Title: Why free speech is fundamental - The Boston Globe
Headings: Why free speech is fundamental
Why free speech is fundamental
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Content: It is only by bruiting ideas and seeing which ones withstand attempts to refute them that we acquire knowledge. Once this realization sank in during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, the traditional understanding of the world was upended. Everyone knows that the discovery that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than vice-versa had to overcome fierce resistance from ecclesiastical authority. But the Copernican revolution was just the first event in a cataclysm that would make our current understanding of the world unrecognizable to our ancestors. Everything we know about the world — the age of our civilization, species, planet, and universe; the stuff we’re made of; the laws that govern matter and energy; the workings of the body and brain — came as insults to the sacred dogma of the day. We now know that the beloved convictions of every time and culture may be decisively falsified, doubtless including some we hold today. Advertisement
A third reason that free speech is foundational to human flourishing is that it is essential to democracy and a bulwark against tyranny.