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Voltaire wrote in a letter to M Le Riche "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."
This phrase has often been paraphrased to "I disapprove of what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it".
The freedom to speak, to exchange ideas is the single most important, most fundamental freedom we have. Through this freedom, all others flow and without it no others can exist. After all, how can you resist your freedom to own property that is not subject to arbitrary seizure if you cannot even denounce an attempt to seize it?
Attempting to silence ideas or concepts we find to be personally abhorrent is nothing new. There is a rich and terrible history of the misuse of laws and violence in order to prevent certain ideas from being heard and certain other ideas from being criticised, and this continues today with attempts to censor criticism of religious and political movements using both the courts and threats of violence.
Wars have been fought to preserve the freedoms we enjoy, lives lost, governments toppled. We reap the rewards of the freedom to exchange ideas and to criticise those we find worthy of criticism, in the form of prosperity, technological advancement and relative peace.
I will disagree with you, I will tell you why, I may even destroy your position using logic and evidential reasoning but I will NEVER demand that you be silenced.
I will conclude with another quote from Voltaire:
"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too."
This phrase has often been paraphrased to "I disapprove of what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it".
The freedom to speak, to exchange ideas is the single most important, most fundamental freedom we have. Through this freedom, all others flow and without it no others can exist. After all, how can you resist your freedom to own property that is not subject to arbitrary seizure if you cannot even denounce an attempt to seize it?
Attempting to silence ideas or concepts we find to be personally abhorrent is nothing new. There is a rich and terrible history of the misuse of laws and violence in order to prevent certain ideas from being heard and certain other ideas from being criticised, and this continues today with attempts to censor criticism of religious and political movements using both the courts and threats of violence.
Wars have been fought to preserve the freedoms we enjoy, lives lost, governments toppled. We reap the rewards of the freedom to exchange ideas and to criticise those we find worthy of criticism, in the form of prosperity, technological advancement and relative peace.
I will disagree with you, I will tell you why, I may even destroy your position using logic and evidential reasoning but I will NEVER demand that you be silenced.
I will conclude with another quote from Voltaire:
"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too."
J/K
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