"It's not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard.
It is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear,
And every time you silence somebody,
You make yourself a prisoner of your
Own inaction, because you deny yourself the right to hear something.
Indeed, as John Stuart Mill said,
If all in society were agreed on the truth
And beauty and value of one proposition,
All except for one person, it would be
Most important that that one heretic
Be heard, because we would still benefit
From his, perhaps outrageous, view.
In more modern times this has been put,
I think, best by a personal heroine
Of mine, Rosa Luxemburg, who said that
The freedom of speech is meaningless
Unless it means the freedom of the person
Who thinks differently.
That person doesn't just have a right to speak, that
Person's right to speak must be given
Extra protection, because what he has
To say might, in any case,
Give people to think about why do they know what
They already think they know?
How do I know that I know this, except that
I've always been taught this and
Never heard anything else? It's always
Worth establishing first principles.
It's always worth saying, what would
You do if you met a flat earth
Society member? Don't take refuge in the
False security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think,
You're bound to be okay, because you're in the safely moral majority.
To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful,
Or who is the harmful speaker? To whom you would give the job to
Decide for you, relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what
You might have to hear? It's quite common now for people to use the
Expression, for example, "anti-Islamic racism," as if an attack on a
Religion is an attack on an ethnic group. It's right in our midst now.
"Behead those,
Behead those who cartoon Islam.
" Do they get arrested for hate speech?
No. Might I get in trouble for saying
What I just said about the prophet Muhammad?
Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen?
You are giving away what's most precious in your own society,
And you're giving it away without a fight, and you're even praising
The people who want to deny you the right to resist it.
Shame on you while you do this.
Make the best use of the time
You've got left. This is really serious."