Not-so-brave new world: After Rushdie's fatwa, fear of violent reaction silenced liberal critics of Islam (Clint Spaulding/AP/Press Association Images)
Why write a defence of freedom of speech? The postmodern Left regards the idea as pernicious and contemptible. Few go as far as the American literary theorist Stanley Fish, author of There's No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too, who announced, "The only way to fight hate speech or racist speech is to recognise it as the speech of your enemy. What you do in response to the speech of your enemy is not prescribe a medication for it but attempt to stamp it out." But the professor is hardly the only "liberal" to believe that the state has the right to suppress offensive speech as if it were crushing an insurrection.
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