Censorship and existential threats

"There are usually two motives behind any censorship- good and bad. The good motive is the desire of the authorities to safeguard and strengthen the community, particular in times of stress. The bad motive is the desire of the authorities to suppress criticism, particular of themselves. Both these motives existed in 1644, as they do in 1944. ... The fact is we are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot forsee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. Yet the past was once the present, the seventeenth century was once “now”, with an unknown future, and Milton , who lived in his ‘now’ as we do in ours, believed in taking risks.”

E M Forster, "Two cheers for democracy"

The first restriction on political speech?

From henceforth none be so hardy to tell or publish any false News or Tales, whereby discord pr occasion of discord or slander  may grow between the King and his People or  the Great Men of the Realm.

3 Edward I , c 34 (1275)

But then again, there's Leviticus 19.16

Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer amongst the people.

Williams on the limits of evolutionary psychology.

The generic human need to make and listen to music, for instance, might be explained at the level of evolutionary psychology, but the emergence of the classical symphony certainly cannot. In fact, the insistence on finding explanations of cultural difference in terms of biological evolution exactly misses the point of the great evolutionary innovation represented by Homo sapiens, the massive development of non-genetic learning.

Bernard Williams, Truth and truthfulness, p 28

Force or argument?

The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse,

For Tories own no argument but force:

With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent,

For Whigs admit no force but argument

Sir William Brown, Nichols literary anecdotes ,ii,  330

In Schauer, Free Speech, a philosophical enquiry,  78, n8