(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Restricting speech is a path to coercion. It's shortsighted. At some point you will strongly disagree with some point of political correctness and the force of restricted speech will come down on your own point of view.
As a professor at Cornell University says, "There is no alternative to free speech, because every controversial topic has a substantial group of people who view it as hate speech."
Free speech respects the dignity of other people, and your own. Free speech enables us to pursue the truth. Those are advantages. The disadvantage is that voices we don't like will also be heard. But free speech is worth it.
Evolutionary biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins speaks and writes books to convince the world that all life on earth resulted from random chance and natural selection. Philosopher Paul Nelson believes that all life shows evidence of intelligent design. Their opinions are far apart.
Normally welcome on any college campus, Dawkins was disinvited from speaking at Trinity College, Dublin, because of politically incorrect comments he recently made. Was Nelson happy to hear of the cancellation? No. He signed a petition to uphold the original invitation, though he objects to Dawkins' message.
Nelson says, "I think Dawkins is wrong about a great many things, but cancel culture destroys truth-seeking." Like me, Paul Nelson believes speech must be free. It's worth it.
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