He wasn't even accused of saying it.

He was accused of perhaps planning to say something

that violated the Austrian law that says only one version of the history of the Second
World War may be taught in our brave little, tyrally, and republic. The republic that gave
us, well time, a Secretary General of the United Nations, and then wanted in several
countries for war plants. You know, the country that gave it has your hider, the leader
of its own fascist party, in the cabinet that sent David Irving to jail. You know
the two things that have made Austria famous, given its reputation, by any chance? Just
what I've got you. I hope there are some Austrians here to be upset by it.
Well, it could be if not, but the two great achievements of Austria are to convince the
world that Hitler was German and Beethoven was Vietnamese. Now to this proud record they
can add, they have the courage finally to face their past and lock up a British historian
who has committed no crime except that of Thornton writing. And that's a scandal. And I can't
find a seconder usually when I propose this, but I don't care. I don't need a seconder.
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any
consensus,
any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick
a number, get online and kiss my ass. Now, I don't know how many of you don't feel you're
grown up enough to decide this for yourselves, and think you need to be protected from David
Irving's edition of the Gerbal's Diaries, for example, out of which I learned more about
the Third Reich than I had from study at Utrecht, or at an AJP Taylor combined when I was
at Oxford. But for those of you who do, I'd recommend another short course of revision.
Go again and see, not just the film in the play, but read the text of Robert Bolts' wonderful
play, Man for All Season, some of you must have seen it, where Sir Thomas Moore decides
that he would rather die than lie, or betray his fate. And at one moment, Moore is arguing
with a particularly vicious and witch-hunting prosecutor, a servant of the king, and a
hungry and ambitious man. And Moore says to this man, you break the law to punish the
devil, wouldn't you? And the prosecutor of the witch hunter says, break it, he said,
I'd cut down every law in England, if I could do that, if I could capture him. And Moore
says, yes, you would, wouldn't you? And then when you pull to the devil and the devil
turn around to meet you, where would you run for protection, or the laws of England having
been cut down and flattened, who would protect you then? They are in mind, ladies and
gentlemen,
every time you've violated, or proposed to violate, the free speech of someone else,
you, in Courtencia, you're making a rod for your own back, because the other question
raised by Justice Solomon, when the Holmes is simply this, who's going to decide, to whom
do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker,
or to determine in advance what of the harmful consequences going to be that we know enough
about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom you're going to award
the task of being the censor, isn't it a famous old story, that the man who has to read
all the pornography in order to decide what's fit to be passed and what is fit and not to
be, is the man most likely to become divorced? Did you hear any speaker in the opposition to
this motion eloquent as one of them was? To whom you would delegate the task of deciding
for you, what you could read, who to me would give the job of deciding for you, relieve
you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear. Do you know anyone
hangs up? Do you know anyone to whom you'd give this job? Does anyone have a nominee?
Do
you mean there's no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read? Or here? I
have no idea. But there's a law that says there must be such a person, or there's a subsection
of some piddling law that says it. Well, the hell with that law that it's inviting you
to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already. About the censor
here since then, we basically know all that we need to know. We've known it for a long
time. It comes from an old story about not the great Englishman, sorry to sound so particular
about that this evening, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great lecturer, author of the first compiler
I should say of the first great dictionary of the English language. When it was complete,
Dr. Johnson was weighted upon by birth delegations of people to congratulate him, of the
nobility
of the quality, of the commons, of the lords, and also by delegation of respectable ladies
of London, who tended on him in his fleet street, Lord Jameson, congratulated him. Dr.
Johnson,
they said, we are delighted to find that you have not included any indecent or obscene words
in your dictionary. Ladies, except Dr. Johnson, I congratulate you on being able to look them up.
Anyone who can understand that joke, and I'm pleased to see that about 10% of you can,
gets the point about censorship, especially prior restraint, as it's known in the United States,
where it's banned by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It may not be determined in
advance what words are apt or in apt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to
make
that call and, what are the point? One has to suspect the motives of those who do so.