Freedom of speech

&

a fitting quote by Voltaire

In light of the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, the debate about freedom of speech is ongoing and has become global, see Anti-Charlie Hebdo Protests in Somalia and Pakistan & Unity March in Paris.

On both sides of the debate, people are eagerly protesting and standing up for what they believe to be true and should be set as a the status quo in how we go about treating controversial topics in society. On one side, there are religious leaders calling for respect and the people of the I am not Charlie Hebdo movement, while on the other side people and political leaders are standing up for freedom of speech and hold it up as one of the core values of a democracy that under no circumstances should be given up carelessly.

In the last days, we have seen people getting arrested for Facebook posts (Dieudonné & a French teenager) under the rationale that exceptional situations require exceptional measures. Is this really the way we want to go? Is this not practically bowing before the terrorists?

There are 2 risks connected to this debate. One is the risk of terrorism itself, so the risk of further attacks happening because of inaction by governments and society. The other risk is terrorism acting like a virus in society, spreading both fear and hatred and acting as a catalyst for catastrophic events like war. In my opinion, the latter is one million times more imminent and dangerous for our societies and that is why I decided to list these 10 reasons why we need freedom of speech now:

The right to freedom of expression is recognised as a human right under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also recognised globally by treaties such as for example the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

There is such a thing as the harm principle. Under it, freedom of speech should only be limited when there is a definite harm to others caused by it. This of course requires a consensus on what harm means in individual cases, but I believe that we as a society are able to come up with a consensus. There is a very clear difference that can be drawn between cyber-bullying causing teenage suicides and a simple political statement online that is offending to a percentage of the population. In the case of the latter, you can escape the situation by simply not reading it while in the the case of cyber-bullying, most teenagers would probably find it difficult to walk away from their online profiles because that would seem like a retreat.

The amount of power that one gives government if it is allowed to restrict freedom of speech according to its will and its political needs should not be underestimated. If you look at history, the cases of societies that suffer because of totalitarian governments will greatly overpower the cases where societies went down a bad path because people were having too much of freedom of of speech.

This one connects to the third point. If a centralised power such as a government is allowed to restrict freedom of speech because of something other than the harm principle, than the question of where to draw the line becomes very difficult. In times of crises or political turmoil, the risk of salami tactics restrictions becomes huge and people will get their rights to speak taken away piece by piece without even noticing it.

I believe that in any situation, the more diverse the opinions, the better the consensus will be. The more ideas you have, the more you can select from and especially, the chances of having lots of valuable ideas rises. So if we have freedom of of speech, we will live in a creative, diverse and exciting society where ideas flourish and innovation grows constantly. If we however, choose to go down the path of restricting what we are allowed to say, the set of ideas will shrink and we will all think alike more and more, hanging on to what we already know instead of exploring what is there to be discovered.

This one is maybe more of a scientific point compared to the above ones which I consider my personal opinions drawn from both life experience and reason. This(green = free, red = restricted) is a map depicting the scores of countries in the 2014 Press Freedom Index. You can see a direct relationship between countries that are developed and their press freedom. That can be interpreted three ways: (1) Countries that are developed are preferring press freedom of over restrictions because that is what they have learned in the course of their development. (2) Press freedom directly encourages the development of a country. (3) Both are the direct consequence of a third cause, but usually in history, positive developments are interlocked. In any way, it is difficult to find an argument against freedom of speech while looking at this map.

Since speech always is preceded by thought, speech control is basically equal to thought control. Do you really want anybody to be allowed to control your thoughts? For me personally, it sends me cold shivers up and down my spine.

The genius of freedom of speech is that it is a tool to let beneficial opinions for society rise up and let detrimental ideas be forgotten. Instead of suppressing something such as right extremism for example, freedom of speech can be used to argue against it, which is a much more powerful tool in eradicating hateful ideas than banning them. The latter only reinforces the trend, it is like taking away sweets from a child.

Freedom of of choosing religion and freedom of speech both stem from the same source which is freedom to think whatever you want. Therefore, you can either have both or none. If religious people now call for restrictions or respect, then they should first ask themselves the question if their own religion is not maybe exactly as a personal and subjective matter as cartoons painted by a French guy on the other half of the globe. In essence, the problem is belief system A vs. belief system B, it can only work harmoniously when it is a reciprocal agreement between both sides to respect each other.