Well, of course security is the weight in one pan of the scales of justice, and in the other pan is freedom.
If there were not important values competing, it would be easy, and there wouldn't be any reason for debate.
I can't remember exactly which of the Founding Fathers' arguments is talking in my ear - some old guy writing by candle light with a quill pen on parchment paper - maybe Jefferson, maybe Madison, maybe Franklin, somebody even earlier, one of the old French guys or Brits who came before them. Montesquieu or Tom Paine or Locke.
I hear him (or maybe it's them) saying that ideas must compete like everything else in the marketplace. They must be observed, and tested, and viewed from this angle and that angle, and - to mix metaphors - you need to kick the tires. I might have an idea, and it might seem like a very good idea, so I go off to the coffee house to talk about it with my friends, and somebody else responds to my ideas, much like you and I are doing here on SI. And maybe after a while you convince me that my idea is no good, or I persuade you that it's brilliant.
But, if it were illegal for me to talk about my idea, then I'd believe it in secret, and never know it was wrong.
The down side is that I might persuade you to believe a bad idea, which you would never have done if I kept my mouth shut. But, I don't believe for a moment that I can convince someone as intelligent as you of a bad idea. So, I have faith that being able to talk about bad ideas is a kind of medicine for the body public. The wise men will persuade the foolish men, rather than vice versa. |
