“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” Teach Different with W.E.B. Dubois – Self Expression
How should a society balance individual freedom with the need for stability and control?
Tune in with Steve and Dan Fouts, the innovators behind Teach Different, as they delve into the complexities of liberties and rights, inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’s poignant statement: “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” In this insightful episode, they navigate the equilibrium between fostering a society that respects diverse rights, while at the same time, preserving order and maintaining social cohesion. With over 50 years of combined teaching expertise, the Fouts brothers use the Teach Different Method to create a lens to view issues like defamation, book banning, protests and basic civility required to function in a democracy.
Teach Different serves educational institutions, families, corporate entities, and mental health communities. If you think the TD method could be effective in your setting, we’d love to hear from you! support@teachdifferent.com
Image: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
Today’s Guest(s)
Transcript
Dan Fouts 00:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Teach Different podcast as Steve and Dan Fouts here with another quote, to apply to our conversation method, and this quote is going to be from W.E.B Dubois, the early one of the early civil rights leaders of the late 1800s, early 1900s, one of the founders of the NAACP, author, just a really pivotal figure in American history, We’re going to work with a quote on liberty that he has come up that is really, really good. And just for people unfamiliar just to go over the the Teach Different method, we’re going to work with his quote, and develop a great counterclaim to his quote, and also a claim to his quote, so we’re going to agree with it, and disagree with it. And then ask questions throughout the process. I mean, that’s the basics of the of the conversation method. And Steve and I are just really excited as Teach Different is developing this method. And we’re, we’re seeing it’s used in the schools as a wonderful tool for teachers of course, that’s where we started and we continue there. But we are also seeing this method here that we’re going to go through as a great place for corporate training, to help people in a management and employee setting, learn how to communicate better. And not only that, but we’re also becoming more active with community constituent conversations, working with local representatives who want to inspire and promote better communication among their constituents. So this method that we’re going to use here with this W.E.B DuBois quote, think about it in whatever context makes the most sense with with you. And we’re really excited about that, the adaptability of it. And we encourage anybody who hears this method, and how this unfolds to contact us at support at Teach Different.com We’d love to talk to you and develop some ideas. Alright, so here we go — WEB DuBois quote on liberty,“The cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression.” The cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression. Steve, what do you got for a claim here? This is really deep.
Steve Fouts 02:43 Claim
Yeah, I like it, because it’s using economic principles, to talk about expression. And in the language of America’s Constitution, rights, rights of expression, freedom of expression. This is one of the most important tenets of the American government, I’d say, for many people, this idea of the First Amendment, we can have freedom of press, we can protest, we can say what we want by in large. And that’s our right. And that’s what our government was founded on. So I would say this quote, is supporting that notion that, although there might be some cases where you might want to not give people the freedom to say what they want to say, and you might want to limit it. The worst thing we can do is not let people express themselves, not have freedom. That is much worse than anything else that we could try to assert and try to demand from people.
Dan Fouts 04:00
Yeah, the cost of liberty. A cost is often thought of as something that it takes away. It’s a negative, you know, the cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression.
Steve Fouts 04:14
Yeah, he’s playing around with words here. Oh, yeah. Total gymnastics
Dan Fouts 04:18
And it is that I’m on the claim with you here. What is the cost of liberty? Well, if the First Amendment says we can speak, we can write, we can assemble, we can petition our government for redress of grievances. We have free exercise of religion, all of these amazing things. I’m a government teacher. So I mean, this is right up my alley. The cost of that, is that you’re my mind goes to– you have to allow people in your society, people and groups to say unpopular things sometimes that are not accepted by the majority.
Steve Fouts 04:57
So the cost of Liberty is when the things that we say freely, hurt other people, or get them nervous or threat or in trouble, well, that’s how it’s perceived by the person who’s expressing themselves, right? They’re just trying to start trouble. But there is a cost to it. because some people are not appropriate with their freedom. Some people want to just rile people up. And they want to, like get backed by the fact that they got this freedom of expression. And they will always argue for that, I won’t say
Dan Fouts 05:30
Or they might not be trying to rile people up, but by the very nature of what they’re saying, they are causing other people to be riled up, that might not be their intention, but it happens that way.
