I think it’s indivisible, freedom of speech:
I mean, either you’ve got it or you haven’t.
And every diminution of freedom of speech
diminishes everyone and lessens the currency
of freedom of speech.
But I feel nothing but unease when it’s
done lightly.
It has to be earned.
The controversial statement has to be earned.
It can’t just be tossed off.
You have to be able to back it up.
So I would urge civilized standards of moderation
on both sides.
It has to be understood that freedom of speech
isn’t just a sort of decadent frippery that
we gather around us like all our other comforts
and privileges.
Democracy can’t work without freedom of
speech.
It’s an absolute cornerstone of democracy.
So we have to be very responsible about this
freedom but there’s no giving it up or modifying
it, even.
I would say it’s an offshoot of what’s
solidified under political correctness, and
I’m a fan of political correctness.
No one ever says, 'Oh, I’m very politically
correct,' but, in fact, it’s good that we
are—not the outer fringe PC, but raising
of the standards about what can be said, and
exclusion of things you could have said and
got away with it 10 or 20 years ago and now
seems discordant.
And who wants to go back to being opposed
to gay marriage?
The ease with which that became the orthodoxy
was, I thought, tremendously encouraging,
and the idea that Donald Trump has cast off
these “shackles” and we can go back to
being brutes again is a terrible prospect.
PC has been an agent for certain sort of evolutionary
acceleration towards progressive ideas, and
I think that’s been very good.
I mean, when I look back at my very early
fiction of 40-odd years ago I’m shocked
and made uneasy by some of the liberties I
took that I certainly wouldn’t take now.
It doesn’t interfere with the freedom of
writers, political correctness—it gives
you challenges every now and then, you have
to sort of work around it a bit.
But I never resent that, and I think it’s
self-improvement on a general scale that we’ve
all responded to.
