I believe that good ideas are strengthened through argumentation and inquiry, and bad ideas are crippled by them. Thus, in the long run, censorship harms good ideas and protects bad ideas.
I believe truth is unconvered by exploration and transparency, and strengthend by the light. Falsity is defeated by exploration and transparency, and burned by light. Thus, in the long run, censorship gives cover to falsity and hides truth.
If I’m wrong about these beliefs, I would be far more likely to alter my principles defending freedom of speech and voraciously criticizing censorshiop. Changing those belief will be hard, because I have what I believe to be a lot of very strong evidence in support of them. But not impossible.
Those beliefs are why I take the stances I take, regardless of WHO is saying whatever is being said. If they are saying things that are bad or wrong, openness will prove that. The only thing censorship can do is harm truth and good ideas.
5 Responses to “Censorship Is The Sworn Foe”
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I’m kinda curious who or what you think is being censored. Your recent posts seem to indicate that you think right-wing ideas are the primary ones being censored. I’m curious if you’re similarly opposed to recent laws banning ‘Critical Race Theory’s from being taught in schools.
First, I object to the phrase “right-wing”. There is no significant right wing in America today. What you mean is more like “conservative”, “traditional”, or “liberal”.
Second, the fact that you consider censoring one party (e.g., being kicked off Youtube, Twitter, and GoFundme) to be morally equivalent to merely /not mandating the views/ of the other party (not requiring them to be taught in schools) shows your extreme bias.
Ok let me list what I consider to be ‘right wing’ trying to keep this concrete.
Opposing the ability of Trans people from being able to fully participate in society as the gender they identify as.
Opposing the ability of women to make choices regarding their reproductive health.
Supporting draconian immigration restrictions
Opposing social programs such as medicaid, food stamps and similar.
Opposing mask mandates
Allowing the police to go unpunished for killing people when those deaths could be easily avoided.
‘Stand your ground’ laws
If you prefer to label all of that in other ways feel free. I don’t feel like playing semantic games.
I’m more than a bit non-pulsed at the claim that the anti-crt laws amount to removing a mandate.
The one in New Hampshire, forbids all government employees and contractors from teaching ‘divisive concepts.’ With a fairly long list of divisive concepts. Admittedly, I don’t think that I would describe myself as holding precisely to any of those divisive concepts but I do believe a number of adjacent things which are close enough that I would be very dubious about being able to defend the distinction in a court of law. This was in HB2 from 2021 if you want to look it up. Specifically amendment 2021-1059h
Florida also prohibited the teaching of CRT by name and specifically banned the 1619 project from being used in education in State Board of Education document 6A-1.094124
I selected New Hampshire because I have family that lives there and Florida at random. using a random number generator from the seven states that are said to have passed such measures. It’s possible that they’re not representative. If so I apologize for the oversight.
I kinda hate wading into what should or shouldn’t be taught in public schools, because I believe compulsory school is very harmful, and it should be abolished. Lets get rid of child prisons entirely, rather than bickering over what color we’re painting the bars.
I’m not sure the laws banning CRT are even coherent, so it’s hard to have an opinion on them.
That being said, the two most recent acts of censorship that come to mind are the attempt to cancel Joe Rogan, and the banning of Maus from a Tennessee school district. Both of these got a lot of coverage, both are bad, and having them happen so close to each other really highlighted how much hypocrisy there is on both the left and right.
I think I started giving up on the idea that truth wins in the end when Bill Nye debated a creationist, and said creationist somehow got enough money from donors post debate to build a “ark” showing how humans and dinosaurs lived together.
Today we have over a third of the country, and the vast majority of one major political party claiming without any credible evidence that the last Presidential election was fraudulent and Trump actually won. Which is up from the 20% or so who believes Obama was born in Kenya and as such was never legitimately President. A major public health crisis caused by science deniers and a looming climate catastrophe for largely the same reasons.
As someone looking for a reason to be optimistic, I’d enjoy hearing your evidence for the claim “Falsity is defeated by exploration and transparency, and burned by light.”.