Kyle Markley, candidate for Oregon Secretary of State

Kyle Markley
for Oregon Secretary of State

I published the following argument in opposition to Measure 107 in the Oregon Voters' Pamphlet for the 2020 General Election.


Frederick Douglass, 1860:

Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.

Benjamin Franklin, 1722:

Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis,
Whitney v. California, 1927:

If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Supreme Court Justice William Brennan,
New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964:

[We have] … a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many.

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.

If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.


All of my other arguments against Measure 107 are available online.

© Kyle Markley
Libertarian candidate for Oregon Secretary of State
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