Steve Fouts 05:43
That’s the argument they’re gonna make, you’re gonna say. Look,I’m saying what I want to say, because I believe it, sorry, if you’re offended, but don’t enforce feelings with the law. You have to let me do what I want to do. And if you don’t like it too bad, but the cost of it is that some people are going to be offended, and they might actually feel threatened as well. So that’s kind of the first part of what he’s saying, right? The cost of liberty, he’s saying, that risk right there that you’re going to have some problems with people receiving these free messages, and feeling threatened. That is not as bad..as telling them, they can’t do…
Steve Fouts 06:28
I was gonna say, as telling them, you got to shut up. You can’t say anything. Or you can’t say anything that that would offend someone. We can have a law that says anybody that gets offended by what you’re saying– It’s illegal. Okay, but he’s saying that’s much worse, then offending people, but still expressing this God given right.
Dan Fouts 06:54
Then controlling… it’s much worse to control people’s free thoughts than it is to have people express their free thoughts and offend people.
Steve Fouts 07:07
Okay.
Dan Fouts 07:08
All right. So a good example of this, I’m thinking is the abortion issue, pro life and pro choice protest groups, of which there are many in American society, especially in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade Both of those groups often take to the streets, to express their opinions, their First Amendment right to assemble and to speak. And oftentimes, that causes disruption in society, where depending on where people are protesting, there might be disruption of traffic, or there might be disruption of some sort of event that’s going on, the news descends down to cover it, there’s a lot of upheaval there. So there you go, there is a cost of liberty, there, people’s lives are disrupted, because people are speaking their mind. But…and I’m going with the claim here–that is, although that disruption is real, it’s inconvenient. It is much better than for those groups to be told by the government, you cannot take the streets, you cannot express your opinion, you must stay home and argue in the privacy of your home what your positions are. That is the price of repression. And that’s way too much.
Steve Fouts 08:39 Counterclaim
And we can point to all kinds of countries that repress protests. And sometimes end the lives of protesters- think at Tiananmen Square way back when, you know, Iran has had protests where they’ve cracked down, they’ve jailed people. And, again, that’s a society that switches this quote up and says, although it is bad that we have to hurt our own citizens, at times, that’s still something that is more important to do that than to allow everyone to say everything, whatever they want all the time, and to have them protest all the time, because that’s going to eat away at the legitimacy of the government, and we need stability.
Dan Fouts 09:29
So you’re going counterclaim, then
Steve Fouts 09:31
I kind of did drill a little bit, that’s what some countries would argue. Yeah, nation level here, nation.
Dan Fouts 09:39
Absolutely,I got another example– banned books. The protests going on, with books being banned in different schools across the country. There are school board meetings all over the country that are being interrupted by protesters coming in questioning the decisions of the school board to take books off the shelf. They are making these meetings longer. They are frustrating these elected officials, they’re ‘re making a lot of turbulence here. But again, back to what DuBois was saying– The cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression. So yeah, people are inconvenienced in these meetings. But that’s much better than the government to control which books are pulled off the shelf, and which aren’t.
Steve Fouts 10:30
What is your opinion on the book thing?
Dan Fouts 10:35
I am open, for the most part if a local community wants to- I more for freedom of expression. So I would be more interested in kids being taught to think for themselves, and to be able to read any sort of book and then discern whether or not it is good or bad. Teach the critical thinking skills to the students. Definitely, I think I fall on that line of thinking.
Steve Fouts 11:08
I mean, I pretty much do, except can it really be a book about anything? You know, there’s got to be a line you draw somewhere where it really is so offensive may be that– and again, it it happens when you think about young people, exposing young people to certain ideas that are more mature and adult-like, I guess, is inappropriate at some points where maybe the price of repression and limiting it actually is less than the cost of the freedom to do it. Yeah. And again, I don’t I don’t know what the criteria is. But in general, why are you banning books? That just sounds wrong to me.
