We all have the right to be offensive
Guardian - comment / 10-01-2010
Apparently, my history teacher was wrong and Voltaire never actually said: "I despise what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." As quotations go, it's only GCSE clever – an interesting juxtaposition for young teens, a notch above "'Assume' makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'." If you're still quoting it at A-level, that's OK but you won't win any prizes. In an undergraduate essay, it should get no more credit than "Too many cooks spoil the broth" or "At the start of the war, few of the combatants knew how it was going to end."
While it's an important sentiment, it should also, in a mature, free country, be an obvious one. It's not complicated – it's a truism, not a paradox. Having accepted it as a premise of our society, we should be talking about mor...
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