A Free Society Needs Free Speech

  • A two-minute video showing German Chancellor Angela Merkel vs. Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, on the idea of banning offensive speech.
  • Angela Merkel’s views on free speech:
  1. Expressing an opinion does not come at a zero cost.
  2. Freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread, begin where dignity of other people is violated.
  3. Merkel warned that the state will and must oppose extreme speech or otherwise society will never be the way it was – a free society.
  • On the other hand, Greg Lukianoff debunks Merkel’s statements to the young people. He reveals Merkel’s statements as being targeted at raising a new generation that will not believe in freedom of speech but rather that they should have freedom from speech.