Free Speech Is Under Attack
QUOTE
London – Recently, at a literary festival in Britain, I found myself on a
panel discussing free speech. For liberals, free speech is a key index of
freedom. Democracies stand for free speech; dictatorships suppress it.
When we in the West look outward, this remains our view. We condemn governments that silence, imprison, and even kill writers and journalists. Reporters Sans Frontières keeps a list: 24 journalists have been killed, and 148 imprisoned, just this year. Part of the promise we see in the “Arab Spring” is the liberation of the media from the dictator’s grasp.
Yet freedom of speech in the West is under strain. Traditionally, British law imposed two main limitations on the “right to free speech.” The first prohibited the use of words or expressions likely to disrupt public order; the second was the law against libel. There are good grounds for both – to preserve the peace, and to protect individuals’ reputations from lies. Most free societies accept such limits as reasonable.
But the law has recently
become more restrictive. “Incitement to religious and racial hatred” and
“incitement to hatred on the basis of sexual orientation” are now illegal in
most European countries, independent of any threat to public order. The law has
shifted from proscribing language likely to cause violence to prohibiting
language intended to give offense. A blatant example of
this is the law against Holocaust denial. To deny or minimize the Holocaust is a
crime in 15 European countries and Israel. It may be argued that the Holocaust
was a crime so uniquely abhorrent as to qualify as a special case. But special
cases have a habit of multiplying.
UNQUOTE
Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky is a Jew. Skidelsky is also right. He says that making
the
Holocaust® story legally enforceable is wrong. Perhaps he makes this point
when he is the Lords.
United
Nations Declaration Of Human Rights
QUOTE
Article 19.
- Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
UNQUOTE
This does not seem to apply in England.
Free Life Commentary
Sean Gabb is England's leading libertarian. He has read
through the foul drivel which is communist propaganda and understood. He
knows that it is wrong and why.
Freedom in Peril
It always is when a government has too much power. Her
Majesty's Government has far too much.
Freedom of
Speech in England
Freedom must be exercised of lost. People do sometimes. They get aggravation
as a result.
Freedom of
Speech Screwed in Oz
Marxists in Australia hate freedom just as much as any other.
