Milton’s Curse of Speech Hypocrisy

Free speech is inherently hard to uphold consistently; even canonical defenders like John Milton carved out exceptions. Jacob Mchangama labels this recurrent pattern 'Milton’s Curse,' arguing that hypocrisy is a feature of human nature and political coalitions, not an aberration. The practical task is expanding the circle of tolerated speech over time despite that bias. — This framing equips policymakers and institutions to expect and mitigate partisan double standards in speech debates rather than treating each episode as novel bad faith.