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Taking a second to appreciate how much damage the IDW, the New York Times Opinion page, and assorted other assholes have done to the brand of free speech and the marketplace of ideas.
With proponents like these, who needs censorious enemies?
With proponents like these, who needs censorious enemies?
In way this is good though. The marketplace of ideas only works if debate serves as a crucible, and whether debate serves as a crucible is an idea that itself needs to be tested, and it turns out an unmoderated marketplace produces slag on a regular basis.
This isn't a surprise, exactly. The most fundamentalist free speech advocate understands you can exert violent threat to shut someone up. But it turns out there are a lot ways you can use a lower quantum of coercion and malign influence and still ruin it.
Small-l-liberalism needs to take power into account a way that is far more sophisticated than "but is it violence?" and instead appreciate a continuum of speech and action as shaped and contextualized by power and status outside the bounds of debate.
E.g., it needs notice and act against an NYT columnist trying to get someone fired over being called a "bedbug". It needs guard against the exercise of privilege, and see how those without the aegis of such are chilled into silence.
Free speech for all, not just the tenured.
Free speech for all, not just the tenured.
The reason is simple. if the marketplace of ideas only works with independently wealthy dilettantes and tenured professors then it *isn't working*. We are neither getting all of the ideas nor putting them under enough pressure to test them.
This problem has been with us from the beginning. These so called Enlightenment values came from people who excluded by gender, by class, by creed, by race, and whatever other batshit ideas they had! Let's not get bamboozled by their narratives and embrace their manners.
Do not defend the Enlightenment and high minded ideals of free debate. Advance from it, so that we can instantiate liberty for everyone and not just those with the power to enjoy it.
Again, @csilverandgold is a great interlocutor, see my disclaimer below. https://twitter.com/tznkai/status/1279437042129285122?s=20
