Free Speech Debate

It's awfully sad that every discussion of speech rights needs a paragraph explaining that the author isn't a nazi. The far left seems to have forgotten what it was like when their ideas to be out of the mainstream. When people don't feel free to listen and think and express themselves everyone loses, even the ones in power.

Highly underrated comment.It's easy to be a free speech advocate when it benefits your own views. It's not easy when it doesn't.

If you live in a society where thoughtful, rational discourse is drowned in a sea of shouted opinions, then you do not have free speech either. Free speech is not the freedom to say anything you like, but the freedom to express any idea you like. You are not free to express it how you like to whoever you like.And there aren't many liberals willing to censor people for controversial opinions presented in a self-aware, carefully worded, and relevant manner abounding in due consideration fo

you called it evil because they support free speech. why?

Your assumption that this is only a problem on the left is completely baseless. The right likes to use the freedom of speech argument when they feel it works against them, but they also support scare tactics to suppress the speech (and votes) of minority groups often with the support or tacit acceptance of the government.It doesn't appear that the right even understands freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not mean that private organizations cannot censor you, it means that the gove

Free speech is not the protection of the speech you don't mind. It is the protection of the speech you vigorously hate. The speech you don't mind needs no special protection. To borrow a quote from Scott Alexander: "But then someone else says “Well, if they get their exception, I deserve my exception,” and then someone else says “Well, if those two get exceptions, I’m out” [...] Civilization didn’t conquer the world by forbidding you to murder your enemies unless they are actually

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. These carve-outs in 'freedom of speech' will most definitely be abused if history is any guide.

Doesn't make it okay. It used to be considered a left position to believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. We also used to argue in favor of freedom of speech. One thing hasn't changed, which is that the people in power want to suppress any speech they disagree with.

Ironic that this got flagged.There's now a larger contingent of people who think free speech is a bad thing (the equivalent of violence), and that you can somehow convince people to agree with you by not allowing them to have a voice.

Where have bad ideas won under free speech?