Vint Chavala in his letter "Unbridled 'freedom' not on" (PostBag, Nov 21) helpfully highlights weaknesses in Veera Prateepchaikul's opinion piece "Dialogue needed on monarchy reform," (Opinion, Nov 15).
But first, Mr. Chavala's exaggeration must be corrected. No one, not a single person, has ever called for "unbridled freedom" of speech. To suggest that they have is as reckless as insisting that if someone wants to discuss how a democracy should be reformed, they are radical anarchists or communists calling for it's overthrow.
Mr Chavala is on safer grounds when he points out that "In any democracy, freedom of expression is always a good thing and necessary." Democracy is that system of government where everyone is accorded an equal voice in determining the form of their society, its government, and the laws that are made by the people's government come from their society. That is why free speech is fundamental and non-negotiable. If some people in a society cannot express some set of ideas in their society, then democracy is denied them.
There are, nonetheless, some limits on what people may say that do not conflict with democratic principle. Every such limit must, however, be very narrowly defined and soundly justified. That someone or some group, even a large majority, is offended can never justify law that restricts the people's right to free speech. That people who lived one hundred years ago would have been offended is even less a relevant justification of any restriction of the basic democratic right to free speech for people living today. Wonderful though they may have been, we can surely do better than our ancestors did.
One justification for restrictions on speech is where ignorance is needed to protect the common welfare. Censorship that restricts free speech is always, without exception, done to enforce ignorance of the topic censored. This ignorance is sometimes a very good thing. The need for such ignorance of a topic is why, for example, nations have laws that criminalize the publication of information on how to make nuclear weapons: such knowledge is best suppressed save for very small numbers of duly monitored people.
In the case of Thai law, it must be asked why legally enforced ignorance of the censored topics is so vital that the usual democratic principle of free speech must be restricted for a set of persons or institutions. This is the truly important question to which Vint Chavala, like Veera Prateepchaikul and those who actually support the forced ignorance that follows from censorship must provide answers. What is it that makes such legally enforced ignorance of the topics so vital? It is not at all clear how this could in fact be in the public interest of the Thai people or of their nation.
A lesser consideration worth noting is that critical thinking mandates respect for free speech. As the ongoing debate about the origins of Covid-19 remind us, in science as in every other area of knowledge, with no exception save mathematics and logic, free speech is a necessary antidote to sincerely held but false beliefs and claims of any kind, factual, moral or otherwise.
Absent free speech, there can be no critical thinking of worth on a topic. Neither can there be informed opinion of worth on a censored topic. Nor can any law be held justly democratic that has not been made by referendum or a government of the people elected from a society in which all have had an equal right to voice their ideas.
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
