Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective.

OPINION: I chuckle at the saying; I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death the right to say it.

For a start, the idea that I would risk my life for some idiot’s freedom to spout a pile of inflammatory nonsense to gain likes is absurd. If the state wishes to put you in a cage because you said something naughty, well, that is sad and I disapprove. I will happily post something on social media in support.

However, I have a diminishing number of days left and I have no intention of squandering them to defend the liberties of people I’d pay good money to avoid and I do not expect anyone to risk their precious life to preserve my right to make a fool of myself; although I would be, and I am, incredibly grateful for those who have. I shall not pretend that I possess their courage or valour.

Also, this quote is misattributed to Voltaire, when it was penned by his biographer. Voltaire, like myself, was more of a libertine than a liberal, in the traditional sense of that word. However, Voltaire did share something in common with some of those marching in the streets of the west in recent weeks; a deep hatred of the Jew.

In his 1764 Dictionnaire Philosophique, the famous Frenchman wrote; “The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.”

This wasn’t an idle line. Voltaire went on about the Chosen People with a vehemence so intense he’d qualify for a position at the United Nations Human Rights High Commission.

Voltaire was a brilliant, but also an awful, human being. Despite, or maybe because of this complexity, he made profound contributions to Enlightenment thinking and it makes him an excellent prism through which we can analyse the complex issue of free speech.

So. Let’s do that.

After the Christchurch terror attacks we established a Royal Commission to look at what happened and the issue of the limits of speech was considered. Currently, our rights are nominally protected by Section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act that states we all have the right to “…freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind.”

There are some restrictions under current law; the main one being Section 131 of the Human Rights Act that makes it a crime, but not a very serious one, to say publicity or print anything that is “… likely to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule, any such group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins…”

The Commission recommended updating the law on inciting racial or religions disharmony; with up to two years for those who, amongst other sins, “…says or otherwise publishes… any words… that explicitly or implicitly calls for violence against or is otherwise, threatening, abusive, or insulting to such group or persons.”

The issue became overly complex and eventually the government left it to the Law Commission. This was politically sensible, but cowardly because it leaves the door open to the sort of restrictions the Christchurch Commission was seeking.

To understand the dangers of the Royal Commission’s approach, look at the marches, signs and language being casually used on the streets, on social media and opinion leaders today. Some of the things being said are breathtaking in their contempt and loathing.

The Commission’s focus, and rightly so given events, was focused on language that could be interpreted as fomenting hatred towards Muslims, and they sought to increase the scope of legislation as well as the penalties for those who said things that did not go as far as inciting violence, but which merely ‘abusive or insulting’.

Well. Take a look at what is being said this week and understand the irony. The beds freed up by Labour’s program of reducing the prison muster is inadequate to house those caught if parliament passed, and the police enforced, the sort of legislation proposed by the Christchurch Commission.

I come with no solution to those who feel isolated and fearful as a result of the increasingly malign language used against many groups in our increasingly fragmented media environment.

However, passing legislation so expansive that it would capture not only those chanting their vile slogans this week, but Voltaire himself, is not the answer. Laws against language would not have prevented what happened in Christchurch nor will it resolve the insecurities many feel watching events unfold after the events in the Levant.

Hateful speech is not the problem. It is a symptom of a larger malaise and one that will require more than a simple legal remedy to overcome.