Censorship is a greater crime than the thing being censored can ever be deemed to be. And when the censorship is aimed at the public by a government that professes Democracy, and it is coerced upon the public broadcaster, then it is a transgression of the public’s right to know! Yes, its true, this is all dependent on the version of Democracy we profess. But I’m assuming that that version does not have a ‘k’ in it.

“Those journalists who cringe before government censorship do their fellow journalists, and therefore the public, a great disservice: “Bad men [and laws] are only strong when the virtuous are timid and irresolute. The present administration – certainly the most contemptible that were ever laughed at – may become as cruel as Nero, if we do not resolutely oppose them as we thoroughly despise them.” – William Hone.

Because some people find a thing offensive does not mean that it should be hidden from view. Hiding something from an intelligent, educated and responsible public doesn’t make it cease to exist. The Final Solution and the Holocaust, which are offensive to most right thinking people, if subjected to the same reason that the Q&A program has been subjected to would also be erased from our consciousness. Likewise the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. While there is no right to offend it is more often true that offence is taken by those in whom the views of others produce some sense of guilt, or ignorant fear. Where that guilt that drives offence comes from is irrelevant, but that guilt, that fear, that ignorance that causes offence, should be used productively and should not deny the rights of those would wish to understand both the reasons for the offence and the fears it induces within those who presume to hypocritical and false propriety. To discuss and debate issues is to understand them – it is to overcome them.

This episode of Q&A – this debate on differing views is no offence –  this is an expression of views that people out here are holding. Fellow Australians. Whether we like those views or not they are out there in our society – we have caused those views. If one doesn’t like those views then the best way to overcome them is through interaction with them, through reasoning, and through an understanding of just what it is that induces those views. Hiding them, sending them behind closed doors is not the way to counter different or even abhorrent viewpoints. Its the very thing that produces those views in the first place.

Political correctness, which seeks to crush dissenting views, creates ignorance and through it we lose any ability we would have to fight against despotism. It takes the very weapon away from us that helps us to reason away, and to conciliate our differences. The suppression of free speech does not create a better understanding and a freer more open and inclusive community. It creates divisions, and leaves no way out for those to express their dissent, their disgust and their disappointment and discontent with injustice and corruption than to resort to force, to violence. The suppression of violent and angry thought – which is only despair – with violence will only make more violence! It has no place in Democracy.

“Its difficult to adopt any mode of address to the unrepresented part of the public … The unrepresented are mere expletives in the political creation; and if they were not called upon to obey laws in the enactment of which they have no share, they might be abandoned to the apparent insignificance to which they are told the constitution has consigned them … Well then, gentleman, although you are mocked with the title of worthy and independent freemen – although your suffrages are not counted, and nobility and wealth and respectability disdain to take you by the hand … yet you are something while you have anything. The minister is not above taking your money, although he is not in need of your advice.”  – Thomas Wooler, The Black Dwarf.