I thought we broadly agreed that absolute free speech was a good thing, and that we should reluctantly tolerate even some fairly offensive speech, to avoid the horrors of cancel culture. What's going on here?
Campuses have for the last 10+ years been a place where this principle has been challenged over and over again by (a loud minority of) the student body, with the university usually folding quickly under pressure and shutting down the 'offensive' speaker.
So what's going on here is a classic case of 'I never thought that the leopards would eat my face!' Progressive activists are learning that you can't spend decades building up the precedent and infrastructure for silencing speech on campus in the name of creating safe spaces and then expect to keep control over which groups of people get to declare a safe space.
If absolute freedom of speech is a good thing, the universities should just be patiently countering the bad actors' speech, rather than applying harmful cancel culture to them. Turnabout is fair play, certainly, but this is freedom of speech.
Well, most free speech starts off well protected. But sometimes some free speech is too free, so laws have to be passed that define which free speech isn't free so others can enjoy their freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
It confuses me too but if I try to speak out against it I could be accused of breaking the law so my only option as a respectful citizen is to ignore it.
"Stricter rules and punishments over campus protests seem to be working."
Working to do what? Enforce group-think? Even when it is in the service of enabling genocide? What interesting times we live in.
I thought we broadly agreed that absolute free speech was a good thing, and that we should reluctantly tolerate even some fairly offensive speech, to avoid the horrors of cancel culture. What's going on here?
Campuses have for the last 10+ years been a place where this principle has been challenged over and over again by (a loud minority of) the student body, with the university usually folding quickly under pressure and shutting down the 'offensive' speaker.
So what's going on here is a classic case of 'I never thought that the leopards would eat my face!' Progressive activists are learning that you can't spend decades building up the precedent and infrastructure for silencing speech on campus in the name of creating safe spaces and then expect to keep control over which groups of people get to declare a safe space.
If absolute freedom of speech is a good thing, the universities should just be patiently countering the bad actors' speech, rather than applying harmful cancel culture to them. Turnabout is fair play, certainly, but this is freedom of speech.
Well, most free speech starts off well protected. But sometimes some free speech is too free, so laws have to be passed that define which free speech isn't free so others can enjoy their freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
It confuses me too but if I try to speak out against it I could be accused of breaking the law so my only option as a respectful citizen is to ignore it.
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