Whole Reason

In lis­ten­ing to Frank Wright’s lec­ture on sup­press­ing ideas, I real­ized some­thing impor­tant.  When a group in power out­laws crit­i­cism, they are engag­ing in a type of total­i­tar­ian lim­i­ta­tion on free speech, and in essence, thought control.

And while us west­ern­ers rightly blanch at Islamic blas­phemy laws, there is a sec­u­lar fun­da­men­tal­ist equiv­a­lent — hate speech laws.  Now, I still agree that there is a limit to free speech, in that we should not be allowed to slan­der oth­ers, nor incite vio­lence against them, but crit­i­cism, espe­cially moral dis­ap­proval, should NOT be dis­al­lowed under hate speech leg­is­la­tion. I should be equally able to crit­i­cize white suprema­cists, Islamic or Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists, politi­cians, or homo­sex­ual activists.