ONE might imagine that free speech, or at least its broad parameters, had been settled some time ago.
Say around the time of John Stuart Mill or Voltaire or maybe well before them, when Socrates told a jury at his trial in 399 BC that "if you offered to let me off this time on condition I am no longer to speak my mind, I should say 'Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you."'
As highly contestable, controversial topics of debate go, one might hope that freedom of expression was not one of them. Sure, we might argue at the edges. But, the central tenet of free speech seems rather uncontroversial. We might not all agree with one another, we may feel vehemently opposed to the views of another, but each of us will defend the right of others to say it. Alas, if you imagine such a commitment to free speech in modern, liberal 2012, you would be sadly mistaken.
Last Thursday, protesters from the Aboriginal tent embassy bashed against the glass walls of the Lobby Restaurant intimidating the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the emergency workers receiving awards inside. Predictably, much of the media moved quickly on to the dark arts of political scheming when it transpired that a Gillard staffer leaked Tony Abbott's whereabouts.
But rewind a moment longer to consider a more important principle. The thuggish activists saw no irony in proudly exercising their right to free speech by using violence and intimidation to shut down those with whom they disagreed.
The protests personify a strain of illiberalism found more often among those on the Left than the Right. Far from being progressive, members of the illiberal Left often work from one of two basic premises to curb free speech.
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