Dan Fouts 11:59
But I understand that a community would want to enforce certain standards, there’s taxpayers within a community and they and they want control over information. I mean, I get the sentiment, there’s no question. But again, I would rather see the students learn the critical thinking skills necessary to process books, and articles, or any kind of curriculum that a teacher gives out, and let them make their own independent judgments. But again, this is age dependent. You know, if you think of K 12. Education. So this is a complicated one. That’s a good one for this quote, that when is banning books, and controlling that–when is that acceptable?
Steve Fouts 12:46
Well, here’s one, going with that– Everyone here has heard about this phrase, you can’t yell fire in a movie theater, it’s actually illegal to do that. And if you apply it to this quote, The cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression, saying that it’s illegal to yell fire, that’s repression. You are telling someone you cannot do something. Done period. But again, in that case, in that context the price of that Dubois would argue–How would he argue?
Dan Fouts 13:31
He would say, the cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression. So he’s saying that the price of repression is greater. But I think what you’re saying is, in that particular case, it’s not greater, right? The price is less, because you’re protecting people’s safety.
Steve Fouts 13:51
And all you have to do is not yell fire. It’s not a big price
Dan Fouts 13:55
Restraint.
Steve Fouts 13:56
It’s not a big price. And let’s go into the gun. Let’s go into the gun control issue. You have got people arguing that this is a second amendment right, we should have the freedom to have as many guns as we want. We should have limited background checks. We should have the freedom to have that because it gives you a sense of security. And it’s also provided to you as a right on the part of the Constitution. Someone would come in and think about this cost thing. And this Dubois quote, someone would come in and say, you know, requiring people to go through a mental health check. And a little bit of red tape and then maybe raising the age to a little past 18 maybe to 21 and not a why not 25.
Dan Fouts 14:48
And not having assault weapons,
Steve Fouts 14:50
There’s a price those are repressive, because it’s saying you can’t get it at this age. You can’t get it if you have a past that is this but is that price so high, that it’s not worth it? Because you, you do get more safety, you could argue, if it were harder to get guns, you know? So I don’t know, what would he do? What’s your sense of this? Give me your opinion and take the gun control thing.
Dan Fouts 15:18
Of what DuBois would say about applying? I don’t know what he would say actually, I’m just trying to apply his quote to it.
Steve Fouts 15:29
That’s what I’m saying.
Dan Fouts 15:30
I am not I’m not sure I can see both sides on the gun rights issue on this, where sometimes the repression is too much. Other times, it’s not, and that you have to lose some liberty. And the repression is worth it for a variety of reasons. So I don’t I can, I can definitely see both. I got another one. How about defamation cases, where you have people saying things that are slandering people’s reputations, I’m thinking of the recent news with Rudy Giuliani, who a settlement, a civil settlement of 150 million dollars for saying lies that were determined by the court to be malicious and with malice and intent. And there’s an example where he was just stating his mind. And essentially, the court came down and said, You cannot say that, or, that’s repression of his speech. And so in that case, you could argue that maybe that is a legitimate way to repress speech, if the speech itself creates enough harm on people’s reputation and their sense of safety
Steve Fouts 17:02
Because you can’t get the reputation back. If you let everybody. Well, now I’m thinking of the Smartmatic case against Fox News. And the other one, I can’t remember the other company. But I guess there is an argument to be made that reputation is such that someone can take away with it frivolously by just using their freedom of speech, and it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. And it doesn’t even matter if you’re able to convince people later that it was bogus, the harm has already been done. And you can’t get that back. So I see the argument why, I guess repression is something that is appropriate in certain angles, but Dubois I’m interested to see what he would think. Because let me argue for him. He would say, okay, yes, it, you can hurt someone’s reputation. You can, that’s the cost of liberty. Because if someone has a freedom to say something, the cost of that is that some people are gonna get their reputations hurt, because they have the freedom to make up stuff.
