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Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @12:38PM (#27606490)
There are also historical reasons to think that tyranny has to suppress free speech in order to survive. So even if extreme speech can lead to tyranny, free speech can lead you back out - if you can keep the tyranny from destroying the free speech.
Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by tetranomiga on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @01:56PM (#27607690)
That's an "if" so big I don't know what your point is.
Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @02:05PM (#27607811)
My point is to keep track of the order of cause and effect. Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny. But tyranny always at least tries to limit free speech. So when you see a limiting of free speech, you should ask "Is this really in defense of liberty? Or is it just tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself?"

Note that tyranny trying to preserve and extend itself almost always says that it's in defense of liberty...

Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by jl2718 on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @02:47PM (#27608431)
> Unlimited free speech may create a tyranny.

Citation required.

Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by Natsu on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @03:08PM (#27608682)
The usual citation is the Paradox of Tolerance but that posited a right to protect against people using fists or pistols, rather than ideas, to debate and premised it on the right of self-defense from physical harm.
Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @03:19PM (#27608816)
tetranomiga's claim, not mine. I merely acknowledged that I wasn't claiming to refute it.
Re:A backlash against gender ideology is starting in univers... by tetranomiga on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @02:32PM (#27608232)
"Is this person defending free speech in favor of liberty? Or because his anti-liberty extremism won't be tolerated otherwise?".

It works both ways so this isn't a practical way of looking at implementation of free speech. You can't keep a system that doesn't protect itself free forever - propaganda travels faster and further than truth, and I doubt the founding fathers wrote the first amendment with mass media in mind.

You can start the argument of who gets to decide what should be allowed and what shouldn't, and in the current political climate (at least in the USA) the answer to that is obviously nobody. Ideally those decisions would be made during a time of cultural unity, where a whole nation can say "These are our values that we want to write in stone", like Germany did with the new constitution in the 20th century where it put well-defined limits on what kind of speech should be forbidden.

It's doubtful if that kind of unity is even possible in the USA anymore, so I'm worried that, on a long enough time-scale, unfettered free speech will inevitably lead to tyranny of a kind because there is no system in place to protect it.