"No Such Thing as Free Speech?"
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Greetings folks--
Join us on the outdoor patio of Mellow Mushroom (309 King St.) next Tuesday (Apr. 25) at 7:00 PM as we take up the topic of Free Speech! (Facebook event link here (https://www.facebook.com/events/691058377758727/); feel free to re-post).
To prep and stimulate your thinking, may I highly recommend Stanley Fish's brilliant and provocative essay, "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too" (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1sI3AJ_hrzdcUZiVFczenl4aFU) (click the link to download).
Some questions to think about:
• Just how much do we really believe in free speech?
• What limits do we place on it, and how well can we justify those limits without undermining our belief in free speech?
• Are there some new limits we should think about?
• Why do we think free speech is such a good thing anyway?
• Is Fish correct that a commitment to free speech necessarily entails acceptance of the pain, the emotional injury, the ignorance and misinformation, that it is bound to inflict on people?
• If so, what is the higher good, or greater evil, (or both!), that warrants our paying this cost?
Sorry for the long drought since our last outing! The last three months have been among the busiest of my life. Looking forward to getting back into the swing of things now!
Sincerely,
Wallace