The Heavy Price Of Free Speech

There are two types of people who hold opinions.

The first is the type of person who refuses to believe that there can be any right opinion than their own. Everyone who disagrees with them, or does things slightly differently is therefore wrong. At different times in history people of this first type have taken 'wrong' to be worthy of everything from a disapproving glance across a royal court, all the way through burning at the stake up to extended torture, religious recantings, forced confessions and eventual death. In honour of that dubious pinnacle, let's call this first group the Hieronymouses, or, if you prefer, Hieronymi. The world has seen a lot of Hieronymi.

The second group hold opinions but accept that other people might concievably hold differing views to their own. This scale can range from hearty and passionate disagreement and discord, but with a retained level of respect, to a level of passivity and intellectual, if not principled acceptance of all points of view. This is obviously a more sophisticated and complex frame of mind, so it isn't surprising that there have been fewer of this second type. Let's call them Voltaires, after the chap who coined the, "...but I will defend to the death your right to say it" line. Killing everyone who disagrees with you is pretty much as far as you can get from dying for the rights of those you disagree with.

Over the course of human history, the world has been slowly wrested from the hands of the Hieronymi by the Voltaires. Look back.

There may have been fair and reasonable absolute rulers in history, but they still perpetuated and represented a Hieronymous way of living - that there is one will, one opinion which really matters. Kings, Sultans, Emperors, Chiefs...humanity needs its leaders, but leaders have had to change.

Whatever the motives behind the changes, power has devolved from the will of the individual to the represented will of the many, with important shifts in human and civil rights along the way. You might pick out Plato penning The Republic, you might see a serene yet serious-faced Gandhi amidst a peacefully protesting crowd.

Being reasonable to be able to get power away from unreasonable people has not been easy, and it's taken thousands of years and an untold number of deaths. Free speech and everything that has evolved with it has had a very heavy price. Part of that price is living with it. It's not easy to be reasonable about the right to be unreasonable. (Look at democracy, for a start)

The world has been wrested from Hieronymous clutches to a point where a leader or any person of public exposure can't afford not to be a Voltaire. Or say they are one, anyway.

There may be only two types of people who hold opinions, but they are not always honest about which they are. Leaders or not, everyone fits somewhere along the spectrum between the two extremes, so your boss might be an heartless slavedriver whilst declaring that he is a people person, or a TV news station could be so biased as to be practically skewed while declaring that they are fair and balanced. Your best friend could be a Voltaire and your enemy one of the Hieronymi, or vice versa.

Regardless, on a personal level I really hate people who pretend to be Voltaires but are really Hieronymi, dictating the way other people should be and think from behind a mask of pretence of reasonability and apparent sense.
I respect their right to be that way, but I hate them.

That's all I'm saying.