Free Speech And Why It Matters

by Andrew Doyle

this is the inevitable corollary of years of risk-averse parenting and teaching strategies, as well as the implementation of anti-bullying measures that have a tendency to catastrophise. As Greg Lukianoff argues, ‘People all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. This is precisely what you would expect when you train a generation to believe that they have a right not to be offended. Eventually, they stop demanding freedom of speech and start demanding freedom from speech’. An overdiagnostic culture has reframed distress and emotional pain as forms of mental illness, rather than aspects of a healthy human existence. To feel upset is not an aberration; it is a sign that we are alive.

interesting take!