So Mark Zuckerberg finally got around to admitting what was already known, that the Biden Administration pressured his Facebook company to censor information on the platform, starting with C-19 (“including humor and satire”) and extending through the Hunter Biden laptop case.

Adding that to the Stasi behaviour of Britain recently, it’s therefore a good time to look at the arguments supporting free speech, and this list of required reading from one Greg Lukianoff is a great start. You can read his commentary on each book at this link, but I’ll list them here, ranking them diffrently on the basis of history. I’ve only read four of these.

  1. On Liberty – John Stuart Mill (1859). The most influential work on free speech in history.
  2. Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News –  Eric Berkowitz (2021).
  3. Kindly Inquisitors – Jonathan Rauch (1993).
  4. Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration – Teresa M. Bejan, (2017). Speech in Britain and America in the 17th century.
  5. A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment – Philipp Blom (2012). Speech in 18th century Britain and France when the culture of free speech clashed with laws on it.
  6. Free Speech, The People’s Darling Privilege – Michael Kent Curtis (2000). Speech in 19th century America, especially during the Civil War when the culture of it exceeded a weakly defended 1st Amendment.
  7. From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America – Christopher M. Finans (2008). Details the oscillations between free speech and US government censorship in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
  8. The Great Dissent – Thomas Healy (2013). Giving teeth the 1st Amendment.
  9. Defending My Enemy – Aryeh Neier (1979). The story behind the case supporting the Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978, by the leader of the ACLU back when they defended civil rights.
  10. Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee – Nat Hentoff (1992).
  11. The Tyranny of Silence – Flemming Rose (2014). He’s was the editor of the magazine that published the infamous Mohammed cartoons.
  12. The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder – Robert Corn-Revere (2021)
  13. The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth – Jonathan Rauch (2021). Free speech today.
  14. Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media – Jacob Mchangama (2022)

I’m going to make a point of getting through all of the ones I haven’t read – and perhaps re-visiting those I haven’t read in a while.