THE debate on free speech and its limits is thousands of years old, and different societies through the ages have taken very different positions.

 

Political power, religious authority and economic ideas can all be threatened by free speech.

For many people, that makes free speech not only an important principle, but an absolute one.

But free speech can also threaten our individual wellbeing, our lives or even our whole society, when those speaking incite others to act against us.

This tension will always exist, and the debate about free speech and its limits will keep resurfacing, never being resolved and always needing to be redefined.

We're currently being forced to consider these issues again following the violence in Copenhagen and Paris, perpetrated by people unwilling to accept that free speech includes the freedom to criticise or mock their religion.

The responses have been both defiant and creative, with the pencil becoming a symbol of free speech.

But it's not so long since our own laws came down on the other side of this debate.

It's less than a decade since blasphemy, which originally carried the death penalty, was repealed in England and Wales, something which has never been done in Scotland.

It's now so long since a prosecution that some people argue that the offence of blasphemy no longer exists in Scots law either, but it's significant that we've never taken the positive step of actually abolishing it.

In the absence of prosecutions some religious groups have relied on protest to challenge public expression they regard as blasphemous, like Jerry Springer the Opera, and a host of lower profile incidents.

The bleating of UKIP and others on the hard right, so often complaining that "we're just not allowed to discuss immigration", is similar.

To use their regular platforms on the national media to complain that they have no platform is frankly pathetic.

This debate has newer frontiers too.

Today's globally connected and networked world in which one person can communicate with millions offers new arenas for public debate.

But that same person can also be subjected to mass abuse and intimidation, behaviour which would clearly be illegal face to face.

Free speech can be a matter of everyday minor courtesies.

Or it can be a matter of life and death.

If we're going to find new ways to defend it and define its limits for the modern world, let's remember that free speech does not mean the right to speak without being challenged, criticised, laughed at or ignored.

Likewise, our own freedom doesn't remove the responsibility to consider others' feelings in the way that we speak, or to remember that our actions and our words can have consequences.