Freedom doesn’t include protection from being offended

Todd Whitcombe’s column re: freedom of speech verses suppression of what some consider offensive exposes a vital topic that needs understanding and clarification.

Whitcombe references the “Lindsay Shepherd affair” where Shepherd as a teaching assistant at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. showed her students a video in which a White Supremacist expressed many ‘alt-right’ racist and anti-LGBTO views that most of us would disagree with. Students were shocked and upset by the views presented in the video. Shepherd did not promote these views, but simply presented them as existing within society.

WLU officials censored Shep- herd for showing it because some students were “offended” and “upset” by the ideas presented, even though Shepherd explained that she did not agree with them but was simply examining them as societal prejudices. The officials claimed the students were “too young” to discern that these ideas were wrong.

Should universities (and, in general, newspapers, and all forms of media) shield students and the general public from discussions of ideas, words, philosophies, political views that offend individuals? Language police fail to understand that discussion does not mean agree with.

One of the prices of freedom that we all enjoy and often take for granted is that other free citizens may speak and act in ways that we disagree with, or may make us uncomfortable.

Too bad. We can’t have freedom and perfect harmony at the same time. People differ, full stop.

Describing some idea as offensive has come to mean simply “something I don’t agree with” or “something that makes me feel uncomfortable.”

Tough luck. Be offended. You live in a free society. Certainly you have the right to express opposition to and debate against these ideas, but not to suppress them. If you don’t like the possibility of being offended, then don’t go to university. Join a religious cult that you agree with totally, where you will be completely shielded from anything you oppose.

We must protect the freedom of the press, freedom to debate, freedom to disagree – even vehemently and passionately – without taking away others’ freedoms.

The latter does not include “protection from being offended or being made to feel uncomfortable by ideas.”

Donald A. Fraser, Prince George