The Right To Think Wrong

Among the gazillion reasons and rationalizations put forth to explain Trump’s improbable victory is the supposed proliferation of “fake news.” If you spend any time on the Internet and social media, you’re bound to come across sensational stories that will provoke outrage. Many such stories are either deceptively headlined, deceptively worded, or flat-out fabrications. They do, however, draw click traffic, a financial incentive for their proliferation.

Such “fake news” used to be the province of supermarket tabloids like the Weekly World News, the Star, the National Enquirer and others, and people who cared to pay attention knew not to trust stories they read therein. That was the status quo for decades – there were the mainstream newspapers and there were the gossip and space alien rags. Of late, however, the Internet, which makes it cheap and easy for anyone to start up a “news” site, has enabled an explosion of digital equivalents. Market forces being what they are, the sites that cater to specific slants and that provide confirmation bias have tended to be more successful and have thus spawned many more of the same.

The “best” of these will mix real, un-slanted news and news that’s real but carefully spun in with their fabrications, and thus sucker people into presuming some degree of trustworthiness in what they share. Again, people’s tendency to confirmation bias drives this behavior, since a site, once trusted, tends to stay trusted.

This has also spawned a “flip side,” wherein debates, disagreements and arguments often devolve to attacking a source rather than the content being discussed. Liberals will dismiss articles shared from Fox News as being from “Faux News,” conservatives will dismiss articles from Salon and Daily Kos because they are the provinces of unhinged lefties, and many will dismiss shared stories from BobsBrilliantBlog because they either don’t fit their ideological predilections or because they once read a story therefrom that they deemed “fake.”

So far, from a libertarian perspective, there’s little to complain about. Just as the Internet has enabled the proliferation of such sites, it has also made researching stories and assertions much easier. Anyone who wants to check an outlandish story has a multitude of means to do so, and people who care about honesty will gravitate to sources that establish themselves as more honest.

Unfortunately, that’s not where the story ends.

The Left, licking its wounds over its losses but unwilling to consider the possibility that its ideas and policies are being rejected by the voters, is taking issue with “fake news” the way any dyed-in-the-wool statist would: by contemplating government coercion.

The past few years have seen a rise of “fact-checker” sites to counter the proliferation of fake news sites, but many of those fact-checker sites have been tainted by ideological/political bias themselves. Crucially, as far as the Left is concerned, they failed to prevent Trump’s victory, a moral affront so severe that the Left knows something must be done. Since, as far as they’re concerned, they couldn’t counter the “fake news” with sites that offered favorable “fact checking” and favorable “real news” (i.e. free exchange in the marketplace of ideas and information), firmer steps must be taken.

Consider President Obama’s recent lament regarding Clinton’s loss as being due to “Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.” and his notion that news today is a Wild West that needs to be curated. The obvious question is “by who?” and the idea/answer should send a chill down the spine of every freedom-loving person in the country.

Here is the reality. If you are to consider your life “free,” you have the absolute right to think what you wish, read what you wish, believe what you wish, and so forth, provided you do not infringe on the right of another to the same. This includes, vitally and inextricably, the right to be wrong.

Therein lies the problem with the Left’s perception of modern society, from politics to social justice. There is, in their view, a list of correct answers to various questions. If you disagree with these answers, you are not only wrong, but you are wrong in thinking that you’re permitted to disagree.

As an example, consider people who believe the Earth and the universe were created 6000 years ago. I know, based on incredibly strong scientific evidence, that they are wrong. I, however, have no desire to force them to change their minds or to alter their behaviors, just as long as they don’t interfere with my rights and liberties. I’m also quite content to let these folks live their lives, earn their livings, and proselytize their incorrectness all they wish, as long as they don’t employ coercive methods (or use public monies). This live-and-let-live mindset is alien to the modern leftist.

Consider the story of Chip and Joanna Gaines, a couple that stars in the HGTV show “Fixer Upper.” It recently came to light that the church they attend preaches against same-sex marriage and advocates gay-to-straight conversion. I don’t care that the church preaches that stuff, even though I’m a long-time advocate for gay marriage and believe that this conversion stuff is unjust claptrap contrary to individual liberty and self-determination. However, as above, this indifference to others’ beliefs isn’t the norm among the social justice crowd. Despite there being no evidence that the Gaines’s themselves believe these particular teachings of their church and no indication that their show espouses any anti-gay message, sites like Buzzfeed are stirring the pot, insinuating some sort of “guilt-by-association,” and thus actively seeking to do damage to this couple’s livelihood. Why? What have they done wrong other than “think wrong?” While none of this reaches the threshold of government coercion, it certainly smacks of not respecting people’s right to think wrong.

The notion that “fake news” should be curated (something that has already begun in a form, with a plethora of lists of fake news sites emerging) is extremely dangerous, because there has to be a curator, and curators, whether humans or algorithms designed by humans, will inevitably be flawed and biased. Besides, why the sudden interest in rooting out charlatans? After all, people have been trading on lies and bunk since the dawn of time. There is evidence that astrological predictions are as old as civilization itself, yet all that history does not refute the fact that astrology is hokum (as are tarot cards, as is palm reading, as is phrenology, as is reading of tea leaves, rolling the bones, as are hundreds of other forms of divination). There are over 4000 religions out there. A believer will tell you that the vast majority of these are wrong, an atheist will tell you that they are all wrong, and universalists will tell you that the believers and atheists are themselves wrong. Do we impose the coercive power of the state to deny all those who are wrong their right to be wrong? Of course not.

So, what’s so special about this “fake news” bit? Could it simply be that this election’s losers are speaking against it for purely selfish and partisan reasons, that they’re merely looking to rig the game in their favor? Nah…