Chomsky on Free Speech

[Gordon Fitch]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > ... The suggestion is Chomsky played in the hands of the right ("my
> > statement was not written as a preface to the book, which I did not
> > know existed, and that I asked to have it withdrawn, though too late
> > to affect publication a few weeks after I wrote it"), which he himself
> > regret now.

C. G. Estabrook:
> Nonsense. Chomsky was being consistent on an elementary principle of free
> speech (as he said at the time, "I thought these matters had been decided
> in the Enlightenment..."), which some invent tortuous rationales for
> setting aside (if from the best motives).  --CGE

I don't know why he said that, other than carelessness or
ignorance.  In most liberal polities, freedom of speech is
never absolutely granted; for instance, it is generally defeated
by property and privacy rights and considerations of public
safety and State security, to say nothing of the ownership of
most of the media by members of the bourgeoisie or bourgeois
institutions, which effectively deprived the majority of the
people of means of expression.  The boundaries of freedom of
speech have been matters of constant ambiguity and conflict
within liberal politics, even of the most fundamentalist
variety.  Nothing was settled by the Enlightenment.