A collection of 238 posts
The greatest threat to free speech today comes from free speech itself. In particular, it comes from the sheer volume and chaotic nature of that speech.
Threatening speech when it actually did not do so delegitimizes speech that epitomizes exactly the type of speech that is supposed to be protected.
It wouldn’t be misleading to say that the greatest threat to free speech today comes from free speech itself.
The effects of that particular stance – it’s not so visible how harmful it can be. But you’re lying about the reality of hundreds of millions of people across the world.
If you’re easily offended, it’s hard to understand the world.
There is no room for nuance, no room for subtlety. Feelings supersede facts. The emotions of the most fragile must be soothed at any cost, even if the truth is a casualty.
News and information thus become weaponized and aimed against the very institutions and values that free speech was supposed to protect.
Mental disorders are highly stigmatized conditions, but they have a hidden upside.
It is only the theocratic movement of Islamism that seeks to silence critics with character assassination, blasphemy laws, threat of riot and the dirty murder of cartoonists.
Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture.
“This is a pretty big concern of mine, I’ve felt this way for a long time, it affects my work, it affects the way I can interact with people, the things I can talk about, the people I can talk to.”
One of the forefathers of the modern internet, John Gilmore, famously remarked that the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
The logic in their peculiar model is illogical, and involves punishing people not because they’ve done something wrong, but because they’ve hurt someone’s feelings.
A woman whose life story, by any rational, humane standards, should win encomia from, and the admiration of, decent people everywhere.