No one should be required to facilitate the expression of Holocaust denial, but neither should there be what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the "silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form."

The point was poignantly made in Robert Bolt's play, "A Man for All Seasons," in which William Roper and Sir Thomas More debate the relative balance between evil and freedom:

Roper: So now you'd give the devil benefit of law.

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

More: Oh? And when the law was down — and the devil turned round on you — where would you hide? Yes, I'd give the devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Call David Irving the devil if you like; the principle of free speech gives you the right to do so. But we must give the devil his due. Let Irving go, for our own safety's sake.
[Michael Shermer, "Free speech, even if it hurts", in der LA Times, via]