June 14, 2025

Free speech is about as good a cause as the world has ever known. But it…gets shoved aside in favor of things which seem at a given moment more vital…everybody favors free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.

Heywood Broun (1888–1939), American journalist, The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.34

Whose free speech would you like to cut off? Admit it, you have a few axes of your own to grind, right? What are they? Get them off your chest—aloud, if only in the privacy of a sound-proof room. You’ll be better for it.

The problem with the much-touted marketplace of ideas, where they compete with each other in the search for truth, is that, like all markets they can be rigged—by monopolists, manipulators, and truth-shavers. Still, better an imperfect marketplace than a Ministry of Truth.