I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I know that’s an epithet, but to me it’s kind of like being an arithmetic absolutist: There are right and wrong answers. Emotional attachment to the right answers might be kooky — but it sure beats being attached to the wrong ones.
In Slate, Eric Posner reminds us that the rest of the world doesn’t love the First Amendment. Even Americans weren’t always free speech absolutists, Posner notes; for much of our history, the state blithely ignored the First Amendment whenever it became inconvenient. American governments cheerfully arrested anarchists, communists, pacifists, and purveyors of birth control literature. They prosecuted publishers of works by James Joyce and William S. Burroughs.
It might be better, Posner suggests, if we went back to the good old days.
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