Today we're talking about the single most important defense of free speech ever written in English: John Milton's Areopagitica, published illegally in November 1644 while England was busy tearing itself apart in civil war.

Parliament had just killed the king's censorship machine, watched ideas explode everywhere, panicked, and promptly rebuilt the exact same censorship machine under new management. Milton, already public enemy number one for arguing you should be allowed to divorce a bad spouse, responded by printing a blazing manifesto without a license and basically told the government: "Congratulations, you just became the tyrant you overthrew."

What he gave us wasn't just a complaint. It was the philosophical foundation for everything the First Amendment would later become: the conviction that real virtue has to be tested, that truth isn't fragile, and that the answer to bad ideas is never silence; it's a fair fight.

So buckle up. Four hundred years later, we're still living in the world Milton demanded. Let's go find out why.