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 -
Having mutually incompatible values doesn't mean that we disagree about the value quality of literally every single thing. Multiple groups with mutually incompatible values can all gain value from a cease-fire. And also from abundance.
Perhaps, but this just looks like a restatement of the supposition "tolerance can't work due to human nature." Perhaps tolerance really is like Communism in that way? It's not out of the question. But, indeed, people want more good things and fewer bad things - that's exactly why one would be motivated to tolerate others who have incompatible values with oneself and limit power struggles to mutually agreed-upon places; it's bad to live in a warzone or to expend resources and blood to crush one's enemies sufficiently to make it peaceful, and it's good to live peacefully. Depending on the specifics, which one's better than the other can change, since the blood lost in crushing one's enemies could be worth it and having to live around people whose values you disagree with could be sufficiently soul crushing to be not worth peace. I just don't think that's always the case, and I also don't think that's the case today in most of the West, or at least America. I do think we have many people actively trying to encourage others to suffer from observing the lack of suffering of [people they disagree with sufficiently], so I could see the argument that it will tip soon or has already tipped, though.
I agree, at the edges, this obviously breaks down, so some shared set of values is needed. If a significant portion of the country considers things like "governance," "democracy," "peace," "stability," "survival," as having negative value, tolerating them becomes quite difficult in a democratic republic like the US. This is why the left's crusade against free speech or just generally tolerating honest discussions is so concerning. That said, I'd still insist on tolerating them, as long as they stay within the bounds of agreed upon mechanisms of power struggle. It's when they break that that it becomes justifiable to not tolerate them. But if they just want to write essays and films about how awesome it would be if we just committed civilizational murder-suicide, in an active effort to recruit more people to their cause, then, well, live and let die. Just don't let them kill.
True. I'm focusing on the marginal cases. To the extent that our values are mutually incompatible, cooperation is harder, especially in pursuing those values. To the extent that the gaps in values are small and isolated, only small amounts of separation are needed to avoid significant value loss or conflict; maybe the normal separation we have between people, families, social groups, churches and so on is sufficient. The larger the gaps, the more separation is needed, until it's more separation than our society can reasonably accommodate in its current configuration; people start moving to different areas they perceive as lacking the gap, change jobs or careers maybe. As the gaps get bigger and available separation can't keep up, fighting over power becomes increasingly attractive.
Rather, "Tolerance is not a general solution to human nature." It works great over a very wide range, but there are edge cases where it stops working. If you can't cooperate on a few things, maybe you can cooperate on other things, and the value is still net-positive. But there's obviously a point where cooperation just costs too much value on net and it's not worth it any more. Further, we can see these points coming, and act in advance of their arrival, and we can respond to others doing likewise, with the usual caveats about the dangers of acting on predictions.
Things like this seem over the line to me. Also things like this. ...I'd prefer not to do a large-type airing of grievances, but there have been a lot of things Blue Tribe attempted or executed over the last ten years that seem to me to amount to irreconcilable differences. It doesn't matter if some of the things didn't work, or others were reversed when cooler heads prevailed; the knowledge these incidents generated about what Blue Tribe is willing to commit to means that it does not seem to me to be a good idea to trust them to have power over me ever again. Maybe that's partisanship talking. Maybe it's really not all that bad. Maybe nothing ever happens.
...I think there will be a backlash to the things my side is doing now. While that backlash is predictable, it does not seem wise to refrain from doing those things to forestall it, and it will almost certainly be a good idea to generate a backlash of our own when theirs arrives. It is hard to imagine the point at which I will conclude that there's been enough conflict, we should make peace instead. Objectively, it is hard to imagine the other side reaching that point either. We will each perceive what the other has done as reason to double down, and our own actions as justified. The difference, of course, is that I perceive my side to be correct, and their side to be insane. And sure, I would, wouldn't I? This is how tribalism works, we can always retreat into abstractions until there's no difference between right and wrong, good and evil, cue the Dril tweet.
Here in the real world, there's not much of an off-ramp I see. When we cannot agree on the definitions of basic terms like murder, child abuse, rule of law, treason... it seems wiser to me to admit that the problem is beyond us, and pack it in before we really hurt each other.
If I convince you that I intend to coordinate unsurvivable meanness against you, your willingness to abide by the bounds of agreed-upon mechanisms of power struggle are likely to decline precipitously, especially when those bounds are nebulous and poorly defined, and playing border games puts me in a progressively-stronger position for clearly violating them to get what I want without paying the consequences.
All these systems are fragile. That doesn't mean they don't or can't work, it means they work when used properly and don't work when misused.
Do you expect them to respect this principle the other way? When it's my side saying that the soap, ballot and jury boxes have been expended and it's time for the ammo box, are they going to agree in principle that only the people who actually act on it are culpable, and not those of us encouraging it? There are principles I'm invested in enough to uphold even alone. If free speech worked the way I was taught it did, if it worked the way I used to believe, it would still be one of them. But after what I've seen this past decade, I'm much more skeptical on the value of the principle, and even the sheer possibility of getting net-good out of it at all under even slightly adverse conditions. Again, this does not make me a censorship enthusiast, just a pessimist on what we're paying and what we'll get in return.
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