Stephen Watt writes that Catholics in Scotland should argue for the promotion of spiritual exploration, not free speech as a means of defending Catholic views in a secularly hostile society.
As far as I am aware there is no law about flag burning possibly because we are a constitutional monarchy, but I'm not sure. Britain as a whole although I have heard of very few cases where a UK flag was burned; most would neither do it nor be angry about someone else doing it.
For Scotland in particular, since the rise of the Scottish National Party, and its constant push for separation from the UK I would say the social pressure around the burning of a Scottish flag would be enough to dissuade anyone.
I will pass your article onto the author for a fuller discussion.
This is an interesting article and you have tapped into my political realist/philosophical reactionary roots.
To my mind, no one *really* believes in the perfection of free speech. To my mind, the perfection of free speech is the absolute inability to restrict speech in any way. The Catholic Church suppresses free speech when it admonishes us to not take the lords name in vain and to avoid profanity. These don't strike us as suppressions of free speech because they are sensible restrictions--not only are they deeply rooted biblical rules, but how can we preserve something Holy if we allow people to profane it?
This is the tension at play. Consider burning ones national flag. I don't know if Scotland has any explicit rules about this but I know in the USA it got to our supreme court many years ago and they ruled that indeed it was considered a facet of free speech to allow a citizen to burn the US flag. How can a person revere ones nation if one is allowed to burn its flag? The tension is between preserving and enforcing cultural reverence and allowing variety and vibrant difference in ones discourse.
Going the opposite route, the perfection of censorship is that no one may speak unless they have permission from the censor to speak. The Catholic Church would recognize this as an abject restriction of human freedom and a terrible thing. It is also nonsensically impractical to enforce.
So the ideal lies somewhere in the middle. Politically, what are the national institutions, symbols, and sacraments which the people ought to revere and preserve? Suppression of "profanity" against those things is sensible for stability. As a Catholic, I would say it serves a larger evangelical purpose to take the unusual line and say that we do not support free speech. We do of course support good speech--speech that brings us closer to God, speech that is reverent and not profane--but marking the Catholic Church as a supporter of Free Speech will lump the Church in with people who want to burn flags and who wish to profane national and religious institutions.
Restrictions on speech, taken lightly, in the sense of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", can help preserve a sense of holiness and reverence; promote the True, Good, and Beautiful; and enhance stability. Increasing freedom of speech towards the ideal increases space for irreverence and instability.
I confess that I am not quite sure myself what, in practice, I would permit in the way of speech. In principle, I'd agree with you that the aim should be something like *good* speech. For ancient political thought, the aim of the state is to promote its citizens' flourishing, so the aim of good speech should also be to promote flourishing. Mill I think rightly emphasised the importance of allowing error, broadly to allow truths to be tested, so it can't just be a matter of good speech equalling true speech. So I struggle to be precise here, but some basic points seem clear to be, for example, that a return to politeness would be helpful together with patience and humility. (No more edgy takes from sociopaths whose brand depends on outrage!) Much here is about the mores of society rather than laws: it's very difficult to have good speech if most people want something like a verbal MMA match.
As far as I am aware there is no law about flag burning possibly because we are a constitutional monarchy, but I'm not sure. Britain as a whole although I have heard of very few cases where a UK flag was burned; most would neither do it nor be angry about someone else doing it.
For Scotland in particular, since the rise of the Scottish National Party, and its constant push for separation from the UK I would say the social pressure around the burning of a Scottish flag would be enough to dissuade anyone.
I will pass your article onto the author for a fuller discussion.
Thanks for the comment!
This is an interesting article and you have tapped into my political realist/philosophical reactionary roots.
To my mind, no one *really* believes in the perfection of free speech. To my mind, the perfection of free speech is the absolute inability to restrict speech in any way. The Catholic Church suppresses free speech when it admonishes us to not take the lords name in vain and to avoid profanity. These don't strike us as suppressions of free speech because they are sensible restrictions--not only are they deeply rooted biblical rules, but how can we preserve something Holy if we allow people to profane it?
This is the tension at play. Consider burning ones national flag. I don't know if Scotland has any explicit rules about this but I know in the USA it got to our supreme court many years ago and they ruled that indeed it was considered a facet of free speech to allow a citizen to burn the US flag. How can a person revere ones nation if one is allowed to burn its flag? The tension is between preserving and enforcing cultural reverence and allowing variety and vibrant difference in ones discourse.
Going the opposite route, the perfection of censorship is that no one may speak unless they have permission from the censor to speak. The Catholic Church would recognize this as an abject restriction of human freedom and a terrible thing. It is also nonsensically impractical to enforce.
So the ideal lies somewhere in the middle. Politically, what are the national institutions, symbols, and sacraments which the people ought to revere and preserve? Suppression of "profanity" against those things is sensible for stability. As a Catholic, I would say it serves a larger evangelical purpose to take the unusual line and say that we do not support free speech. We do of course support good speech--speech that brings us closer to God, speech that is reverent and not profane--but marking the Catholic Church as a supporter of Free Speech will lump the Church in with people who want to burn flags and who wish to profane national and religious institutions.
Restrictions on speech, taken lightly, in the sense of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", can help preserve a sense of holiness and reverence; promote the True, Good, and Beautiful; and enhance stability. Increasing freedom of speech towards the ideal increases space for irreverence and instability.
I confess that I am not quite sure myself what, in practice, I would permit in the way of speech. In principle, I'd agree with you that the aim should be something like *good* speech. For ancient political thought, the aim of the state is to promote its citizens' flourishing, so the aim of good speech should also be to promote flourishing. Mill I think rightly emphasised the importance of allowing error, broadly to allow truths to be tested, so it can't just be a matter of good speech equalling true speech. So I struggle to be precise here, but some basic points seem clear to be, for example, that a return to politeness would be helpful together with patience and humility. (No more edgy takes from sociopaths whose brand depends on outrage!) Much here is about the mores of society rather than laws: it's very difficult to have good speech if most people want something like a verbal MMA match.
Very well said!