Letter to The Editor - Perhaps one symptom of a healthy society is its capacity to tolerate language that vilifies and to admire vilification that is also witty

To The Australian        The claim by Stuart Andrews ("Court ruling on Ridd raises some questions", 24/4) that there is no "unfettered right to denigrate or offend" in public discourse can be disputed. One person who did so was T. S. Eliot who, in his 1931 essay on Charles Whibley, observed with regret that few people any longer claimed "the free speech to call a knave a knave, or a fool a fool." Eliot noted that "invective is a form of writing which varies at different times and in different countries according to the customs and laws in vogue at the time and in the place." He added that some people deplored the decay of the language of abuse as a literary loss. Perhaps one symptom of a healthy society is its capacity to tolerate language that vilifies and to admire vilification that is also witty. By contrast, a craven kow-towing to limitations imposed on discourse by commissars is then a sign of cultural ill-health.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic