Aristotle, Liberalism, and the Enemies of Free Speech
I ran across this article while reviewing my RSS feeds. Interesting thoughts in a world where corporations are considered “persons” in the area of speech with an election less than a year away.
Aristotle, Liberalism, and the Enemies of Free Speech
By Hrafnkell Haraldsson
“It is dangerous,” wrote Aristotle to a Macedonian friend near the end of his life, “for an immigrant to stay in Athens.” Ironically, like America of the 21st century, Athens was a stronghold of liberal ideas, the western birthplace of democracy. The Athenian historian Thucydides wrote of the virtues of free speech in the fifth century B.C.E. when the authors of the Jewish Bible were extolling just its opposite: repression born of hate and intolerance. Thucydides records the words of an Athenian, Diodotus, that “Haste usually goes with folly, anger is the mark of primitive and narrow minds.” Diodotus, reminds one modern historian, “went on to outline the dangers of using emotional rhetoric to frighten or manipulate an audience into reacting rashly.”If you can see the parallels between Athens of the fourth century B.C.E. and our own time, it is because they are there to be seen. Liberalism is not something that can survive without being defended, fought – and sacrificed – for. Greed, selfishness, the baser instincts of humankind, including racism and exceptionalism, crop up again and again throughout the history of democracy, and it is no surprise that time and again democracies and liberal ideas have fallen victim to demagogues and plutocrats stirring the mob for their own gain. We might compare the Athenian haters of the fourth century B.C.E. to the Tea Partiers of today. They certainly served the same function, channeling and expressing hate for politicians trying to build their own base of support, part of a symbiotic relationship between who frighten and stir hate and those who fear and hate. Click here to read more.