It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of the audience to listen. Every time you silence somebody to make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. And you are hurting me, specifically, because I want to hear it. I want to know what they think and I want to know who it is who thinks in this way. With the right to free speech that these people have, you have come to learn what they really think, and denying that right doesn't change that or make them go away. It just allows you to be happily ignorant of the existence of such people. Which is surely a far worse problem.
John Stewart Mills said that if all in society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person, it becomes even more important that that one heretic be heard. Because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous and appalling view. Also put well by Rosa Luxembourg who said that freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently.
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