Freedom Of Speech: The Case Of The Charlie Hebdo Shootings

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The case of the Charlie Hebdo shootings is a curious one. Although it is widely believed that there should be freedom of speech in the world that we live in, not many people stop to think what the consequences of freedom of speech are. The Charlie Hebdo shooting is a perfect example of what can go wrong with freedom of speech. There should be sympathy for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shooting but that does not mean that it needs to be forgotten what impact that their magazine had and have on some people in todays world. Any expression, therefore, that impedes on one person or a group of people should be stopped because it has not done anything to benefit anybody. Mill’s statements on the freedom of speech is what I will rely on for my argument. Mill’s view on the freedom of speech is still relevant today because he does not take the view that there shouldn’t be any freedom of speech, but that it should be limited at certain times and this issue is very relevant in today’s society.

Mill states a bold statement in the footnote at the beginning of Chapter II of On Liberty, in defence of the freedom of speech ‘If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered’. Mill clearly is in the defence of the freedom of speech here because this liberty has to exist with everything so that we have ‘absolute freedom of