PER 2015
seeing as we are inherently selfish. Classical economists claim that consumers are rational and they seek to maximise their utility, whether that be at the cost of others or not. Thomas Hobbes described the human condition, stating that “each man acts always with a view to his own benefit… and most good things in life are scarce”. Therefore, assuming that men will act upon their needs regardless of the cost it might incur on others, their right to act upon their thought is at a cost to someone else. JS Mill wrote that there is “only one purpose power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. This is obviously just. For example, if I liked someone’s car I can’t just take it; that would be theft. Another, more relevant example is that inciting racial hatred is illegal. Despite this being someone’s right to state how much he or she hates someone of a different race. It is not illegal, however, because it is incredibly offensive but because it can be shown to lead to intimidation or even violence towards minorities. This is an example of how we already understand that unrestricted individual freedom is not in the interests of all. This year, freedom of expression has been a big topic in media. For example, the Charlie Hebdo massacre or Edward Snowden releasing confidential files. These two examples, I feel demonstrate that freedom of speech can actually be detrimental to the whole of society. Freedom of speech has evolved into a right to offend. Freedom of expression fundamentalist justify their offensive slurs claiming it is their right to be able to say what they think. Therefore, someone’s individual freedom is at a cost of someone else. Martin Rowson, a cartoonist for the guardian came to my school earlier this year and described his work as an essential cog in the political system. He said the ability to talk about politicians in a really demeaning manner stops them from abusing their power. His work helps to scrutinise the government. This is true because any move a politician makes now, a cartoonists is thinking of how he/she could make him look like an idiot. Take Ed Miliband’s attempt to rally support by engraving his main points of the Labour parties manifesto on a huge piece of granite. Cartoonists pictured him as Moses giving his ten commandments to the people of Britain. Rowson felt that it was his duty to lampoon people. However much I do enjoy seeing outrageous images of Nick Clegg, and I think it is good that someone is trying to scrutinise politicians, I also think that this is a good example of how freedom of speech has evolved into being a duty to offend. A recent example of this is the abuse that satirical magazines aim at Muslims post 911, which accumulated to a devastating attack in Paris on 7 th January. We were told that the Charlie Hebdo massacre was an assault on free speech. We were told that the magazine was right to picture the Prophet, despite this being the most insulting thing possible to a follower of Islam. Nicolas Sarkozy called it “a war on civilisation”. Following the avalanche of articles claiming similar statements a Muslim journalists, Mehdi Hasan 22 , wrote an article talking about the hypocrisy of free speech fundamentalists. This was the first article I came across saying the magazine was in the wrong (obviously stating that there was no justification for gunning down the journalists). In the article, Mehdi described the “thought experiment” put forward by the Oxford professor Brian Klug. He asked the audience to imagine what would have happened if someone at the “Unity Rally” was to wear a badge saying “Je Suis Chérif”, the first name of one of the murders. He concluded that he would have been lucky to escape with his life, despite in some people’s eyes, that person would have been a lone hero standing up for freedom of speech. The people on that march would have been profoundly offended by him. This experiment, I think, proved that we can all understand that saying exactly what you think is not always the right thing to do. Also the pope injected a tone of common sense by saying “if you insult my mother, expect a punch”. In fact, you could argue that the
22 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/charlie-hebdo-free-speech_b_6462584.html
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