Why Are We Discussing Mental Illness As An Excuse to Curtail Free Speech?

Cyber bullying laws are big state censorship laws & an attack on free speech. Every dictator who soc. media has toppled tried to 1/2
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 24, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 ... censor & stop social media: there is no justification for curbing free speech ever, if you present to be a free society.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 24, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 If you are going to surveil, censor or ban Twitter, then you have to abolish every school playground, every text machine.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 24, 2014

 

A wise society, a free society, knows that the principle of free speech is an absolute: the minute you tinker with it, no matter how minutely, the entire principle is lost, and with it, the free society. Thus a wise society, a free society, knows that the emotions and feelings stirred up around a multi-faceted personal tragedy must not lead to the social injustice of curbs on free, unfettered, speech. Twitter did not kill Charlotte Dawson, mental illness did, with its concomitant breadth of unique circumstances, financial, relationships, childhood, et al, the intricate, complex web of a life, as is always the case. At times like this we need particularly to be thinking on the way we live, and our classical liberal ethic that once made the West the best civilisation humans have reached, and not producing policy born of emoting and what ‘feels right’ at the time. It’s about rigour and backbone required by our politicians, for once … (which is why, of course, I have lost hope).

 

Furthermore, to deflect Dawson’s suicide over to curbs on free speech, misses entirely the important issues surrounding mental health in our societies that should be the only issues front and centre here being discussed.

 

No to cyber bullying laws, hate speech laws, and all incursions on free speech, no matter how worthy may seem the excuse or the cause. If Judith Collins's New Zealand cyber bullying law is passed, then so must there be censored and/or banned every school playground and device that can send a text, because otherwise it can only be cynical politicking. I’m disappointed in Judith for championing this law, but then that’s why I’m a classical liberal, not an authoritarianTory.