Freedom of Discussion

Source: Law and the Government / By J. L. Brierly (Professor of Edinburgh University).

Freedom of discussion and as much of it as possible in public and in private is the very life-blood of
democracy, and nothing is more foolish than to sneer at Parliament, as some people do, as a “talking
shop.” It is just because Parliament is a place for talk, and often for very good talk, that it is so
immensely valuable.
What makes freedom of discussion so vital is that if the accountability of governments is to be a real
thing, it is essential that all the arguments for and against what they propose to do should be
expressed. There are always arguments both for and against any governmental measure, and even if
the arguments on one side or the other are weak, it is still important that they should be expressed
since otherwise it cannot be seen how strong the better argument is. Moreover, not only are
decisions more likely to be wise when they are arrived at after consideration of all that can be said
against them than if they are taken in ignorance of the counter case, but they are also more likely to
be accepted willingly by those whom they will affect and so to conduce to the smooth running of the
machinery of government.
Freedom of discussion is one example of the freedoms which we sometimes refer to collectively as
“civil liberties,” liberty of the person, of speech, of the Press, of access to sources of information, and
so on, and none of these can exist without the others. They are all causes which democracy is bound
by its own principles to uphold; or perhaps it would be truer to say that they are the soil out of which
democracy grows.
In a speech which he made in August, 1944, Mr. Winston Churchill summed up these liberties in a few
questions which might well serve as tests of the sincerity of any regime which claims to be
democratic.
1. “Is there,” he said, “the right to free expression of opinion and of opposition and criticism of
the government of the day?
2. Have the people the right to turn out a government of which they disapprove, and are
constitutional means provided by which they can make their will apparent?
3. Are their courts of justice free from violence by the executive, and free of all threats of such
violence and all association with any particular political parties?
4. Will these courts administer open and well-established laws which are associated in the
human mind with the broad principles of decency and justice?
5. Will there be fair play for the poor as well as for the rich, for private persons as well as
government officials?
6. Will the rights of the individual, subject to his duties to the state, be maintained and asserted
and exalted?
7. Is the ordinary peasant and workman, earning a living by daily toil and striving to bring up a
family, free from the fear that some grim police organization under the control of a single
party, like the Gestapo started by the Nazi and Fascist parties, will tap him on the shoulder and
pack him off without fair or open trial to bondage or ill-treatment?”
RIGHTS OF MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES
Much of what has been said above has assumed one obvious element in the democratic method of
government, namely, that it is a system of majority rule; and perhaps the right of a majority to rule a
minority is not self-evident, and we ought to consider how it can be justified. A short and not a bad
answer to that question is that since men cannot live together without government of some sort, and
since they are not in the least likely all to agree always on the policies that their government should
follow, the only alternative to the rule of the majority is the rule of minority, and for that it would be
even more difficult to provide a satisfactory defence.
Majority rule, therefore, can be defended without it being necessary for the democrat to pretend to
believe that the majority are always wise and right. Certainly they are not, but the reasons why the
democrat rejects the idea of entrusting the government to the wisest few, even if they could be
identified with any certainty, are the same as those which make him demand that it should be
accountable to the whole of the people, and of these we have already spoken. But most democrats
would also maintain, though this may be a matter of faith rather than something which they prove,
that on the whole the majority are at least as likely, and probably, more likely, to be right than the
minority. In any case there is no better alternative until all men think alike.

OBJETIVOS DE LECTO-COMPRENSIÓN:

• Nivel discursivo: Libro de texto.

• Nivel textual: Organización de la información.
• Nivel léxico: Campos semánticos (política, vida en democracia).
• Nivel pragmático: Evaluación y reflexión sobre conceptos y contenidos encontrados.
• Nivel gramatical: Cleft-sentences, anticipatory subjects, inversion of order, modal verbs,
phrasal verbs, tenses, passive voice.

ACTIVIDADES DE LECTO-COMPRENSIÓN:
01).- ¿Qué se afirma en el primer párrafo?
02).- ¿Por qué se incluye la referencia a la vitalidad en el segundo párrafo?
03).- Traducir el primer segmento subrayado.
04).- ¿Qué se afirma en el tercer párrafo?
05).- ¿Con qué finalidad Winston Churchill formuló siete planteos y cuáles fueron dichos planteos?
06).- ¿Qué se dice del gobierno de la mayoría contrastado con el gobierno de la minoría?
07).- Traducir el segundo segmento subrayado.