George Will: Freedom is the Greatest Insurance Policy against Crackpots

George will’s column today in the Washington Post tackles one of the most difficult issues for many of us. Is it intellectually consistent, or productive for that matter, to jail holocaust deniers like David Irving in Austria, while at the same time defending the virtues of free expression as it relates to the Danish cartoon issue (as an example). Does this not expose a certain hypocrisy that Islamic radicals from Osama Bin Ladin to Iran’s Ahamadinajad can harp upon? Does jailing Irving not create a free speech martyr out of a man with despicable views? Is it not far better to confront and defeat the whacky assertions of holocaust deniers in the open market of ideas, rather than suppression through a legal system with enforceable speech codes? George Will has a long record of defending freedom and a long record of defending Israel, and the Neocon tends to extend great respect to Mr. Will’s view that placing our faith in freedom is the greatest insurance policy against the views of crackpots like Mr. Irving.

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