Dan Fouts 18:15
Yeah, that isn’t true. But if that also then would lead to threats against their safety. I want to speak for him, but I think he would be very concerned with, you know, the defamation cases that we’re currently grappling with…
Steve Fouts 18:35
Or at least you’d like to hear him talk about the price and the cost in each case. Oh, yeah. How would he break them down? Remember, who we dealing with here? We’re dealing with someone at the end of the 19th century, you know, who was a an African American in very near the time of when, when the when they were liberated in the Civil War. So, I mean, he knows a lot about oppression, and freedom. And, again, I can see why he’s arguing that liberty should take number one. I’m just curious as to how he would think about all the free speech cases of today, with how people are taking this idea of freedom. They’re applying it to being able to do just about anything. Who’s the name of the guy, Alex Jones?
Dan Fouts 19:30
Alex Jones, with the defamation case, the Sandy Hook.
Steve Fouts 19:35
The Sandy Hook, right, right. They found him guilty as well. Nobody’s going to jail for these cases, but they’re losing money. And maybe that is the balancer in some people’s minds. Okay. We’re not going to throw you in jail for saying all these things, but we will take away financial resources because your actions took away others.
Dan Fouts 20:09
The repression is linked to the money, not a deprivation of liberty. You know. So I got another example real quick Japanese internment during World War Two. There’s an example where our government made thinking of this, quote, the cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression. Our government made a conscious decision to say that repression of Liberty was of a greater value and importance than Liberty itself. Because there was a deprivation of liberty of Japanese Americans, 120,000 Japanese Americans. So that’s where where our government made this calculation, applying this quote, that, you know, Liberty was not as important as security of a nation.
Steve Fouts 21:00
Yeah. And that’s literally taking away your freedom. That is more serious than taking away your money. Okay, go with this. cancel culture. What’s your thinking on cancel culture? How does this fit in here?
Dan Fouts 21:20
The cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression. So I think with the can’t cancel culture example, it seems like the what’s chosen is repression, that the thought is that if you repress the speech, that’s going to be less of a cost to society than allowing this speech. And I don’t know if that’s true all the time. Sometimes it’s an overreaction and is unnecessary other times it is. I hope everybody who’s listening to this podcast is realizing– the issues Steve and I are bringing up, there is no clear answer to any of these issues. But notice what this quote is doing. It is forcing a discussion over some controversial topics. But we’re doing this in a safe environment where we’re talking about Du Bois quote, and therefore the level of the dialogue and the atmosphere and temperature of the dialogue is in a safe place.
Steve Fouts 22:27
It’s setting the tone. Yes, It’s setting the criteria where you can talk about these things in a refreshing way; you can just apply them to his way of thinking and then you know, see where you get.
Dan Fouts 22:41
And just as a little tip for everyone out there, if you use this in your setting, if it gets heated on any of these issues that we brought up, always bring them back to the quote and say what it does this? Are you agreeing with Dubois or not? Does this? Is this aligned to the claim or the counterclaim? Explain your reasoning. So then that brings the students or adults depending on what setting you’re using this in, brings them back to normalcy, to calm and gets them thinking critically about the quote and how their opinions relate to it.
Dan Fouts 23:19 Essential Question
A question that is popping up in my head – a very basic question from this conversation. What are reasonable restrictions on freedom of expression in our society? That’s what I’m coming out of here with.
Steve Fouts 23:52
It’s a big question. That’s what a judge would decide. That’s what they do all the time. They have to figure out what is kind of allowable. And this is why it’s like we have two worlds whenever these things happen, and you get this expression of speech. And you get a lot of pushback from people who don’t think that it’s appropriate. You get people taking these strong positions, you get them going after each other very divisive. Culture, right? And people aren’t listening to each other right now. And you get people just picking one side and treating the other side like the devil. But then when it gets into a court of law, and you unpack things, and you look at all the nuances, and you look at the specific situations, and you look at like what is a price? You know, what is a cost of what happened in this situation? You get someone like a judge that’s going to have to decide things like that in our society. The scariest part to me, is when we get us a society that doesn’t have an established judicial system that’s independent. And you might get a repressive leader or a dictator or an autocrat, whatever you want to call it. And they end up starting to use that system to make sure that all their enemies perceived and otherwise are going to be repressed. And it does, it’s not a fair argument anymore from anyone, it’s just who has the power and who doesn’t. And repression is going to pretty much always when I think, in the case where the people in power, aren’t, don’t have checks, they don’t have accountability. This is the beauty of America’s democracy, that it seems like we’re not appreciating as much anymore, this kind of three separate powers that run our government. And Du Bois was in a society that had these three things established that we just got through a civil war, he came up with a quote like this. I just don’t know how to really answer your question. In a world that isn’t a democracy, and doesn’t have this separation of powers. That’s what you’re making me think about.
