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 -
There is something comical to me about this having 0 points on this site, to me it's a well intentioned post and title and yet it will never work (perhaps that is simply my view however). I would posit that this is even more general where leftism used to be tightly linked with class and freedom of speech and now is the thing that has been most "poisoned" over the past decade, and previous people who held that label have the poisoned choice of abandoning it and making it seem less sane or trying to market a new term. There is also a clash between purist-types who would advocate freedom of speech despite a large coalition who had no respect for it for years and (I don't know) realistic/pragmatic types who I would not even say it would be hypocritical to want revenge/retaliation instead.
Whenever there is a drift of terminology from a core useful idea (like what has happened to "freedom of speech") I often meditate on whether others believed the original idea at all. It feels a bit bleak to think of it that way, though.
It's even more ironic when you read the comments, because not a single one of the responses demonstrate they understand what freedom of speech actually is.
So they are actually demonstrating my point by example. I do not care about "Open Ideas", I care about a proper understanding of actual freedom of speech.
The fact that people are downvoting reflexively, and not a single one of the replies seems to be interested in the history of freedom of speech and what is was supposed to mean, proves my point.
This thought drives deep into the whole point of actual freedom of speech.
Ideas are never static: they evolve over time. The idea of "freedom of speech" is no exception: it started as one thing, it evolved to something else, and then devolved to something entirely different. Virtually no one today ask the question why was "freedom of speech" introduced in the first place, in the 17th century. Even less interested in how this term evolved over time.
All they care about is that they can say "freedom of speech doesn't mean X", when that suits their purposes, of course. But since its inception, the importance of freedom of speech what it is, the importance was what it ought to be.
If we start from scratch with a new term such as Open Ideas, people would be forced to actually think and argue what Open Ideas ought to be, regardless of what they wrongly believe freedom of speech "is". But somehow that is not obvious to this supposedly intelligent and knowledgeable audience. At least, not the vast majority of them.
It seems to me you are the only one that gets what to me is obvious.
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