As I was browsing around my favorite blogs today, I stumbled across this Washington Times book review of Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction by Nigel Warburton.  Here’s a quote from the review:

Mr. Warburton, a philosophy lecturer at Open University, opens with that famous Voltaire quip, “I despise what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it,” explaining, “Freedom of speech is worth defending vigorously even when you hate what is being spoken.”

I agree completely with Voltaire.  This concept of the freedom to offend people with one’s speech is extremely important.  It is also something that Western culture is losing sight of.  There’s a lot of talk on blogs about ‘hate’ speech.  There are laws against certain kinds of hate speech.  I have always thought that the only legitimate limitation to free speech is that which prevents harm to others.  Emotional harm doesn’t count.  My attitude toward free speech is ‘if you can’t take the hate, get out of the fire.’ I have every right to offend you.  You have the right to offend me.  I have the right to shock and disgust you with my words.  Once you limit my right to do these things with words, you side with people who would eventually strip away all right to speech that disagrees with what they want.

The National Geographic pictured here shows the censorship of its cover by Iran to hide a photograph of a couple embracing.  It does seem that most censorship is performed by people with some sort of religious motivation.  It is most obvious in countries like Iran, but it is also happening here in the U.S. where the more religious people get the more they tend to want to limit freedom of speech or expression in their communities, schools and libraries.
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