The freedom of individuals to speak their minds is being eroded on many fronts, I’ll give a few recent examples from Australia, a country that considers itself to be free, and a place where having your say without repercussions has in the past been excepted as the norm.

Recently a retail employee working in Australia was told by her American boyfriend she should stop ‘bagging’ George Bush in her weblog as it may make it difficult for her to enter the USA to visit him. He believed the authorities would have her on a watch list as a risk to national security and would not allow her entry to the country. Whether this would happen or not is unclear but the fear of repercussions is enough for many people to self gag, and thus this girls freedom to voice her own opinions is muffled, or at the very least if she continues to say what she believes her stress levels increase because of feared restrictions to her normal life, the ability to see her beloved. The implication alone is enough to make her life a lot less pleasant and may increase her fear or hatred of those in power.

An employee from a large financial institution was told by his employer he had better watch what he said regarding the organisation and its clients outside of work. Part of his terms of employment were ‘to not bring the organisations name into disrepute’ essentially he risked loosing his employment if he voiced any negative opinions about his employer or those individuals or groups who provided business to his employer. Or compared them to other groups or individual they found were not conducive to the image they were trying to portray to the public. He must now self gag his own opinions about his employer even in his own time, or run the risk of loosing his income and therefore his ability to house and feed himself. At the very best this forces him to think of the employer as an unquestionable deity. At worse he would have to vet everything he said in public before saying it because it may be overheard and taken the wrong way if reported back to his employer and always be at risk of loosing his employment.

And in another case recently, that was well publicised, Henry Rollins was anonymously reported to the Australian security watch dog because he was reading Jihad by Ahmed Rashid which is a history of Central Asia. Although it is doubtful Henry will change what he says in public because of this, it shows that the individual should be careful of what they read, because the government is keeping notes.

So if we accept that now we are loosing our freedom of speech not just about religious issues but also to voice our opinions about our leaders and employers, is this a good or bad thing? Why is freedom of speech so important?

We as humans don’t generally agree on everything, and this is normal, actually its a good thing, it adds diversity and makes it possible to find new solutions to difficult problems. The problem is that often people will try and convince others of the righteousness of their opinions by domineering those who disagree, forcing them to comply with their views rather than finding a commonly agreed solution. This intimidation through the use of power or physical force (violence) generally leads to fear in the subdued party and ultimately in returned violence. Essentially the submission of free speech leads to violence and fear.

You might ask though what of those people who use ‘free speech’ to deliberately tell untruths to incite violence? Well the only way to prove an untruth is by open debate, eventually if everyone can speak their minds openly without negative consequences either threatened or actual, the best truth for all will out and become obvious.

Our only real weapon against the cycle of violence and violent reprisal is free speech. And the more people are encouraged / forced to gag themselves for fear of reprisals the more the stewing pot of social violence is feed with more heat. Please release the oppression and give the human populous some credit for speaking freely and having the ability to listen to others without resorting to violence.

David Campbell