John Stuart Mill Freedom Of Speech Analysis

The freedom of speech is one of the most essential human rights since its existence, 67 years ago, to this day. Free speech allows individuals the right to express their beliefs and debate amongst others. In John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, the underlying message of this essay is that no one (collected group, or individual) is allowed to completely suppress the speech of others, regardless of authority or belief. The theory of free speech will be proven by specific evidence in John Mill’s essay on rights and regulations, the management of free speech in todays society, and personal belief on this topic.
John Mill argues this saying that suppression of speech is invalid, since to do so the suppressor must hold the ultimate truth – however, as humans, no one is capable of absolute truth because we are subject only to opinion. Moreover, suppression would cause society to pause in development, as a debate between opinions and challenges would be unnecessary.
Nevertheless, John Mill suggests that freedom must be regulated, considering that if not, opinions can become offensive and hateful much like the ones seen by Mark Steyn in the TVO episode of
“No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself, without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often far beyond them” (Mill 154). When an opinion is voiced publicly, it no longer only concerns the individual with the voice, but whoever it is directed to and those who are exposed to it. For this reason, it is not acceptable to voice opinions that are inappropriate, racist, sexist, and so forth, since it would call for a disturbance of the greater population. This is why no matter how essential freedom of speech is considered, when the voice harms society it must be