Ytringsfrihed og tankefrihed

Der er mange debatter som slet ikke drejer sig om argumenter, de ender med at dreje sig om personlige angreb (Ad hominem), distraktion, stråmænd, også videre.

I mange debatter, indvandrere, miljø, Islam, politik, EU, er argumenter sjældne, men følelsesmæssig antipati og sympati er ekstremt hyppig.

Det værste overgreb mod ytringsfriheden er naturligvis fysiske trusler og vold. Det er så antidemokratisk som noget kan være.

Alene at trodse sådanne trusler, kan være grundlag nok for at fortsætte sin kritik, nej, det er en forpligtigelse til at fortsætte denne, når trusler bringes på banen, fortsætte og udbygge.

Det er en pligt over for den fritænkning og ytringsfrihed som er kernen i demokrati og videnskab.
I en tidsalder som er moderne og oplyst, fornægtes sandheden og retten til at søge denne stadig.
Mod dette skal der blæses til fuld kamp, sandheden må aldrig fornægtes og muligheden at tænke frit og lade argumenter kæmpe frit mod argumenter må der aldrig accepteres indgreb mod.

Som Orwell har udtrykt det:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

John Stuart Mill har fat i den lange ende, når han siger:

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

Jo mere falsk en forestilling er. Jo lettere er den at modbevise med ARGUMENTER!
Og sandheden, når den er sandhed, vokser sig stærkere og klarere i kampen mod usandhed og fejlslutninger.

Så uanset hvor dumt og forkert noget er, har man ret til at mene det! Det er bolden og ikke manden man skal gå efter.

Vores civilisation hviler på skuldrene af dem som, tænkte videre end det accepterede, som kritisk gik til værks, som søgte sandheden fremfor overtroen.

Sandheden trives kun i den have, hvor kritisk analyse, argumenter og modargumenter, logik, fritænkning, nysgerrighed og åbenhed og den ubetingede ret til at forfølge sandheden eksisterer, som redskaber, gødning og muld.

John Stuart Mill igen:

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

Her følger en lille samling af citater som siger det langt bedre, end jeg kan:

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."
Charles BRADLAUGH
British social reformer (1833-1891)

"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."


Benjamin Nathan CARDOZO
American jurist (1870–1938)

"The Freedoms of Speech and Press are the necessary Conditions for the Enlightenment of Human Life, which again is the only Thing, that can save Peoples and Nations, and Experience teaches, that where these Freedoms exist, one will find comfort from much other Burdensomeness and Unpleasantness; but where it is not, and in particular where one feels deprived from it, the People either descends to the Beast or cut up rough like the Wild Animals, and in both Cases it is indeed the End to Human Life."


Niels Frederik Severin GRUNDTVIG
Danish social reformer and educationist, 1845 (1773-1872)

"Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought."


Naguib MAHFOUZ
Egyptian novelist and screenwriter (1911-)

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."


Salman RUSHDIE

"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism."


Wole SOYINKA
Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, and political activist (1934-)
Indian-born British novelist (1947-)

"I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking."
Woodrow WILSON
28th President of the United States (1856-1924)

The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.

Molly Ivans

Thomas Jefferson:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.