Christopher Hitchens - Free Speech скачать в хорошем качестве

Christopher Hitchens - Free Speech

Transcript: “It’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard. It is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear, and every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your own inaction, because you deny yourself the right to hear something. Indeed, as John Stuart Mill said, if all in society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except for one person, it would be most important that that one heretic be heard, because we would still benefit from his, perhaps outrageous, view. In more modern times this has been put, I think, best by a personal heroine of mine, Rosa Luxemburg, who said that the freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently. That person doesn’t just have a right to speak, that person’s right to speak must be given extra protection, because what he has to say might, in any case, give people to think about why do they know what they already think they know? How do I know that I know this, except that I’ve always been taught this and never heard anything else? It’s always worth establishing first principles. It’s always worth saying, what would you do if you met a flat earth society member? Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think, you’re bound to be okay, because you’re in the safely moral majority. To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? To whom you would give the job to decide for you, relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? It’s quite common now for people to use the expression, for example, “anti-Islamic racism,” as if an attack on a religion is an attack on an ethnic group. It’s right in our midst now. “Behead those, behead those who cartoon Islam.” Do they get arrested for hate speech? No. Might I get in trouble for saying what I just said about the prophet Muhammad? Yes, I might. Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen? You are giving away what’s most precious in your own society, and you’re giving it away without a fight, and you’re even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you while you do this. Make the best use of the time you’ve got left. This is really serious.” Soundbite:    • Видео