The Free World Bars Free Speech By Jonathan Turley, Washington Post
For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam...
But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West. Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The "Free World," it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.
...should anyone be surprised that free speech is supressed?
Free speech is a messy and angering thing, allowing for all sorts of hateful and hurtful ideas to be expressed. We've seen what happens when speech is banned--that's what communist countries do--and, supposedly, we are supposed to be better than that.
But once we allowed the Left to start telling us which speech should be permissible, through the advent of hate speech laws and college campus speech codes, it was inevitable that some group would start using those codes against the rest of us. Rather than fighting ideas with better ideas, we are now in the position where expression yourself in an offensive manner can get you fined or jailed. Soon, such ideas will be literally unthinkable.
On another note, it's no wonder the Left seemingly hates free speech, if they can't control it, they resort to smears.
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