What is your opinion or view regarding freedom of speech and how does it affect humanity so far? Is there any good point to hold on to this principle? In my humble perception so far, it does harm more than good. It may be a good thing to point out things in an honest and straightforward way, but when it got brutal and offend and potentially break certain individual or group of people's hearts or mocks on their beliefs, I think it's when it gets too far.
Of course there are types of speech that are better left unsaid. But the problem is not there. The problem is with how we control speech. Who can we trust to control speech? Do we put it in the hands of clumsy and short-sighted politicians who will ban books, documentaries and films left and right according to their own ideas?
That is what happens whenever a country tries to control speech. So the solution, within our imperfect world, I believe is to defend the freedom of speech to the utmost. It is simply impossible within our human limitations to create a fair, just and ideal censorship system that only restricts harmful speech because such a system will always involve thousands of humans with their own ideas, agendas and shortcomings.
Rather than leaving it to the government to decide what books I can or cannot read, I want to decide for myself. If a book contains vile speech, then I will not read it. I do not want someone else to make this decision for me.
For these reasons I believe freedom of speech should be defended as one of the essential principles of any civilized system of government. If you try to restrict speech against a certain group because you consider their speech harmful, another group can easily do the same to you. A country for example may ban the Quran because it contains speech against homosexuality. The country may rule that the speech is offensive and harmful to the well-being of homosexuals so that it should be banned.