Sunday, February 6, 2022

On cancelling

Via David French: from a speech by Frederick Douglass on December 9, 1860, in Boston, after being shouted down and denied the right to speak a few days earlier. Douglass was then addressing abolition but what he said had, and has, a broader application.
.... No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. ....

.... To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money. ....

.... A man’s right to speak does not depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right – and there let it rest forever.
Frederick Douglass, “A Plea For Freedom of Speech in Boston,” December 9, 1860.

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