Dan Fouts 26:23
Okay. Wow, those are those are big thoughts off of that, that question. I mean, yeah, the question itself, what are the reasonable restrictions on free speech in a society? All of the examples we brought up, have a unique answer to that, you know, you can answer that essential question by looking at all of those different examples. And I think that it also would force people to start thinking about criteria they set, what are the criteria we should have in a democratic society, on acceptable speech and unacceptable speech? What are those reasonable restrictions? I mean, the fact that we’re still grappling over that, after 230 years, or whatever, I think is a sign of strength. I think you’d agree. This is what makes our society so robust and healthy, that we still have these kinds of these debates. But I think that’s a fundamental question.
Steve Fouts 27:27
It is, and I mean, I would end that one with if people are not acting in good faith, meaning if they don’t show some respect, some civil respect for other people, and there isn’t at least a modicum of appropriateness or tact that we have with other citizens, this is extremely hard to get consensus on. Because you’re going to have people that are going to go to the extreme and just argue that whatever they say, stop telling me not to say it. And they’re going to forget about the harm it’s causing.
Dan Fouts 28:11
There has to be a baseline level of civility within the population, in order to have a society like this; we have to get along on a certain level in order for a society to function. So we don’t have to resolve all these things in a court of law. You mentioned judges, yeah, judges have to decide what are the reasonable restrictions. But ideally, we don’t have to always go to court over all these things. There’s civility baked into the system a little bit.
Steve Fouts 28:50
I would argue, even the fact that we’re going to court, so much now on this is the breakdown of civility. Like now the judicial system is needed to solve problems that we cannot solve any more with each other. And that’s what’s broken to me. That’s it right there. Because I don’t know if the judiciary is going to be able to answer all these issues, to such an extent where everyone is going to be okay with it, and they’re ready to move on. I think that you’re going to get what we’re getting now, which is each side, thinking, you know what, the other side is trying to use the law against me so that they can repress me. And vice versa. That’s what’s broken. That’s our division in the society right now. And that’s what’s worrisome, because whoever wins this one, if we don’t get that civility back, I feel that we will have a repressive leader. And we’re going to have to live under that for a while and compare it. I tell everybody I know that really, really complains about American society and how things are unfair, and are always talking about how we need to be better. And I wish I could move somewhere else. I tell them to write down a list of all the things that scare them right now. And keep that list in a lockbox. Because if we get a dictator or a repressive leader, I think that we’re going to look at the things that bother us now, in another light. And I don’t think it’s going to be as serious because I think it’s going to be worse. So I don’t mean to be a pessimistic person. But I feel like we have a great system. It’s imperfect. But it’s great.
Dan Fouts 30:50
All right. Yeah. So great conversation of a really important issue, you know, liberty and order, security and liberty, just the fundamental dichotomy in American society, how to balance the interests of control from above, and liberty from below. W.E.B Dubois – “The cost of Liberty is less than the price of repression.” We hope everybody considers using this in whatever setting you you have, and see how it goes and it leads hopefully, it will lead to a civil conversation over fundamental values. And we need to have these civil conversations more and more in an atmosphere of trust, and safety. And that’s where we hope this Teach Different method provides that for you. So thank you so much, everybody, and we will see you soon.
Steve Fouts 31:45
Bye. Bye, everybody.