Liberal Curse
Further to my post last week I've been thinking about the problem of living in a society that values free speech.  The difficulty that I have is that there are so many people whose views I disagree with. 
 
Obviously it's healthy to be able to disagree on such things, and in all honesty how many of us can hold our hands up and say that we fully agree with every policy of any of the political parties currently representing us?
 
Similarly, it would be wrong for us to have a government whose actions go unquestioned and unchallenged, then where would we be?  This, if anything, is the biggest problem with the present government.  Blair has too many allies in his party, and in particular on the benches behind him, that he can more-or-less act without fear of recrimination.  Compare this with John Major's last Tory government, whose every Bill was carefully measured as the support of his own party was weighed up, and you can see that Tony really does have carte blanche in what he does.
 
Therefore, it would be better for us all to have a government under pressure, struggling for a majority who might therefore have to listen to its electorate to govern us, and not one with such an overwhelming majority that it can ignore what we say.
 
However, the biggest problem that I have with democracy is that we allow everyone to air their views.  This isn't a problem if those views are moderate, but when it comes to people like the BNP then it becomes a whole different story.  I'm pleased to see that the police are taking action following last week's documentary and am also pleased that BNP supporters remain very much in the minority and reviled by the masses, but I'm still worried about the apparent growth on their support.
 
However, the most upsetting thing is that I'm adopting a stance which is diametrically opposed to my belief in democracy, by seeking to punish and outlaw people whose views I strongly disagree with. 
 
The question is, would it be better to allow everyone to speak, or are we better compromising the right to free speech because we disagree with the opinions being spoken?




- posted by Paul @ 12:24 pm