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.
近来，宗教极端分子要求对他们的看法予以“尊重”的呼声越来越髙。几乎没有人会反对必须尊重人们宗教信仰权利这一想法——毕竟，美国宪法第一修正案明确地保护那些权利，就如同保护言论自由一样——但是现在有人要我们同意下面这个观点，对那些信仰持有异议，认为那些信仰不可信、过了时、不正确或是实际上可辩论的，就是与“尊重”这个概念相矛盾的。当批评因为表示“不尊重”而被禁止，并因此具有了冒犯的意味，尊重这一概念就变得有些奇怪了。不过，就在最近美国全国教育协会和英国广播公司双双宣称将把近来这种颠倒了的“尊重”作为决定提供资金和制作节目的标准。
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.
其他一些少数群体一种族的、性别的、社会的——也都要求给予他们这种新形式的尊重。我们一定要明白尊重，路易斯·法拉罕，就是完全地同意他的观点；而“不尊重”他，就是同样完全地不同意他的观点。但如果持有异议也被当作是一种“不尊重”的话，那么我们就的确屈服于思想警察了。
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.
我想说的是：我觉得自由社会的公民们靠谨小慎微，跟着他人的观点——即便是他们最为珍惜的观点，亦步亦趋，而不敢越雷池一步，是不可能维护他们的自由的。在自由社会里，你必须有思想的自由交流和表达，必须要有辩论，而且这种辩论必须是充满激情的、不受约束的。一个自由的社会不是一个平平静静、水波不兴、什么事情都不发生的社会——那是独裁者企图创造的那种停滞的、死气沉沉的社会。自由社会是充满活力的、喧闹的、像河水一样欢快奔腾的，而且充满着尖锐的不同见解。怀疑与自由是不可分割地连在一起的。也许正是新闻工作者的这种怀疑，这种没有见到证据决不轻信的态度，才是他们对这个自由世界的自由最重要的贡献。实际上，我想庆祝的这种所谓不尊重并希望所有人都能以自由的名义来维护的，正是新闻工作者这种所谓的不尊重——不管这种所谓的不尊重针对的是权势、正统观念、各种意识形态的教条、虚荣、狂傲、荒唐、装腔作势、腐败、愚蠢，也许甚至包括那些编辑以及所有他人对自己的不尊重。
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