How did we get here? Have the populations in liberal democracies been lulled into thinking that things are how they are and will ever be? Real blood was spilled in the major conflicts of the last century (WW1 and WW2) on the "idea" of freedom. Men, women and children sacrificed creature comforts, food and property, and in many instances their lives, so that the "idea" of liberal democracy could thrive. Central to the idea of a liberal democracy is the concept that dissent can be voiced, heard and then hopefully resolved in a manner that avoids bloodshed. I don't believe this is the "end-game" of liberal democracies, just that this is where we are now.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) - source: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/364.html
[also attributed to Mark Twain - Jack]
The right to free speech can be boiled down to the right to offend. It is inevitable that the free exchange of ideas, that certain ideas will offend people. Copernicus would never have published his heliocentric theory (that the sun is the center of the solar system and not Earth) in the 16th century if he was worried about the potential offense to the religious authorities of the day. His theories became the foundations on which Newton and others built our current day understanding of the solar system. Not a bad trade off for the potential to cause offense.Among western countries, the Canadian Human Rights commissions have been the most active in prosecuting "incorrect thoughts". Canadian agent provocateur Ezra Levant has been on the wrong side of a Human Rights action and had to spend over $100,000 defending himself. The hypocrisy of the action is well documented. The commissions only want more power in the pursuit of an impossible, politically correct future. As Mark Steyn said when commenting about these Human
"When you subordinate legal principles to ideological fashion, you place genuine liberties in peril and that's the state in Ontario today. If you don't believe in free speech for people you loathe, you don't believe in free speech at all."The last word from a column in The Australian:
"But the West is killing free speech slowly - by more subtle means - through state-sponsored censorship under the grand name of protecting human rights."What a change that would make if those institutions so interested in "human rights" actually focused on real human rights, as opposed to the PC garbage they promote.
Links:
Copernicus Reference:
No comments:
Post a Comment