State should be prepared to take some risk in order
to preserve a freedom so hardly won.

Such a claim places the matter upon a wholly mis-
leading and unsound foundation. If it were true that
respect for freedom of speech could invoke no greater
reason than the right of individuals to enjoy intel-
lectual exercise unhampered by the needs of the com-
munity for common action, such a right should not
survive a state of war for a single day. But the real
reason for preserving minority criticism is the need
for it on the part of the community -- of the major-
ity -- as much in war time as in peace. Indeed the
need is greater in war time. For without minority
criticism the majority is bound, sooner or later, to
go wrong, to show defective judgment, to adopt and
execute disastrous policies; and that even more cer-
tainly in war than in peace.

And it is a significant reflection upon the extent of
any real understanding of the principle of democracy
that this one reason, recognized by every mind from
Socrates to Milton, and from Milton to Mill and
Mill to Bertrand Russell, or John Dewey, that has
wrestled with the problem of freedom as overriding
all others in importance, is the reason practically
never invoked by either party to the popular discus-
sion. The matter is almost always regarded as a
conflict of rights between the majority and the mi-
nority, or as between the individual and society. At
best we "tolerate" contrary opinion -- the very
word excluding the idea that such is necessary to the
common welfare, and should be scrupulously pre-
served to that end.

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