From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

And on this week's show, our radical, paradoxical free speech tradition.

Whenever you write about free speech, obviously the free speech absolutists are going to come out of the woodwork,

and there are a lot of absolutists on the internet.

But I didn't expect it to be so unrelated to what I actually argued.

It's one thing to talk about all these nice and fluffy concepts of free speech and being able to say whatever you want,

but in the day-to-day reality of the United States, that just doesn't exist for many people.

John Stuart Mill argues for one simple principle, the harm principle.

The state, my neighbors, and everyone else should let me get on with my life,

as long as I don't harm anyone in the process.

John Stuart Mill was brilliant, but this is the point that I want to make.

He was wrong.

Why revisiting our assumptions about speech and democracy might save us from ourselves.

It's all coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is out this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And this week we're talking about free speech.

Is it all that's cracked up to be?

America's defining ideal?

Or is free speech killing us?

Uh, maybe.

I think so.

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