{"id":25190,"date":"2014-11-04T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T05:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25190"},"modified":"2014-11-01T12:33:44","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T16:33:44","slug":"qotd-democracies-need-freedom-of-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/qotd-democracies-need-freedom-of-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Democracies need freedom of speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In the <em>New Statesman<\/em>, Sarah Ditum seemed befuddled that the \u2018No Platform\u2019 movement \u2014 a vigorous effort to deny public platforms to the British National party and the English Defence League \u2014 has mysteriously advanced from silencing \u2018violent fascists\u2019 to silencing all kinds of other people, like a <em>Guardian<\/em> feminist who ventured some insufficiently affirming observations about trans-women and is now unfit for polite society. But, once you get a taste for shutting people up, it\u2019s hard to stop. Why bother winning the debate when it\u2019s easier to close it down?<\/p>\n<p>Nick Lowles defined the \u2018No Platform\u2019 philosophy as \u2018the position where we refuse to allow fascists an opportunity to act like normal political parties\u2019. But free speech is essential to a free society because, when you deny people \u2018an opportunity to act like normal political parties\u2019, there\u2019s nothing left for them to do but punch your lights out. Free speech, wrote the <em>Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Robert Samuelson last week, \u2018buttresses the political system\u2019s legitimacy. It helps losers, in the struggle for public opinion and electoral success, to accept their fates. It helps keep them loyal to the system, even though it has disappointed them. They will accept the outcomes, because they believe they\u2019ve had a fair opportunity to express and advance their views. There\u2019s always the next election. Free speech underpins our larger concept of freedom.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Mark Steyn, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/australia\/australia-features\/9187741\/the-slow-death-of-free-speech-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The slow death of free speech&#8221;, <em>The Spectator<\/em><\/a>, 2014-04-19<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the New Statesman, Sarah Ditum seemed befuddled that the \u2018No Platform\u2019 movement \u2014 a vigorous effort to deny public platforms to the British National party and the English Defence League \u2014 has mysteriously advanced from silencing \u2018violent fascists\u2019 to silencing all kinds of other people, like a Guardian feminist who ventured some insufficiently affirming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,41],"tags":[459,766,186],"class_list":["post-25190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-censorship","tag-democracy","tag-freedomofspeech"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6yi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25191,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25190\/revisions\/25191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}