Opinion
Should opinions be censored?
Good morning. Today is the fourth of the sansculotides, the unnumbered days that fit between years. We celebrate l'opinion, or the sharing of our thoughts.
💡
The French Revolution was nothing if not opinionated. The century leading up to the tumult was marked by a swing toward openness of expression after hundreds of years of strict control by the crown (at the behest of and under the control of the church) over what was published and disseminated. Then Louis XV appointed Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes to be his royal censor, and the sensitive man decided to strike up friendships with the major authors of the day rather than view them as antagonists, and the wheel began to turn. Malesherbes was a correspondent and champion of Voltaire and Rousseau, the animating minds behind the questioning of royal inheritance, and Malesherbes himself frequently espoused and pressed for the idea that merit rather than birth should be the basis of nobility in France. In some ways, his lax approach to censorship opened the door for the open distribution of pamphlets that fueled the revolution, and he wasn't sorry for it. The events of the revolution came late in his life, far after his retirement from the censor's desk, and he came out of retirement to serve as the legal counsel to Louis XVI in the trial for his life. It was Malesherbes who delivered the bad news to the king that he was to be beheaded, and Malesherbes made his own trip to the guillotine a few months later for his efforts – on trumped up charges of treason that were themselves opinions run amok.
This is sometimes translated as the day of convictions, which sounds more positive in English, as opinions have gathered up a subtly negative connotation. Opinions are not facts. Opinions are not inherently correct. Opinions require justification for being shared, and are often best kept to one's self. That sort of thing. But I like the direct translation of the word and re-valuing opinion, especially in this age when the stock of opinions is at an all-time low but their deployment is at an all-time high. Should opinions be celebrated?
