A FRIEND OF GLENN’S WRITES: “The Financial Times appears to have come out against free speech.”

Here’s a bit from FT’s “The real history of free speech — from supreme ideal to poisonous politics.”

So what exactly do we mean by free speech, and should there be any limits on it? In democracies, we celebrate free expression for good and hard-won reasons. Liberty of conscience is superior to enforced theocracy. The right to voice opinions without being persecuted is a hallmark of free societies as opposed to autocracies; so is the creation of challenging art and literature. Whatever your truths, freedom of expression is a valuable and inspiring ideal. 

But that doesn’t mean its principles are obvious or absolute. We often assume they must have been clearly established by great thinkers of the past, from Milton to James Madison to George Orwell, and that it’s only in the present that we’ve lost our way. But the real history of free speech is far more interesting — and it illuminates our current predicaments in surprisingly direct ways. 

Weird how “free speech” only became a problem when DOGE began disassembling the multibillion-dollar government apparatus that promoted the speech of one side, and not during (and just before) the Biden administration when those same tools, aided by social media, were used to stifle dissent.