From "The Case for Democracy"

On Natan Sharanky’s delineation between free societies and fear societies from his book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror:

"And despite our sometimes contradictory visions of the future, the dissident experience enabled all of us to agree on what freedom meant: A society is free if people have a right to express their views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm. Each dissident envisaged a future in which his concerns were paramount, but no matter how fervent our individual desires, all the dissidents understood that a society that does not protect the right of dissent, even if the society perfectly conforms to their own unique values and ideas, will inevitably turn into a fear society that endangers everybody. While we dissidents vehemently disagreed about what type of free society we wanted to live in, we recognized that as long as dissent is possible we would always be safe to fight for our ideas.

A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.

Some people who live in free societies may consider this test too expansive since, in addition to the liberal democracies, it includes many countries not always considered free. According to the town square test, societies where women are not allowed to vote, where discrimination is rampant, or where the economy is rigidly controlled can still be free. This valid criticism demonstrates that every society that meets the definition of “free” is not necessarily just. Rather, this test shows only that every society that passes it has crossed the threshold of freedom. In contrast, fear societies never cross this threshold and are always unjust."

[italics by Sharansky, boldface by me]

Of course, earlier Sharansky noted that in no society are liberties absolute (think yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater), and that appropriate boundaries of various freedoms “may make for interesting policy debates within democratic societies...”

It’s those changing boundaries that I find interesting. “Hate speech” policies at various colleges and universities and “hate crime” legislation both seem to me to be criminalizing thought and not action. Can we go into the town square and express our views, no matter how repugnant they are? Or will we be constrained by laws against speech?