Mencken on Free Speech
No wonder neither the right nor the left have any capacity whatsoever to tolerate it:
“The danger in free speech does not lie in the menace of ideas, but in the menace of emotions. If words were merely logical devices no one would fear them. But when they impinge upon a moron they set off his hormones, and so they are justifiably feared. Complete free speech, under democracy, is possible only in a foreign language. Perhaps that is what we shall come to in the end. Anyone will be free to say what he pleases in Latin, but everything in English will be censored by prudent job holders.”
– H. L. Mencken; Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 18, 1929
(Tim Swanson)
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Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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