Aswad
Posts: 6908
Joined: 4/4/2007
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tsatske
If you want free speech, there is a cost - You must be willing to stand and listen to the man proclaim the ideas you hate, which make your blood boil, listen to him shout them on the street corner, and be willing to defend his right to do so.
Actually, you don't need to listen to his ideas, but you have to defend his right to express them. It is a matter of Integrity. And one that I took to heart long ago. If I disagreed with someone, or disliked their ideas, I voiced my arguments or opposing ideas, but I would still make sure he got to express the ideas. Many people don't get that such things work both ways, e.g.when Noam Chomsky spoke out against those who would censor Holocaust-deniers, people accused him of sympathizing with the ideas (despite his statement to the effect that "any idiot can see this is bullshit"), rather than realizing that he was only backing the right to express them.
Popular speech has never needed defending.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Express yourself - 
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