I just started reading James Blish’s “Cities In Flight” novels and he said something that linked freedom of speech (to my mind an inherently liberal and/or left wing concept) to science … broadly speaking he said that in an atmosphere of scientific secrecy (if taken to extremes) the scientific method cannot work which of course means that it is impaired in climates where there are some restrictions on science. Depending on your POV that means science, whilst not inherently liberal in any sense, DOES rely on an inherently liberal society, one that enshrines such concepts as freedom of speech, the freedom to investigate without restriction and the freedom to make & publish data and conclusions whether those conclusion be popular with the population or powers that be.
In fact I was chatting to my brother the other day and I mentioned that freedom of speech was so very important to which he replied that poverty, health, education etc. were important (implying more so) … I thought about this for a moment and then said but from free-speech all of that follows and I think that is true.
If we have free speech we are free to talk over issues, we recognise inequality and so on … it seems to me that it is from our ability to communicate freely that our recognition of bad things and thus our efforts to resolve them stem … in that sense the extremes (both left and right) are anti-freedom of speech and inherently bad.
Add that to a decent education system, something I think goes had-in-hand with freedom of speech, and you have intelligent discourse and in my humble opinion from intelligent discourse good things follow! So it seems to me that we need more left wing pinko scientific bastards!
It was just a thought 
Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)
