What a surprise: illiberal liberals continue to find exceptions to other people’s right of free speech. At his Hilarious Pessimist blog, Dalrymple quotes Deborah Orr in the Guardian: “Free speech does not confer the right to be wrong, mistaken, biased or an axe-grinding- pain-in-the-ass.”
It is so obvious that the right to free speech includes the right to say things that others might find offensive or irritating that it is surprising, and not altogether reassuring, that a columnist in what was once a liberal newspaper should deride it.