Dworkin On ‘The Right To Riddicule’

“So in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended. That principle is of particular importance in a nation that strives for racial and ethnic fairness. If weak or unpopular minorities wish to be protected from economic or legal discrimination by law—if they wish laws enacted that prohibit discrimination against them in employment, for instance—then they must be willing to tolerate whatever insults or ridicule people who oppose such legislation wish to offer to their fellow voters, because only a community that permits such insult as part of public debate may legitimately adopt such laws.” – Roland Dworkin, ‘The Right To Riddicule’.

[Dworkin provides an interesting jurisprudential discussion of the role of free speech in democracies, after the ‘Danish Cartoons’.]