American Views Abroad

 
I would like to repeat a quote by Noam Chomsky which I found in a Wikipedia article on censorship.

"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech."

-Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)

Chomsky used this to point out the danger of denying Nazis the right of freedom to express their abhorant views. In my opinion, this is the ideal of freedom of speech as it is defined in our American Bill of Rights. I believe one begins to destroy the essence of democracy when one begins making decisions about which opinions may be voiced and which may not be voiced.

Today is "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day", a global blogger action day for the right of bloggers to express their opinions in the Internet. Two Iranian bloggers, Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, have been jailed in Iran for doing just that. Here is a BBC article telling what this is about: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4278241.stm

The Website championing the cause of freedom of speech for bloggers is at Committee to Protect Bloggers. If you feel strongly about freedom of speech, please do everything you can today to express your opinion about this.
- posted by Fred @ 4:56 AM