Resist the urge to limit speech

November 21, 2015 – A couple of interesting items today deal with self-censorship and the rise in support of limiting speech.

The Daily Caller reports on a recent Pew Research Poll showing that 40 percent of youth between the ages of 18 – 34 support restricting speech critical of minorities. While this seems like a well-intended idea, I’d like to remind everyone that censoring bad ideas is a bad idea. Why? Because if are not able to confront bigoted speech in the public sphere, then where are we going to be able to confront it? The full story is here.

Kenan Malik by Lars Pehrson

Check out free speech leader, Kenan Malik’s blog Pandemonium and recent interviews on self-censorship here.  A growing movement towards self-censorship across the globe is very problematic. Self-censorship is worse than regular old censorship because it means the messages and ideas promoted by the censoring body has seeped into the collective mindset of the population. Or that the population fears retaliative measures taken by the government, friends and family and/or religious community. Self-censorship is very difficult to stop.

Photo: 2015-11-11 Kenan Malik, forskare neurobiologi
by Lars Pehrson code 30152