A note on free speech absolutists and closed borders supporters

A dilemma for some right wing liberals

Recently I met a free speech absolutist who affirmed that protecting free speech is right irrespective of the good it does for civil society at large Not John Stuart Mill’s consequentialist defence. So strong was their commitment to free speech, they defended libel, slander and a limited number of death threats too. If they had defended blackmail, I’d would have been sitting beside Murray Rothbard. I was impressed. This same person though also happened to be a Reform UK supporter, who, obviously, favoured closed borders, largely to ensure British culture. This free speech absolutism and closed borders position is inconsistent. Or, at the very least, they do not sit well together.

If free speech must always stand in virtue of upholding freedom itself and cannot be violated, even in order to stop the deterioration of British culture; analogously, freedom of association in virtue of upholding freedom itself must stand too, even if the deterioration of British culture results. And if freedom of association stands it must stand with foreigners as well, i.e., closed borders must be rejected. Now you could claim the difference is open borders would be very bad while absolute free speech is not, therefore, the presumption of freedom is overcome in the borders case. Moderate deontology. (Along with Bryan Caplan though I’d question the empirics). The problem though for the free speech absolutist is she’s willing to bear any cost to uphold freedom of speech. Which raises this obvious problem for Reform UK types.

If you’re objecting to Britain becoming a Muslim country with Arab cultural practices and are prepared to restrict the freedom of foreigners to move here, and, crucially, British landlords, employers and families here to have them, then, bad consequences are warranting restricting freedom. If this is so; then if Muslim preachers were going to convert millions of Britons to Islam and Arab cultural practices the Reform UK type would have to violate the freedom of speech of such people to stop, by hypothesis, the exact same bad consequences as the open borders would have, on pain of inconsistency. So much for free speech absolutism! I put this argument to the said person but they were not moved by it.

Gestures were made to the difference in rights, or, freedoms, between Britons and foreigners; basically, we need to uphold the former but not the latter. I left the actual conversation here. It’s a strange reply though; if freedom is so important in and of itself, why does a person being on the other side of a made-up political line suddenly warrant violating it. Plus: Domestic citizens’ freedom is being violated anyway, therefore, even on the argument’s own grounds, it doesn’t work. Regardless to both of these points, however, the gesturing begs the question as to the justification for closed borders, because, the rights and freedoms of foreigners to come to the UK, are the very things being disputed. I’m sure my interlocutor has replies to these arguments; we had better things to talk about though.

The above nicely demonstrates how otherwise liberal people are very quick to throw away liberalism when it comes to foreigners. I’ve pressed this point since rejecting my Hans Hermann Hoppe position in 2022. For interested readers, I’ve rejected that position in The Critic here, and, Peter Foreshaw Brookes and I then had a fruitful back and forth on it, found here, here, here, here, and, here. As I said in The Critic: ‘Liberalism demands a free society and open borders and I doubt it is coherent to have the former without having the latter too’. It’s a great shame that in admitting that claim many people go onto reject liberalism.