FLAME: Defending unpopular views

[nobody@rosebud.ee.uh.edu]

From John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859:

[I]f any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught
we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own
infalliabilty ....
[T]hough the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly
does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing
opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only
by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth
has any chance of being supplied ....
[E]ven if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth;
unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly
contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the
manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension [of] or feeling [for]
its rational grounds.