Free Speech And Why It Matters

by Andrew Doyle

It may be that in another thirty years we will have resigned ourselves to self-censorship and conformity to the status quo. Perhaps all art will be a form of ideological reinforcement, with eccentricity and free-thinking seen as quirks of a half-forgotten time. Perhaps we will learn to live under the continual supervision of the state, tempering our every utterance in accordance with the accepted script. Such a scenario seems inconceivable to those who have not learned the lessons of the past. For the rest of us, it is surely worth stemming the momentum of this new illiberalism. While we should celebrate progress, we need to be able to recognise the forces of regression that usurp its name. Even if we fail, at least we can say we tried.