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Comment by dredmorbius

4 years ago

But it is a power struggle and always has been.

The very earliest advocates for free speech, most notably Milton, excluded established powers from its protections, notably the Catholic Church:

I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled.

-- John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.