thing falls apart for me.
Because if your answer is no, then your actual principle was never:
“People in authority should determine which opinions are acceptable.”
Your principle was:
“People who agree with me should determine which opinions are acceptable.”
That is not a principle.
That’s winning.
And winning does not make you right.
This is the strange thing about elections.
If an election changes which opinions are acceptable, what exactly changed about the opinions?
Nothing.
Did the facts automatically change on Election Day?
No.
Did logic change?
No.
Did truth change because a different candidate got 51 percent of the vote?
Of course not.
The people holding power changed.
That’s it.
Which means if yesterday Opinion A was officially beyond the line and today Opinion B is officially beyond the line, we were never actually establishing which opinion was true.
We were establishing which group currently had the authority to call the other group wrong.
Those are completely different things.
And we already know this is temporary.
That’s what makes it even stranger.
Every political party knows it will eventually lose.
Every movement loses influence.
Every cultural majority eventually changes.
Every institution gets new leadership.
Every generation replaces the one before it.
Power moves.
It always has.
So when one side creates a rule while it has power, it already knows something.
Eventually the other side is going to inherit the rule.
You know this in advance.
That seems important.
If I build a machine that allows me to silence you today, I should probably spend at least a few seconds thinking about what happens when you own the machine tomorrow.
Because you will.
Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe not next year.
But eventually.
And suddenly defending the other person’s ability to say something stupid doesn’t seem nearly as generous.
It seems practical.
Almost selfish.
I should protect your ability to be wrong because one day I am going to be the person everybody thinks is wrong.
That doesn’t mean I have to pretend your opinion has merit.
I can think it’s ridiculous.
I can argue against it.
I can vote against it.
I can tell everybody willing to listen exactly why I think it’s dangerous.
But I should be very careful about creating a rule that says:
“People with unpopular opinions lose their ability to express them.”
Because I have absolutely no guarantee that my opinion stays popular.
Nobody does.
And there is another problem.
I think this happens gradually.
Imagine all the opinions in America laid out across a really long line.
Way over on one end are opinions almost everybody on the other side thinks are insane.
Same thing on the opposite end.
Then one side gains enough power and says:
“Come on. We can at least agree that those people way over there are beyond the line.”
So we cut off the tail.
Those opinions become things decent people supposedly don’t say.
Maybe people still believe them.
But they learn to keep quiet.
Then power shifts.
The other side looks toward the opposite end and says:
“Fine. Then surely we can agree those people are beyond the line.”
Another tail gets cut off.
Then power shifts again.
Snip.
Then again.
Snip.
Back and forth.
Every time, the people doing the cutting convince themselves they are only removing the obviously unacceptable part.
Nobody feels like they’re attacking ordinary disagreement.
They’re only dealing with the extreme people.
Except there is a problem with cutting off the end of something.
Once you cut off the end, there is a new end.
Yesterday’s second-most-extreme opinion becomes today’s most-extreme opinion.
So now that one looks like the tail.
Cut it off.
New tail.
Cut it off.
New tail.
And if you keep doing that long enough, something very strange happens.
The range of opinions people are comfortable expressing gets narrower and narrower.
Not necessarily the range of opinions people actually hold.
That distinction matters.
People haven’t necessarily changed.
The visible country has.
What Americans believe may stretch all the way from here to here.
But what Americans feel safe admitting they believe may only stretch from here to here.
And then we start confusing those two things.
We look at the smaller range and say:
“These are American values.”
Are they?
Or are these the values Americans currently feel permitted to say out loud?
Those are not automatically the same thing.
And every side contributes to the problem when it gets its turn.
The right can do it.
The left can do it.
Religious people can do it.
Secular people can do it.
Employers can do it.
Universities can do it.
Governments can do it.
Communities can do it.
This isn’t an argument that one side is uniquely bad.
It is an argument that human beings are incredibly tempted to use power when they have it.
Especially when they are certain they are using it against people who deserve it.
And everybody thinks their exception is the reasonable one.
That’s why I think the only rule that survives the transfer of power is the rule you are willing to live under when your opponents are enforcing it.
That seems like a pretty good test.
Before you decide somebody else shouldn’t be allowed to express an opinion, imagine the person you disagree with most making the same decision about yours.
Still like the rule?
If yes, fine.
At least you’re consistent.
But I suspect a lot of us suddenly become passionate defenders of open expression the second our opinion becomes the unpopular one.
Which tells me we understood the principle all along.
We just liked power better.
And maybe this is why living around people who disagree with you actually matters.
Not people you tolerate from a distance.
People you know.
Neighbors.
Friends.
Coworkers.
Family.
People who can look you directly in the face and say:
“I think you’re completely wrong.”
And then still be there tomorrow.
Because maybe the goal was never to build a country where everybody agrees.
Maybe that was impossible from the beginning.
Maybe the goal was to build one where disagreement doesn’t end the relationship.
Where you can think I’m wrong without needing me gone.
Where I can tell you exactly what I believe without first checking which side currently has the power.
Because eventually the power changes.
Eventually your opinion becomes unpopular.
Eventually somebody looks at you and thinks:
How in the hell could a functioning adult possibly believe that?
And on that day, you are going to want one thing from them.
The same thing they wanted from you.
The right to be wrong.
