I've written about freedom of speech extensively in all manner of forums, but the one thing that has become clear to me lately, is that people are genuinely uninterested in the philosophical underpinnings of freedom of speech. Today they would rather quote an XKCD comic, than John Stuart Mill's seminar work On Liberty.
Because of this, I've decided to try to reframe the original notion of freedom of speech, into a term I coined: Open Ideas.
Open Ideas is nothing more than what freedom of speech has always been historically: a philosophical declaration that the open contestation of ideas is the engine of progress that keeps moving society forward.
Today the tyranny of the majority believes freedom of speech is anything but that. They believe that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", despite the fact that such term came from nowhere, has no author, and in addition all great free speech thinkers argued precisely the opposite. The great thinkers argued that if people are afraid of expressing unpopular opinions, that is functionally the same as government censorship: ideas are suppressed, society stagnates, and progress is halted.
So far I have not yet heard any sound refutation of any of these ideas. All people do is repeat the aforementioned dogmatic slogan with zero philosophical foundation, or mention First Amendment details, which obviously is not equal to freedom of speech.
How is anything I've stated in any way an inaccurate assessment of what is happening?
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Notes -
If you gave a speech in the liquor isle about the dangers of alcohol, you’d be removed. You’ll also be removed for causing a disturbance. It happens all the time. Homeless people yelling at the voices in their head get kicked out quite often.
But that's because they're being a nuisance. If they spoke about the wonders of alcohol, they'd be removed all the same, so they're not kicked out for being anti-alcohol. I guess we can define "freedom of speech" as unbiased moderation, in short, it's "neutrality". So even with freedom of speech, spam is not allowed, but you can advocate in favor of any ideology as long as you do it in the proper manner.
Another important thing to note is that rights are limited when and only when they conflict with another persons rights. There's a hiarchy of importance, so certain rights overwrite others in certain contexts. This makes it appear as if precise definitions aren't possible with human-related problems like rights, but I still think it is
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