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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Ok, if you want to make this point about the things you listed before, you'll have to show me similar statistics about work relationships breaking down due to cullinary choices, etc.
Correct, which is why they're not both "American". Or at least not the same kind of American
Completely irrelevant to the point being discussed.
Re: The last thing, we're just two people talking, I don't see the value in calling something out as irrelevant.
Re: The first, I don't even think you can reach the general idea by way of this sort of quantitative analysis, but I do have something better (an anecdote) that your specific sub-example reminded me of:
Once worked at a very self-important, corporate place, where the break room constantly smelled like curry. It was absolutely overwhelming. One day, someone put up a passive aggressive anonymous note in all caps asking that people "PLEASE STOP MICROWAVING CURRY" because it made the whole building smell and made them unable to taste their own food, or something to that effect. Guess this landed on HR's desk pretty fast, because the next morning the entire office gets an email about racial microaggressions will not be tolerated, and now hundreds of people had to take a racial bias training course (most of whom happened to be Indian).
But we're talking about specific things. I'm saying that what you're pointing to is not relevant to what was said before.
I mean, I agree, but you're the one that started talking about the frequency of short(er) presidents being elected.
Note, how this is not a problem with food, it's exactly the sort of problem of incompatible values that was brought up before.
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