Giving up the right to offend forfeits the power to challenge injustice.
Evidence
The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority. This is why free speech is essential not simply to the practice of democracy, but to the aspirations of those groups who may have been failed by the formal democratic processes: to those whose voices may have been silenced by racism, for instance. The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged. Once we give up on the right to offend in the name of ‘tolerance’ or ‘respect’, we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 661
Categorization
- APHORISMS: A genuine claim about how to live — that free speech’s true value accrues to the powerless and that ‘tolerance’ can be a tool of the powerful.
- DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the usual framing that free speech protects the powerful; here it is cast as the weapon of the silenced, and censorship as the shield of authority.
- XREF: connects to: Censoring bigotry makes opponents complacent and shirks the work of countering it. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 680; Bigoted speech should be countered morally and politically, not legally. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 671; Legal censorship lets anti-racists abandon open argument against prejudice — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us…, 675
Related
- Legal censorship lets anti-racists abandon open argument against prejudice (similarity 0.87)
- Censoring bigotry makes opponents complacent and shirks the work of countering it. (similarity 0.85)
- Bigoted speech should be countered morally and politically, not legally. (similarity 0.83)
- Free speech serves the powerless while censorship protects the powerful (similarity 0.82)
- Hateful criticism should be answered politically, not legally (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Censoring bigotry makes opponents complacent and shirks the work of countering it.
#corroborates(0.90) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 680 - Legal censorship lets anti-racists abandon open argument against prejudice
#corroborates(0.90) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 675 - Bigoted speech should be countered morally and politically, not legally.
#corroborates(0.85) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 671