It seems crazy to me that we are still debating what this means, or at least what it ought to be. I mean, no doubt of all us have a grasp of the concept, more so if we live in a western society, but do we really embrace it, or we just think we do, and that seems to be enough.
The opposition
If you truly embrace the ideals of freedom of speech, then you must also be completely comfortable defending the right of someone who you oppose to speak up. In other words, you can't both claim to be for freedom while restraining or accepting the censoring of others. It's not only paradoxical and dishonest, but in my opinion also pathetic.
This is why It's frustrating for anyone who actually embraces this freedom to see how some "progressive minds" fail to see how much they hurt their own cause. In other words, when you isolate a group with an opposing opinion, not only do you validate their position, but also show the weakness in yours. The battle of ideas is one that is not only healthy, but it needs to happen for actual progress to occur.
But to abandon abstracts, let me lay some painful thought experiments that may or may not apply to you my dear reader:
- As a Jewish person, are you willing to defend the right of someone to deny the holocaust?
- As an atheist, are you willing to defend the right of someone to profess their faith?
- As a religions person, are you willing to defend the right of someone to talk about Atheism?
I think you get the picture. If one of those applies to you and you thought to yourself "No! never... I would never help the opposition", then, I'm sorry to say, you don't understand freedom of speech nor stand for it at all.
Battle of Ideas
The only way we move forward as a society is to duke it out, so to speak. That is, to have debates, to discuss the differences and find compromise when we can. We don't win by silencing others, but by making more sense than they do.
I applaud those who invite people with opposing views to discuss policies and ideologies. Of course I should add the caveat, that I applaud it, only when it's done with sincere intention of having a healthy conversation. This of course is not always the case, and there is a fraction of pundits out there who just love the drama of political Theater, but those are usually the ones I don't take seriously anyways.
We should really take a look back at how intellectual discussions were carried in the somewhat recent past, before the media turned everything into a machine for selling ad space, and the conversations had more refined characteristics.
Consequence
I think this is precisely where people get confused, simply because the right to speak is conflated with the idea of the lack of consequence. In other words, someone may have the right to say the most ignorant, bigoted thing imaginable, and the voices of reason have free reign to criticize and ridicule that someone for it.
You see, criticizing someone's opinion is not censorship and its most definitely not an attack on free speech, but the opposite. Why is this so confusing to some people? I guess they've not taken the time to think about it enough.
