When The Marketplace Of Ideas Goes Broke – OpEd

By David Volodzko

Advocates of free speech champion it because they believe in the marketplace of ideas. The notion is that open discourse allows all perspectives to be heard and tested. When ideas are challenged, we cut through the clutter of bad thinking with the benefit of arguments sharpened by other minds.

At least, that’s what the brochure says.

But what happens when media bias, political propaganda, bot armies, troll farms, and deep fakes become so sophisticated that we can no longer trust our own eyes? What happens when the marketplace of ideas goes broke? When sunlight no longer disinfects?

The easy solution is to censor the harmful things you don’t want to hear. But this raises two problems. First, whom do you entrust with such immense power? Who gets to determine the truth? Second, censorship doesn’t actually eliminate bad ideas but rather drives them underground—now with the dissident’s badge of respectability. The moment people are censored, we begin to wonder if they’re onto something. But if we feel that all views have been given due consideration, we’re more likely to trust the truth as it unfolds. Even when we agree, some truths must be tested and sharpened against the whetstone of rebuttal.

In Areopagitica, John Milton argues that censorship prevents us from stress-testing bad ideas. If we’re worried about harmful lies, we need not restrict speech, he says, because if we simply let people talk freely, the truth will out. Over 150 years later, Thomas Jefferson echoed this sentiment in his first inaugural address, saying, “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” But even if truth does not prevail, John Stuart Mill later argued, we still hone our critical faculties by engaging each other. In other words, you benefit by playing chess even when you lose.

This tradition of thought was finally crystalized with the marketplace metaphor, first used by the Supreme Court in the 1919 case Abrams v. United States, in which the Court upheld the conviction of five Russian immigrants for handing out leaflets opposing US involvement in World War I. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote, “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” This turn of phrase was later rendered in its modern form by Justice William O. Douglas, who wrote in United States v. Rumely of a publisher who “bids for the minds of men in the marketplace of ideas.”

Recently on X, the political commentator Richard Hanania shared a list of the top podcasts in the United States—Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the “Hawk Tuah” girl Haliey Welch. Hanania wrote, “If you’re a smart person who believes in free speech, you need to have your eyes completely open as to the likely winners in a free marketplace of ideas. The next project for liberals is what to do about the fact that humans are this stupid.”

Claire Lehmann, founder of Quillette magazine, replied, “It’s not our job to police the entertainment of plebs. But it is our responsibility to build institutions which maintain high standards—& keep the riffraff out.”

They’re both onto something. Hanania is correct that in a truly open marketplace of ideas, many awful propositions will be put forward. Recently, for instance, we saw claims that Hurricane Milton was created by Jews, or that it was geo-engineered to target red states. But Lehmann is correct that we shouldn’t micromanage art in order to engineer the souls of citizens. Any history book on communism provides a ready education on where that winding path inevitably leads.

So where does this leave us? One problem is that our institutions are crumbling. As I have argued elsewhere, our universities and news outlets, two of the most important sources of education, have been subverted by Marxist ideology. To Hanania’s point, what can we do about the fact that given enough rope, Americans may well hang themselves?

The answer is staring us in the face. As philosopher John Dewey put it, “The only solution to the ills of democracy … is more democracy.” But you may be wondering, what sense does that make if you’re saying the system we have isn’t working? How will doubling down solve anything?

It won’t.

There will always be a rattling noise built into the machinery—some of it born of ignorance, some of folly, and some of outright malice. Ours is not a perfect union, nor will it ever be. The misguided notion that we can engineer perfection is not only wrong but evil, for in order to rebuild the human soul, first, you must break it. But this does not mean we cannot strive for perfection. Such was the message our Founding Fathers left us in the preamble to the Constitution when they wrote of creating “a more perfect union.” Better than before, yet never flawless.

We must set legal boundaries, and within those boundaries, allow the kids to play. There will be bruises. There will be bullies. But we want our kids to learn resilience by handling their own problems—because if you coddle them, you will protect them from harm here and now, but create a brittle constitution that’s ultimately more susceptible to damage.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill’s famous line on democracy, the marketplace of ideas may be the worst arena for discerning truth, except for all the others.

• About the author: David Volodzko is a senior writer and editor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of The Radicalist. He is also a journalist whose work has appeared in the Free Press, New York Magazine, Foreign Policy, the Nation, the Wall Street Journal, and more.
• Source: This article was published by FEE