My Take | The price of free speech is sometimes too high

Voltaire's quote has become a cliché: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." But in its unconditionality, it's effectively a blank cheque that obligates you to defend the right of anyone to say anything.

I doubt many of us are willing to go that far, even if we can agree on the general value of free speech. Would Voltaire, if he were alive today, defend the provocative cartoons of Charlie Hebdo?

Some of its cartoons are beyond provocative - they are just obscene, like the one with a naked Mohammed on all four, his nether region fully exposed, with only the most sensitive bit of his posterior covered by a yellow star. What point was its slain editor, Stephane Charbonnier, trying to prove, other than that he did it because he could?

It's in this context that former colleague Henri Roussel, in a controversial interview with the French publication Nouvel Obs, accused Charbonnier of "dragging the team" to their deaths by releasing increasingly provocative cartoons.

He might have included the two murdered police officers, one of whom was a Muslim, who died protecting Charbonnier.

Roussel dares say what many people around the world think but are afraid to say because it's politically incorrect. We are all supposed to say "Je suis Charlie".