Douglas Murray

Four defences of free speech that everyone should read

  • From Spectator Life
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Every generation, and individual, has to rediscover the arguments for free speech for themselves. Some people learn from major incidents. Some when the censors come for someone close to them, or an opinion that they hold. Others come to believe in free speech because they realise that while being offended on occasion might be terrible, it is nowhere near as terrible as any system designed to make being offended impossible.

Fortunately there are short-cuts to finding the best defences of free speech. The English language provides an especially rich tradition on which to draw. From many centuries of literature allow me to list just four works: two classic, two modern.

The first – John Milton’s ‘Areopagitica’ (1644) – is really an argument for the freedom of the printing press. Milton’s argument was unsuccessful at the time, but became one of the foundation arguments for free speech. Apart from the beauty of the language, Milton’s work is remarkable for conceding that those intent on censorship do have a legitimate fear. ‘For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them.’ Yet, ‘As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself.’

On Liberty’ by John Stuart Mill appeared two centuries later (in 1859) and yet the sentiments are remarkably close to Milton. Mill’s work remains the classic defence not just of the right of free speech but the necessity of it: the right from which every other right flows. Mill says:

‘If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

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