Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 363 of the late Gordon Wood’s great 1991 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution:

Yet the [Jeffersonian] Republicans did have a criterion for determining who was right and who was wrong, and it was the opinion of the whole people. Their arguments in favor of freedom of speech rested on the assumption that opinions about politics, like opinions about other subjects, were no longer the monopoly of the educated and aristocratic few. Not only were all opinions equally to be tolerated but everyone and anyone in the society should be equally able to express them. Truth was actually the creation of many voices and many minds, no one of which was more important than another and each of which made its own separate and equally significant contribution to the whole.

DBx: Such admirable support for freedom of speech and the press does not, of course, imply that every voice is equally well-informed or responsible. When speech and press are free, the ignorant, the childish, the venal, and the cunning have just as much right to express themselves as do the informed, the mature, the public-spirited, and the honest. But freedom of speech and the press do not imply any right to be heard or heeded. Nor do these freedoms imply a right to be free of criticism; quite the opposite.

And yet, while freedom of expression doesn’t guarantee that light (or even the better arguments) will triumph over darkness, such freedom provides the best prospects of moving in that happy direction.