The difficulty arises because that precept pre-supposes that, through freedom of speech, contrary ideas are put and that the better ideas ultimately triumph. As a result, human society improves.

It is fairly idealistic. But we have seen it work. Silly ideas have been exposed as silly and discarded in a way that would not happen without freedom of speech. Similarly, good ideas and discoveries initially condemned as heresies have been accepted because of freedom of speech.

One of the reasons that truth, facts and discoveries prosper is because they are useful. If you find a new way of doing something it is worth replicating. If you discover something and show its truth it is enlightening and worth passing on.

These are strong forces. The fittest ideas survive.

One hopes, therefore, that when prejudiced, stupid and false speech is put about in a free-speech society, it quickly gets corrected and ridiculed by further free speech, and the best survives.

This is the motivation of the great majority of proponents of free speech - that it improves human societies.

Last week Jones made an egregiously boorish, insensitive and manifestly incorrect comment about Prime Minister Julia Gillard, saying that her father died of a broken heart because of her lies.

The comment hardly needed correction, it was so obviously wrong.

How much better if no one had said anything in response, instead turning off his radio show and ignoring him.

How much better if that had been the response seven years ago when he made his racist comments before the Cronulla riots.

This week's NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal decision rejecting an appeal against a decision that the statements incited hatred and ordering an apology would have been unnecessary.

As it happens that process is proving deeply flawed - as if any legally imposed apology would have a grain of sincerity in it. Moreover, do we really need a tribunal to tell us the obvious?

But it is apparent that the self-correcting mechanism of the Voltairians is not working here. Why not?

Humans, like many other creatures, stick together to survive.

As a group they can find predators, prey and food more easily. They can look out for each other, support each other and survive as a species.

In human societies race and religion are forces like that. People of the same race, language or religion stick together. They patronise each other's businesses. They send their children to similar schools. They go to the same churches. And more importantly they exclude those not in the group - those who are different.

It is evolved behaviour. The group that stays together survives together. The group instinct is a powerful force in society.

The force is so strong that it makes people prejudiced against outsiders and it makes people act as a group. It produces the sort of thinking that gives us prejudice against people of different races, language or religion. The sort of thinking that gives us the troubles in Northern Ireland; the violence in the Middle East; the civil war in Sri Lanka and the Cronulla riots.

That force might have helped humans in a state of nature survive, but it is now counter-productive. Nonetheless it still exists. And it was prevalent again in the reaction of Jones's supporters.

When Jones asked on his show for comments about what he'd said, the response (according to a survey done by Crikey) was universally supportive.

You see, Jones and his followers form a tribe themselves. They feel threatened as a species so they feel they must stick together like humans in a state of nature whose conduct is dictated by the laws of evolution.

In short, Jones is as intolerant, tribal, visceral, unsophisticated and intolerant as the religious fanatics he so roundly condemns.

It makes it very difficult for us Voltairians.

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The suggestion this week by the Australian Law Reform Commission to raise the retirement age of judges (among others) will run into difficulty because it will need a constitutional amendment.

Originally, the constitution granted life tenure for judicial officers. In 1977, one of eight successful referendums changed that to age 70 - now referred to as the age of constitutional senility. Thirty-five years on, however, 70 is the new 60 and it seems absurdly early to force people to pasture.

The failure of more than 40 proposals - many of them worthwhile - to change the constitution is frequently bemoaned. But our constitutional record is worse than that. The eight that have been approved have all proved defective, unnecessary or of little moment.

Judicial retirement I have mentioned.

Aboriginal recognition (1967) allowed the Parliament to make detrimental as well as helpful laws with respect to indigenous Australians - hence the intervention. Voting rights in referendums for territorians (1977) was of no moment. Commonwealth power over social services and to take over state debt could have been exercised without constitutional change.

And the referendum to change the Senate election cycle from January to July has proved more inconvenient than the original.

Not only have we so often said No when we should have said Yes, but we have also voted Yes when we should have said No.

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I have been watching again the BBC's splendid 1982 production of the Barchester Chronicles based on Anthony Trollope's masterpieces The Warden and Barchester Towers. The relevance of the Anglican Church may well be on the wane, but Trollope's exposure of human foibles remains timeless.

What a joy it was to hear every word spoken by every actor (and Nigel Hawthorne plays the archdeacon as artfully as he played Sir Humphrey Appleby).

So why is it that modern films have to attempt to capture reality by opening the microphones to extraneous background noise?

Every movie made since about 1990 has been contaminated by this practice.

If they are going to do this, let's have some sub-titles. Indeed, when you add to this the trend to also portray regional dialects and strong accents amid the noise of traffic, restaurant clatter and the like, the whole aim of capturing reality is defeated.

The words of Tartan detectives or Deep South hill-billies are lost to us.

crispinhull.com.au