Liberty must never be traded for security 
  
    

Following the tragedy in New Zealand, many not only decried bigotry and related violence, but attacked free expression. As if debate in the public square necessarily produces atrocities.

On 3/15, The Hill ran "White supremacist terror can no longer be ignored." It was authored by Abbas Barzegar, national director of research and advocacy at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

He is not alone in pressing for the powerful to silence speech. Many political opportunists seize upon terrible events for partisan advantage. ("You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," as Rahm Emanuel notoriously put it.)

In early paragraphs, Barzegar seemed reasonable:

"Whether it's ISIS, Nazi fascism, or any other ideology of racial and religious supremacy, hate has the same DNA."

Barzegar rightly observed that wherever hate exploded into horrible atrocity, and despite bileful perpetrators representing different causes, illogical group-hostility was a common faith. 

He also stressed that, like the white supremacists in Andrew McDonald's Turner Diaries novel, mass-murderers who targeted entire racial, national, or religious communities harbored "Day of the Rope" genocidal fantasies. 

After so lulling readers, though, Barzegar posited suppression of citizen political speech as imperative societal self-defense tool.

"While the world categorically rejects this type of ideology and violence, as global citizens we must do all that we can to take back control of our public spaces," Barzegar counseled. "Whether in media, popular culture, or politics, we need to be vigilant and not allow the poisonous rhetoric of ethno-nationalist extremism to invade our public square."

The CAIR spokesman proposed that a speech clampdown emanate from the people. But only the state has the needed institutional power to effect general prohibitions. The rights of the minority are not vulnerable to majority whim. 

The subtext of Barzegar's essay was the implied assertion that security can be got by surrendering individual liberty.

A clampdown on political expression would stifle not only miscreants who urge violence and supremacy, but also major-party politicians and backers who articulate conventional views to which some object. 

Issue organizations and individual activists would also have much to fear, should perspective discrimination become the guide.

For example, it once was accepted that "racism" connoted the foul belief that a race can be innately superior or inferior. 

Today, though, some argue it's racist to espouse national sovereignty or wear MAGA hats. So it's important to consider that goalposts may be moved from places where before they were reasonably set. And that what one man embraces as healthy patriotism can be (wrongly) villified as hate speech by another.

The only way this can be satisfactorily addressed, as has traditionally been the case, is to maintain a values-free speech environment. And let debate unfold.

As true today as when argued in earlier years, the solution to bad speech is good speech. More intellectual exchange, not less. 

When inferior ideas are not publicly tested against better ones, and are instead driven underground, as CAIR's Barzegar and others urge in tragic moments, they can seem plausible to the unwary. 

But in the glare of open attention, and when subjected to vigorous challenge, they deservedly wither. And that's truly in the public interest.