h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some of the people here seem to believe FREEDOM OF SPEECH should allow David Irving to publish what. Surely it is but not all the countries in the world allow to publish, present and say publicly what one's opinions. The problem of democracy is that we let people to say or do everything, even (quite logically?) to criticize or even subvert the basics of democracy itself. We are so tolerant we let the skinhead organize concerts, parties and meetings, we are so tolerant we can see books by revisionist historians in shops, we are so tolerant we let the extremists (in my country the communists, even those who took an active part in establishing the communist regime) run in the elections, we allow people elect them and finally we will probably allow them to destroy democracy and the FREEDOM OF SPEECH as well. I don'n know what should be done about this, neither I think all revisionists or extremists should go to prison, but there must be an answer to this DILEMMA, something has to be done.

To be fair, I don't think we need to worry so much, or rather David Irving is a case which is positive in terms of the connection of free speech and democracy. The actual question of free speech most obviously evoked by this case results from Irving suing Lipstadt (not the other way round). Why? Because she dared to say that he was a holocaust denier. In fact, Irving is roundly dismissed by all but a tiny minority, because people like Lipstadt have been allowed to point out that he's no kind of 'historian'. She won the case.