John Mill on Free Speech

In this essay I will attempt to elaborate on John Stuart Mill’s view on Free Speech while also discussing how the opposing side would argue his view on the topic. In this specific topic Mill addresses whether people should be allowed to persuade or limit anyone else’s expression of opinion. Mill argues that everyone should share the equal opportunity of free speech. He supports his theory with four arguments. Mill’s first view is that it is wrong to silence one’s opinion. Actually he would also say that keeping one from speaking their opinion is evil. The reasoning behind his theory is that it is evil to take one’s free speech because if the silenced opinion is even possibly true, then one would be robbed from the truth. Sometimes in order for the truth to be fully understood we must take a look at what is not the truth to help support the real truth. For example, lets say as being the truth that immigration reform would be good for the economy according to democrats. On the other hand the republicans would do and say anything to silence the democrats from convincing people that it could actually be true. This is because they completely oppose the idea that immigration reform could be good for the economy.
Mill would then go into the second argument that if you silence someone’s opinion then one would be losing on what is the partial truth. Since the opinion on any subject is sometimes not the whole truth but it is only a combination of opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. For example, two people at a crime scene are asked to explain what happened. Each person explains what they think they saw but don’t realize that they only saw half of the crime. Because of this what they think is true actually isn’t, however each investigation helped combine to form the full explanation of what happened. Following is the third argument by Mill. If the opinion is entirely true, yet is not fully and honestly contested, then it will,