JRP1994
Sr. Member
Posts: 2,048
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« on: January 07, 2015, 07:04:13 PM » |
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I've been thinking.
What makes this horrible and barbaric terrorist attack in Paris even more disturbing is that this was not merely an attack on a magazine office in Paris - this was, quite simply, an attack on one of the most basic and most fundamental rights of man: freedom of expression.
The right to speak/write freely exists, by definition, to protect controversial speech - speech that some will inevitably disagree with, and that some will consider offensive or blasphemous. Think about it. Small talk doesn't need protection - there are no crusades to stop people from talking about the weather. You never hear about car-bombings against sports pundits. The fact is, it’s controversial and offensive speech that does need protection. Not a single person on earth has the right to censor someone - much less attack them - for the mere purpose of avoiding offense. Nobody has the right to not be offended merely by being a certain race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or of a certain political persuasion.
I firmly believe that unless someone's speech or writing presents a clear and present danger - such as an explicit call to violence - it should NOT be censored. This includes pornography, obscenity, political dissent, criticism of any and all religion, racist/xenophobic/homophobic speech, and any similar controversial speech.
The fallacy of censorship is that it assumes that man cannot decide for himself what is appropriate for him to hear, yet finds it perfectly acceptable to give that responsibility to other men - government, specifically - to determine it for him. Even the most disgustingly offensive speech must be granted utmost protection. If a radical says that the Jews deserved the Holocaust and brought it on themselves, his speech must be protected. If a cartoonist draws a cartoon depiction of Mohammed that some find offensive, his speech must be protected. Phil Robertson's anti-gay statements are as important as Noam Chomsky's writings in the sense of the necessity to protect them. Simply put, the more controversial the speech, the more important it is to protect (so long as the speech does not incite violence.)
As Salman Rushdie said, "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
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