Does the current tendency for political correctness excessively limit

freedom of thought and speech?

Freedom of opinion and expression can be defined as the right to seek, receive and carve
out any idea, message or information and to transmit it to others by any way. This right
is recognised in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where a sine
qua non condition for its full exercise is stated: "this right includes the right to hold
opinions without interference".
Its current consecration is the result of a complex and centuries-long evolution. In the
17th century, John Milton defended his Areopagitica in the English Parliament and called
for an end to censorship. In the 18th century, the First Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States of America included the exercise of this freedom in the Bill of Rights.
At about the same time, during the French Revolution, freedom of opinion and speech
were recognised as Right of Man and Citizen. In the 20th century came its legal
consolidation through the doctrine of the Free Marketplace of Ideas, devised by US
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., for whom the best free speech policy
is no policy at all, so that we should all be "eternally vigilant" against those who would
restrict it. After World War II, the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteed it
in Articles 9 and 10, and all democratic constitutions have included it in their catalogue
of fundamental rights, giving it maximum protection.

Although courts in democratic countries have repeatedly reaffirmed the importance of

freedom of expression for society, the problem arises when this freedom is used to lie,
defame, insult or harm. Limits have been placed on its exercise to prevent such abuses
from permeating public opinion, especially among young people, or harming individuals
who are part of vulnerable groups. Therefore, there are sanctions to punish these
possible abuses and there are offences such as defamation, slander, incitement to
violence, glorification of terrorism or dissemination of hate speech.
However, during the last decades, a growing number of collectives, pressure groups and
lobbies, which understand that this is not enough, have emerged. In their view, the
promotion of values such as equality or multiculturalism requires firm social actions to
avoid any message or behaviour that could be seen as excluding, marginalising, offensive
or perpetuating historical prejudices (such as sexism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism). This
movement has been called "political correctness".
“For” debaters will have to explain the current erosion of freedom of expression and
how political correctness has led to increasingly less free societies, where dissenting
opinions are threatened. They will be able to investigate a wide variety of cases in which
those who do not accept these new patterns of behaviour have been punished, analyse
the current restrictions to freedom of artistic creation (for example, the demand for a
multi-racial cast in recent television series even if this does not respect historical reality
or the original intention of the authors), explain the risks of historical revisionism (for
example, the debate about Christopher Columbus´ figure and actions) or the censorship
of classical works (from the videos of Leni Riefenstahl on YouTube to the categorisation
of movies such as "Gone with the Wind", "Grease" or "Peter Pan" as "negative
representations with a bad treatment of people or cultures", or the controversy over
Pablo Neruda in Chile), and the progressive implementation of self-styled "inclusive"
ideologies in particularly sensitive environments, such as schools. All of which have
opened up a cultural war, a chilling effect and the replacement of old prejudices with
others.
“Against” debaters may start from two premises: The first is that no right, not even
fundamental ones, is absolute; the second is that we must all be aware that, in an
increasingly pluralistic and interconnected society, it is necessary to behave in a non-
offensive manner. After all, until very recently, access to the economic, political and
even intellectual elites was much more difficult for those who belonged to a vulnerable
group, so there are people who, by defending an erroneous conception of freedom of
expression, are de facto advocating the maintenance of a traditional situation of
privilege. Advocates of political correctness believe that an effective fight against racism,
homophobia or sexism would require much more than punishing abusers: in their view,
both affirmative actions and an intellectual and practical structuring of "inclusive
ideologies" are indispensable, even if that means a restriction of freedom of speech.
Moreover, it could be argued that, if there have been excesses, they have been small in
comparison to the broader goals to be achieved and that, despite the changes that have
occurred in society during the recent decades, the main goal has not yet been reached.
The debate on political correctness, even if it has a legal or philosophical basis, is
undoubtedly of great practical relevance. It affects us every day and, therefore, all
debaters are invited to study the issue from its different perspectives.
The debate is, thus, served.