The Marketplace of Ideas

In the last decade or so, there’s been a lot of talk about the “marketplace of ideas.” A prominent example of this is former executive editor of the NYT editorial page James Bennet’s 2023 article titled “When the New York Times Lost its Way”.

Obviously I’m a bit late to rebut this particular piece, but the same line of reasoning comes up again and again: from the people who enabled Trump’s rise by constantly decrying “illiberal college campuses”¹, to the Democrats acting as, at best, useful idiots for the right-wing campaign to eradicate trans people, by fretting to the media about “purity tests” within the party. The through-line in all this is: “we need to be willing to listen to ideas that we disagree with.” And it seems like on its face, of course we do! After all, isn’t liberalism (in the traditional sense) about tolerance and coexistence?

Approaching the argument from a place of good faith, it’s easy to agree with the premise: how is progress made, how do we grow, without being able to listen to ideas, even or especially ones we may disagree with at first? And it’s hard to believe so many seemingly-reasonable people—including purported allies—would be operating in bad faith. Frankly, I don’t think all of them are. But I think there’s a pretty easy test to figure out who has, at least, thought it through and who is just using this argument as a shield to espouse or platform hateful ideas while attempting to avoid responsibility for their words or platform:

Would this person tolerate or platform other ideas we as a society have agreed are truly heinous?

Would James Bennet have published an op-ed that he, himself, considered antisemitic? Before you say “Godwin’s Law,” that’s kind of the point of this exercise: can you recognize that there are ideas that this person would not tolerate, would not publish? Even ones that are, to you, obviously evil?

Would Democratic congressmen like Greg Landsman and Seth Moulton suggest that maybe the party should be more open-minded about white nationalists in the party in order to swing more votes?

To me, the answer is of course not—the New York Times would not in this century intentionally publish an op-ed it considered antisemitic; and I’d like to think most Democrats would not go on record as being open to white nationalists in the party. And to be clear: neither should happen. But once you recognize that there is a line, you can see what does not cross that line, and examine why.

It becomes clear that for Bennet, the idea of almost literally “crossing the rubicon” to brutalize protesters for Black lives with the full might of the military is an acceptable one; perhaps not one he agreed with, or particularly wanted, but certainly one that was not inconceivable enough, morally offensive enough, for him to reject.²

And for Democratic politicians so ready to cave on trans rights, the appeal to open-mindedness of course rings hollow. What’s open-minded about betraying an already-mistreated subsection of your constituency?³

I believe we all have a line, between arguments and philosophies we are willing to hear out and those that we won’t. I’m sure there’s a professor of rhetoric or law somewhere who is the exception to this rule, and ok, fine. But for the rest of us, I think it’s dishonest to pretend there is no line; and once we accept that there is a line, it must be recognized that the arguments we defend in the interest of open-mindedness, even with the disclaimer that we disagree, are then implicitly endorsed on some level.

Personally, as a leftist, I’m happy to talk about economic policies, and the pro’s and cons of, for example, the private sector—I think many calls for privatization are thinly-veiled power and money grabs, attempts to strip away the social safety net and help the rich get richer; but I believe one could reasonably discuss this type of policy while still agreeing that people who need help should get help. The same does not hold true for most civil rights issues, where the foundation of one side’s argument is in the rejection of the other’s humanity. There’s no argument to be had, because Black Lives do, in fact, Matter, and trans rights are human rights; I don’t need to hear out a contrary opinion to the validity of either minority’s existence.

There may really be a “marketplace of ideas” today—it is even, arguably, a good thing. After all, I’ve learned so much about justice and about people outside of my bubble from somewhere, right? We have to be allowed to learn and grow, and that’s the justification often given in these conversations. But few markets allow just anything to be sold. We don’t have ebola on the shelf next to the oatmeal, and we don’t need it there to know oatmeal is the better option. Hate doesn’t have to be sold to be rejected. And we can’t let hateful people sell their hate in our stores.