THE debate on free speech and its limits is thousands of years old, and different societies through the ages have taken very different positions.

Political power, religious authority and economic ideas can all be threatened by free speech.

For many people, that makes free speech not only an important principle, but an absolute one.

But free speech can also threaten our individual wellbeing, our lives or even our whole society, when those speaking incite others to act against us.

This tension will always exist, and the debate about free speech and its limits will keep resurfacing, never being resolved and always needing to be redefined.

We're currently being forced to consider these issues again following the violence in Copenhagen and Paris, perpetrated by people unwilling to accept that free speech includes the freedom to criticise or mock their religion.

The responses have been both defiant and creative, with the pencil becoming a symbol of free speech.

But it's not so long since our own laws came down on the other side of this debate.

It's less than a decade since blasphemy, which originally carried the death penalty, was repealed in England and Wales, something which has never been done in Scotland.

See original here:

Patrick Harvie