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Friday, January 9, 2015

HOW THE PC POLICE THREATEN FREE SPEECH

HOW THE PC POLICE THREATEN FREE SPEECH

Today we are all Charlie Hebdo. But what about tomorrow? And the day after that?

That’s when our commitment to free expression will really be tested, and in ways that are less obvious and prone to easy, social-media heroics. That’s when the battle lines over “allowable speech” will really become clear and we’ll see who’s standing where. If the recent past in America is any indication, we should be worried, as free speech and the marketplace of ideas it energizes are never really popular for very long. They are always suspended over a precipice, dangling by a slender thread that shows every sign of snapping.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s absolutely fantastic that Twitter and Instagram are overflowing with people from all over the world publicly stating solidarity not simply with the French satirical magazine whose staff was murdered by Islamist madmen, but the larger principle that speech and peaceful expression shouldn’t be subject to murderous reprisals. I think it’s especially great that Europeans are doing so, since that part of the world is no haven for free speech.

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