We should not be too quick, Walt thinks, to shut out of our ears voices from history. The concepts and issues they spoke and wrote about, decades or centuries ago, are, like the poor, always with us.
Last night, I came across a thought on the limits of free speech, written 73 years ago. The author is Jean-Marie-Rodrigue Cardinal Villeneuve, Archbishop of Québec City from 1931 until his death in 1947.
"Freedom of speech is not freedom to outrage our social conceptions, to insult our traditions, our principles and our religion."
The prelate's opinion presupposes a more or less homogeneous society, based on shared traditions, principles and religion. We no longer have that in America, Britain and -- especially -- Canada.
We live in a fractured, fragmented society where keeping track of all the "communities" is like counting baby spiders. And since the new "progressive" thinking says that one tradition or belief system is as good as another -- a notion that Cardinal Villeneuve would rightly have denounced as heresy -- we are now "free" to say anything we damn well please, no matter how offensive or outrageous it may be.
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