WE saw in the siege of the United States Capitol the horror that unbridled free hate speech can bring. The repeated lies and extremist rhetoric of Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican political class have damaged the rationality of democratic discourse. It proved Aristotle’s theory about the flaws of democracy as a tragic prophecy; seen in the diabolical effects of unrestrained and uncensored freedom to peddle untruths. It is in the seriousness of the political implications and the steepness of the political costs that one is confronted with the painful question of whether democracy and the freedom to speak are still worth the price at a time when the speed of technology enables the depth of the damage of the lies from the extent of coronavirus deaths in America to the threat to its democratic institutions.

Free speech, during the pre-internet era, was at least tempered by logistical challenges.

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