Scotland’s Hate Crime Bill is well-intentioned. But history shows us that censorship is no way to fight hate.
‘Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country of communicating whatever we please to the public…’ Thus wrote Scottish philosopher David Hume in 1742, extolling free speech as ‘the common right of mankind’.
Read the whole piece at Spiked.
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and past President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties.