| If you read the original arguments in favor of freedom of speech, it's actually quite easy to determine who should prevail. Back in 1644, John Milton argued in favor of allowing bad ideas to be published for the following reason[1]: > Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Thomas Paine said something similar in his introduction to The Age of Reason[2]: > You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. As did John Stuart Mill in On Liberty[3]: > But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. In short, freedom of speech isn't some deontological argument about the rights of the speaker or writer. It's a consequentialist argument about the rights of people to read or listen. Every time you silence someone, you are denying others the right to read what they want to read or hear what they want to hear. If some protesters are disrupting a talk, they are the ones who are in the wrong, as they are denying others the chance to get the information they want. Many in the audience might not agree with the views expressed, but they want to understand the ideas so they can strengthen arguments for their own views. If you don't think people are rational or intelligent enough to consume certain ideas safely, well then you might as well get rid of the entire idea of democracy, as you shouldn't trust them to vote either. 1. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Areopagitica_(1644) 2. https://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/intro.htm 3. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2 |
"Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments.[6] It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century BC.[7]
Freedom of speech was vindicated by Erasmus and Milton.[6] Edward Coke claimed freedom of speech as "an ancient custom of Parliament" in the 1590s, and it was affirmed in the Protestation of 1621.[8] England's Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament which is still in effect, so-called parliamentary privilege.[9][10]"