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https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Defending the right to unpopular and offensive speech is not the same as compromising with the speech. You can truly abhor what someone's saying and not try to some them.
Okay, so then do you really want the Trump administration deciding on what speech to ban? Freedom of speech isn't just about defending monsters. It also can save us from them.
This is the fundamental issue with people arguing against free speech: I can never tell if they know they behave fascisticaly or not. Are they ignorant, or do they know?
This past election was very eye-opening in that everyone on the left was so absolutely confident that Trump wouldn't win. So much so they had already started laying things out for their own fascist takeover.
And yes, the left can act in a fascist manner.
Remember that bill that would strip non-profit status from any group, based on the whim of the president? With no hope of appeal? That was very popular with Democrats, until Trump won.
Even if you assholes don't abuse something like that, you know that you aren't going to be in office forever? There's an election every 4 years, remember?
Don't go conflating Democrats with the left, though. There's some overlap, but they aren't the same.
The comic is actually self contradictory, because the top-left panel satirizes being tolerant with Hitler, while the bottom left satirizes accepting some wars. No wars would mean letting Hitler just go around annexing countries and creating concentration camps wherever he wants.
There's a big difference between defending your country within your borders and crossing a border to fight in another country.
Hitler will be defeated in the marketplace of ideas.
Surely, as he was in reality. I'll be paraphrasing this, thanks.
"The Marketplace of Ideas" is such a scam, all that phrase accomplished was getting Bill Nye to debate creationists, who then gained followings because "The TV Box said that the Creationism and Evolution are equal ideas worth debating and considering the merits of!"
Don't let them make you think that Piss belongs on the shelf with Pepsi.
Chicken and the egg, he would have been defeated in the marketplace of ideas, if he didn't seize power and destroy the marketplace of ideas. If the German population held freedom of expression, equality for all under the law, etc., as sacrosanct, and Hitler wasn't able to manufacture a legal mechanism to seize power, nothing would have happened. But, they were missing that kind of unity, the idea of what a better society should look like and why it's worth defending, so that enough psychopaths organized around Hitler that he was able to enforce his mandates.
Ultimately the question is about whether or not a political paradigm can gain enough traction to have its followers come out on top of everyone else. The prevailing wind of society has to be justice instead of injustice. And not always "domestically", either, war and colonialism take a very similar shape. just as a projection from one region into another. This gets to Chomsky's description of "power structures". A fascist power structure could defeat, or be defeated by, the organization of the people, but it all depends on their collective cultural mindset - strength in numbers, arms, organization, etc. That is why ultimately the fight against fascism is about the necessity of education, and why fascists attack all forms of education.
Insistence on classic freedom of speech doesn't mean centrist, moderate, or apolitical. It means supporting civil liberties without being an ignorant hypocrite that takes those hard-fought liberties for granted. There was a whole movement that was pivotal to the civil liberties movement.
I once saw a guy on Twitter who edited the second panels compromise sign to say "You're both fucking stupid". He used it as his profile banner.
People like this actually exist in real life.
not taking a side, is taking the side of inaction, which will inevitably result in oligarchy. You can say you don't care, withdraw, and refuse to participate, but don't pretend like it's not an active participation. You're actively in this life, you're just choosing to let the wrong team win.
Most people will choose the side of inaction as long as they're comfortable enough. That's something I don't get with today's oligarchs. They are just as stupid as they are greedy. If they hoarded just a bit less -- if they were willing to live a lavish post-scarcity lifestyle while having as much money as a SMALL country rather than living a lavish post-scarcity lifestyle while having as much money as a midsize country -- they could live the exact same day to day existence without the working class being up in arms and in love with CEO assassins.
In the movie of their life, the only difference would be the "high score" text at the top of the screen.
But I guess if you value a practical good life over unchecked avarice and ego, you probably aren't cut out for the oligarch lifestyle.
This is one of the best summaries of it that I've seen.
People are being stupid when they call oligarchs selfish. They aren't selfish. They're idiots.
If you took away the internet and TV, People would riot like they never have before. You hit the nail on the head, enough of us who would do something are just comfortable enough not to. We have comfort food, alcohol, weed, TV, video games, and movies. All distractions. Take away the comfort, take away peoples last remaining reason not to revolt.
The moral purists are lashing out with hyperbole since the Israel/Hamas ceasefire has castrated their big issue. They have to pretend letting Trump win by refusing to vote for Harris cuz she "supported genocide" was still the right thing to do, and they weren't just being impatient toddlers demanding a cookie RIGHT NOW. Apparently they don't understand that diplomacy isn't something you can just click on.
I also would like a reasonable amount of wars.
The reasonable amount of wars just happens to be 0.
War on terror ?
People that are in favor of legal censorship of political speech make the mistake of assuming that the laws will always be applied to censor the speech that they find objectionable or harmful.. As soon as you start allowing the gov't to determine what speech is and is not acceptable, that power will be used to oppress whatever the currently disfavored group is. The words themselves are not the harm; it's the actions that can arise from the words.
I'll defend the right for anyone to speak their mind, but I'll allow the masses to take their pound of flesh when their mind is filled with hate and bile.
just because you can speak your mind doesn't absolve you of the consequences of doing so.
You cannot apply the paradox of tolerance without understanding the outcome. If you tolerate everything, the extreme takes over. You are also making it an either:or choice - don’t censor vs lose control of all free speech.
This is false, and stems from the assumption that there is a victory only one way or the other.
There is no victory in any form of governance seeking to hold a middle ground for any aspect of society. You don’t get to set up some rules, dust off your hands, say “That should do it…” and think you’re done.
It is a constant battle that must be fought every single time an issue becomes a problem. No, not all speech is acceptable. But we should also aggressively protect the speech that is acceptable even if we don’t like it. If we can’t do that, then we’ve lost for different reasons.
The paradox of tolerance is a concept, not a unique conclusion. Philosophers drew all kinds of conclusions. I favor John Rawls':
Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
Sacrificing freedom of speech is unnecessary for self-preservation in extraordinary circumstances as speaking one's mind is not an act that directly & demonstrably harms/threatens security or liberty.
"While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
This is the entire thrust of the argument I am making. My position is that you cannot tolerate extremes that pose a legitimate threat as posited by the quote you selected.
You are arguing that freedom of speech should be tolerated as long as possible. I already clearly stated that.
I don’t know why you felt the need to reiterate what I said.
This isn't about the paradox of tolerance; the paradox of tolerance refers to a social contract, not a legal framework.
You have the legal right to spew hate and vicious trash. You do NOT have the right to be free of social opprobrium should you do so. As soon as you start legally limiting speech based on what you think is acceptable, you create a legal framework for other people to do the same.
Nobody said it was a legal framework. I am applying the paradox to how we should frame it legally.
The rest of your argument was already covered in my post.
It's your inability to differentiate between political speech and hate speech that's the problem
In modern societies, we're happy with the government banning the latter and not the former
In undeveloped countries like the US, their toddler-level reading skills prevent them from knowing which one's which
There is no 'hate speech' exception to the 1st amendment of the US constitution. That's a well-established legal precedent that no succeeding court has been willing to overturn.
If you decided to make hateful speech illegal, then it would be perfectly reasonable for Christians to claim that my advocacy for my religion--Satanism--was hate speech.
"It is a less significant thing I do, than I have ever done."
