{"id":1580,"date":"2009-05-04T20:25:16","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T03:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.candlelightstories.com\/?p=1580"},"modified":"2010-12-13T09:58:28","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T17:58:28","slug":"freedom-of-speech-and-thought-endangered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/2009\/05\/04\/freedom-of-speech-and-thought-endangered\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom of Speech and Thought: Endangered?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was browsing around my favorite blogs today, I stumbled across this Washington Times book review<\/a> of Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction<\/em><\/a> by Nigel Warburton.\u00a0 Here’s a quote from the review:<\/p>\n

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.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I agree completely with Voltaire.\u00a0 This concept of the freedom to offend people with one’s speech is extremely important.\u00a0 It is also something that Western culture is losing sight of.\u00a0 There’s a lot of talk on blogs about ‘hate’<\/em> speech.\u00a0 There are laws against certain kinds of hate speech.\u00a0 I have always thought that the only legitimate limitation to free speech<\/a> is that which prevents harm to others.\u00a0 Emotional harm doesn’t count.\u00a0 My attitude toward free speech is ‘if you can’t take the hate, get out of the fire.’<\/em> I have every right to offend you.\u00a0 You have the right to offend me.\u00a0 I have the right to shock and disgust you with my words.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The National Geographic pictured here shows the censorship of its cover by Iran to hide a photograph of a couple embracing.\u00a0 It does seem that most censorship is performed by people with some sort of religious motivation.\u00a0 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.
\nIn places like China, censorship is not religious but is rather a tool used by the government to prevent a population from gaining an understanding of what\u00a0 is happening in the world.\u00a0 (By the way, Candlelight Stories cares not the slightest if China bans its web site.\u00a0 In fact, I encourage China to do so.\u00a0 I don’t need their poison toys.)\u00a0 Western culture places huge importance on freedom of speech and constantly engages in an ongoing argument about how far this right extends.\u00a0 I see no limitation other than obvious harm that makes any logical sense.\u00a0 The cartoonists in Denmark who did the drawings a few years ago that so offended Muslims around the world and led to death threats had every right to draw anything they liked about a religious and historical personality.\u00a0 The Muslims who objected had every right to parade in the streets and shout their hatred as loud as they could.\u00a0 But they didn’t have the right to threaten the cartoonists with death.\u00a0 That is harm.\u00a0 That is where the Western world gets up to defend itself.\u00a0 It is the right to freedom of speech and thought that sets Western culture apart from almost every other culture on the planet.\u00a0 That is what the ancient Greeks went to war to protect.\u00a0 That is what we are supposed to fight for.\u00a0 Not oil.\u00a0 Not land.\u00a0 Speech and thought.<\/p>\n

As we build these technological monoliths like Amazon.com and iTunes to distribute our intellectual and creative output with seeming efficiency, we also build systems that are capable of censorship beyond anything imagined in history.\u00a0 Books can be completely erased from consciousness with a single entry in a database.\u00a0 Music that some corporate employee thinks is offensive can be wiped out of the digital marketplace in five minutes.\u00a0 Recently, Amazon and Apple have shown themselves willing to eliminate books, music and applications that they have thought to be somehow offensive.\u00a0 Consolidation of distribution means that censorship will happen and will be excused as a private corporate decision.\u00a0 Any store has the right to choose not to stock any book it doesn’t want to stock.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 But what if there’s only one store?\u00a0 What then?\u00a0 You might as well be living in China.\u00a0 The world’s biggest bookstore will also be the world’s most efficient censor.\u00a0 It’s coming.\u00a0 It’s already here.\u00a0 And we embrace it.\u00a0 We want to buy personal cash registers called iPods.\u00a0 We want to press a button and give a company the right to take our money and lend us a text that we are not allowed to share.\u00a0 These companies actually believe that they still own the things that we pay for and download.\u00a0 They still own them.\u00a0 That means they can alter them or take them away at any time they choose.\u00a0 Who will stop them from editing books they sell?\u00a0 Who will stop them from changing lyrics in songs they don’t like.\u00a0 Apparently, Wal-Mart already forces recording artists to change ‘offensive’ lyrics or they won’t sell the CDs. That’s what I hear.<\/p>\n

Here’s a nice little sample of speech meant to mildly offend a rather large group of people in the United States:\u00a0 If you shop at Wal-Mart, you’re stupid.<\/p>\n

But see, I live in a country with freedom of speech, so I don’t care if you hate me.\u00a0 And you’re so cute when you’re angry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163],"tags":[225,336],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-censorship","tag-free-speech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1583,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/1583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}