In Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today, Wendy Kaminer writes:
[The] assumption that government knows best suggests that we’re a nation of children (while the government is staffed by adults), and it’s no coincidence that censorship campaigns often begin with the stated intent of protecting minors. Censorship in the name of child welfare usually garners popular support, although it treats child rearing as the collective responsibility of government officials and not individual parents.
In any case, if individuals can’t be trusted to choose “good” speech over bad (or “good” religions over “cults”), then neither can their government, which is, after all, composed of individuals, with all their vices; it’s not as if being elected or appointed to office magically cleanses them of sin.
It is curious that people would turn choices over to the government on the assumption that the government, made up of people, would make better choices than individuals — or perhaps it’s not that curious after all. An institution like the government is organized according to procedures and rules which, ideally, can transcend many of the passions and errors that may plague the decision-making of individuals.
A good example might be the scientific community: on the whole, “science” works better than individual scientists because of a multitude of checks and balances that exist to prevent the development of bad data. There have been plenty of errors, of course, but on the whole it has done very well. It’s not a stretch to think that government can be treated in the same way. Perhaps government can never work as well as science, but it’s really not out of line to think that it can work better and arrive at better conclusions than individuals.
This is not to say that Wendy Kaminer is not making a valid argument, but we should be careful not to take her idea too far. It is true that the government cannot be trusted to choose “good” speech over bad or “good” religion over bad, but I’m not sure that it’s entirely because individuals cannot. It may be more due to the fact that such a choice is inherently impossible, regardless of who is making it.
At the very least, though, anyone who argues or even just implies that the government should be entrusted with choosing good speech or religion must be asked to defend that. I don’t think that it is, in principle, an impossible position to defend, but I think that it would likely be very difficult.
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