The antidote to speech you don't like is not censorship.
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
John F. Kennedy
Jefferson's Bill sets out four reasons why government can make no law that constrains our freedom of speech, conscience, or opinion. Those four reasons were summed up by Justice Brandeis in Whitney, and they have been further developed by the Supreme Court since then:
1. Freedom of conscience is an unalienable right because people can only think for themselves;
2. Free speech makes representatives accountable to We the People;
3. Free speech is necessary for the discovery of truth and the rejection of falsehood;
4. Free speech allows the public discussion necessary for democratic self government.
If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
[Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)]
Louis Brandeis
Free discourse without threat of fine or imprisonment is the necessary method to ensure adversarial victory for true ideas. History is full of instances where central authority over information flow preserved false ideas.
There was no time in history where the people who were censoring free speech were the good guys.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
Harry S. Truman
For the Far Left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.
Dennis Prage
No man/woman who is corrupt, no man/woman who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his/her duty by the community.
Theodore Roosevelt
There's two choices:
Either allow for some speech that you don't like.
OR
The government will allow only the speech that they like.
Peter Tarrd
If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
Sam Harris
