Religious extremists, these days, demand "respect" for their attitudes with growing stridency. Few people would object to the idea that people's rights to religious belief must be respected——after all, the First Amendment defends those rights as unequivocally as it defends free speech—but now we are asked to agree that to dissent from those beliefs, to hold that they are suspect or antiquated or wrong, that in fact they are arguable, is incompatible with the idea of respect. When criticism is placed off-limits as "disrespectful," and therefore offensive, something strange is happening to the concept of respect. Yet in recent times both the American N.E.A. and the very British BBC have announced that they will employ this new perversion of "respect" as a touchstone for their funding and programming decisions.
近來，宗教極端分子要求對他們的看法予以“尊重”的呼聲越來越髙。幾乎沒有人會反對必須尊重人們宗教信仰權利這一想法——畢竟，美國憲法第一修正案明確地保護那些權利，就如同保護言論自由一樣——但是現在有人要我們同意下面這個觀點，對那些信仰持有異議，認為那些信仰不可信、過了時、不正確或是實際上可辯論的，就是與“尊重”這個概念相矛盾的。當批評因為表示“不尊重”而被禁止，并因此具有了冒犯的意味，尊重這一概念就變得有些奇怪了。不過，就在最近美國全國教育協會和英國廣播公司雙雙宣稱將把近來這種顛倒了的“尊重”作為決定提供資金和制作節目的標準。
Other minority groups——racial, sexual, social——have also demanded that they be accorded this new form of respect. To "respect" Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him. To "dis" him is, equally simply, to disagree. But if dissent is also to be thought a form of "dissing," then we have indeed succumbed to the Thought Police.
其他一些少數群體一種族的、性別的、社會的——也都要求給予他們這種新形式的尊重。我們一定要明白尊重，路易斯·法拉罕，就是完全地同意他的觀點；而“不尊重”他，就是同樣完全地不同意他的觀點。但如果持有異議也被當作是一種“不尊重”的話，那么我們就的確屈服于思想警察了。
I want to suggest that citizens of free societies do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow citizens' opinions, even their most cherished beliefs. In free societies, you must have the free play of ideas. There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammeled. A free society is not a calm and eventless place—that is the kind of static, dead society dictators try to create. Free societies are dynamic, noisy, turbulent and full of radical disagreements. Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked, and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the freedom of the free world. It is the disrespect of journalists—for power, for orthodoxies, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretension, for corruption, for stupidity, maybe even for editors—and the disrespect of every citizen, in fact, that I would like to celebrate, and that I urge all, in freedom's name, to preserve.
我想說的是：我覺得自由社會的公民們靠謹小慎微，跟著他人的觀點——即便是他們最為珍惜的觀點，亦步亦趨，而不敢越雷池一步，是不可能維護他們的自由的。在自由社會里，你必須有思想的自由交流和表達，必須要有辯論，而且這種辯論必須是充滿激情的、不受約束的。一個自由的社會不是一個平平靜靜、水波不興、什么事情都不發生的社會——那是獨裁者企圖創造的那種停滯的、死氣沉沉的社會。自由社會是充滿活力的、喧鬧的、像河水一樣歡快奔騰的，而且充滿著尖銳的不同見解。懷疑與自由是不可分割地連在一起的。也許正是新聞工作者的這種懷疑，這種沒有見到證據決不輕信的態度，才是他們對這個自由世界的自由最重要的貢獻。實際上，我想慶祝的這種所謂不尊重并希望所有人都能以自由的名義來維護的，正是新聞工作者這種所謂的不尊重——不管這種所謂的不尊重針對的是權勢、正統觀念、各種意識形態的教條、虛榮、狂傲、荒唐、裝腔作勢、腐敗、愚蠢，也許甚至包括那些編輯以及所有他人對自己的不尊重。
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