Some of you might remember Robert Reich. He’s the archetype of a neoliberal intellectual: secretary of labor under Clinton, has the requisite Ivy League credentials and a prestigious academic position at that bastion of intellectual diversity known as Berkeley.

A friend read a recent Reich blog post he liked and asked me to respond. I thought I’d share my answer here.

Reich’s post was called “How to stop Musk”. In his view, Musk is a public menace guilty of a number of offenses. I only have space for one here: the crime of telling lies contrary to the public good.

I’ll start with Reich’s opening sentence: “Lies on Elon Musk’s X have instigated some of the worst racial riots in Britain’s history.”

Lies instigate riots? Really? Don’t the rioters have agency? Aren’t they creatures of free will who made the conscious choice to wreak havoc?

Why do the chattering classes find it so hard so believe human beings aren’t robots, but individual minds who make choices? Why is individual responsibility so out of fashion? Saying “Lies instigate riots” is little different from “guns kill people”, or even “drugs ruin lives”. How different would things be if we said “people read something and rioted” or “people kill people with guns” or “people ruin their lives with drugs”?

Liberal intellectuals sweep all this aside because you can’t ban free will, as much as they might want to. It’s easier, supposedly, to ban lies. Reich says:

“First, the Federal Trade Commission should demand that Musk take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals or threaten our democracy, and if he does not, sue him under Section 5 of the FTC Act. “

I have to ask: How exactly would the question of individual endangerment and the threat to democracy be determined? Who should determine it? Are the politically appointed employees of the FTC gifted with sufficient moral sense and wisdom to make that call?

If Reich wants this legal hammer to bludgeon billionaires Democrats don’t like, what does he expect when the worm turns and Republicans are back in charge? Will they use his legal ploy to ban the speech of rich liberals? I might not be as smart as Reich, but it doesn’t take a genius to know the answer.

Policy proposals like this are typical of neoliberals’ belief the power they are asking for will never be abused, that their judgment is best, and the right thing to do is simply obvious. There is no foundation for any of those beliefs beyond their own hubris.

Reich goes on: “Musk’s free-speech rights under the First Amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest.” I beg to differ. I believe protecting free speech ultimately serves the public interest. That’s what a maximalist approach to free speech does.

Reich’s proposals would make the FTC a “Ministry of Truth” straight out of Orwell’s “1984”. He would use the coercive power of the state to determine who is lying, how they are lying, and why they should be punished for lying. This is no mere book club chit-chat. Orwell wrote that the Ministry of Truth is concerned with lies. Do we really we want to go there?

As messy as free speech is, particularly in an era of social media, I would rather live in a world where lies can travel to millions of people at the speed of light. Not because such a world is perfect, but because it is the only world where the truth travels with them.

The alternative is far, far worse.

Barry Fagin was a successful plaintiff in the Supreme Court case of Reno v ACLU et. al that established First Amendment protections for the internet. He is a recipient of the ACLU National Civil Liberties Award. Readers can write Fagin at barry@faginfamily.net.