A philosophical aphorism seen on Twitter…
You don’t believe in freedom of speech unless you believe in freedom for speech that you consider ugly, offensive, deplorable, dangerous…
What?
The first three adjectives are standard fare, and reasonable, and so on. But the last one? That’s a whole different category, and it’s far from obviously true. Depending on how “dangerous” we’re talking about, it’s not true at all.
There have been many examples in very recent history of speech used to foment hatred of outgroups with a view to getting rid of said outgroups, and the result was “ethnic cleansing” aka genocide.
No, I don’t believe in freedom for speech that’s dangerous in that way, and no that doesn’t mean I don’t “believe in freedom of speech.”
But then I’m not sure I “believe in” the need for swearing a loyalty oath to freedom speech. I get the principle, and I basically agree with it, but I also don’t think it’s an absolute, and I think one does need to consider particulars.
