"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", wrote Evelyn Beatrice Hall, not Voltaire, whose biographer she was. I'm heartily sick of hearing it spewed out by defenders of free speech.
Somewhere in
Gulliver's Travels, the third book, I think, set in the land of Brobdignag, the giant king of that land remarks to Gulliver to the effect that a man has the right to his opinions, but if they be wrong, no right to publish them, just as a man may keep poisons in his closet, but may not "vend them abroad as cordials".
I heartily agree.
All that libertarian nonsese about fighting to the death to defend the rights of liars and perverters of the truth is just hogwash. Untramelled free speech is for those individuals or groups who have the power, prestige, influence, or money to make themselves heard. The rest of us are largely voiceless and reduced to 'custody of the ears and eyes'.
Free speech? Free for whom?
For the 'great and the good', irreligious idealists, the heirs of demented Marie Stopes, the bbc, newspapers, politicians, advertisers, manufacturers of contraceptives and their mouthpieces; for pharmaceutical companies, anti-social and anti-family pressure groups, all, all of whom are engaged in attacking the moral structure of the family, of society, such as it is, and religion. They are not engaged in the noble pursuit of Truth, but in the advancement of their own foul agenda: the destruction of religion, morality, the family, the unborn, the untroubled innocence of childhood, the right of the old to proper care without fear of 'assisted dying', and the right of the rest of us to speak the truth.
Their mission is to bind us together, not by love, but by lust, idle curiosity, and greed.
Would I fight to the death for that? Damned if I would.
Be damned to them and to Marcuse and the rest of the Franfurt school, certainly!
