Because there is no principled way to draw the line.

One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?

If you don't allow censorship, nobody gets censored. If you do allow censorship, there will always be somebody who wants to censor you.

> Because there is no principled way to draw the line.

In this case the line is pretty clear, and very crisp.

You're talking about a political group that advocates overthrowing the results of free and fair elections aimed at subverting a democratic regime by installing a dictatorship whose supporters are very adamant in their embracing of racist world views.

Challenging election results is not the same as “overthrowing elections”. The Democrats literally challenged the election formally in 2000, 2004, and 2016. For anyone keeping track, that is all the recent presidential elections in which they lost. They even had legislators voting against certification. Polls showed that after the 2016 election, most Democrat voters believed (and probably still do) that Russia literally altered the votes of the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton claimed for months that this election was illegitimate. Yet to you, challenging an election result is only a problem now? That seems oddly one-sided.

As for your claims about dictatorships, racist world views, and so on - all of these are vague attacks that generalize an entire half of the country. There’s little evidence to support such claims.

Hillary didn't encourage a coup and all the Democratic candidates were graceful in accepting defeat.

It's one thing to clench your teeth and complain a bit and an entirely different thing to try to overthrow the democratic system in place.

And keep in mind that except for 2004, the popular vote went the other way so for sure there were enough people to send marching on the Capitol.

Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.

Proselytizing religions have no moral leg to stand on from an imposition point of view.

Plus, let's be honest here, your example is just people being jerks with each other. The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.

> Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.

In which case the party trying to impose censorship always loses.

> The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.

Nobody is talking about laws against violence or monopolization. Charging someone with a crime for beating you with a billy club is not censorship.

> Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.

For the preferred pronoun question, which one is more imposing? Getting other people to call you by your preferred pronoun, or refusing to call people by their preferred pronoun? You can make plausible arguments for either side.

For one, if my name is Joe and you don't call me Joe, that's highly insulting. I doubt there's any culture in the world where it's not.

>One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?

Except the paradox of tolerance clearly states that simple disagreement isn't intolerance, nor does it prefer censorship in all cases of disagreement, so your scenario isn't a refutation of it:

    In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress
    the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational
    argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly 
    be most unwise.

What the paradox of tolerance considers to be intolerance, and thus open for censorship, are views which do not allow for rational debate, or respect the existence of opposing viewpoints, but which resort to violent suppression of those viewpoints and the people who hold them:

    But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it 
    may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational 
    argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to
    listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer 
    arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. 

That seems like a clear principled line to me.

This is a classic motte and bailey. The motte is that "intolerance" only means the denunciation of rational argument and calls to violence. The bailey is that this justifies blocking the entire opposition because they are declared to be violent criminals who have abandoned rational argument, or expanding of the definition of "violence" to mean (warning: irony) any rational debate about sacred cows.

>The bailey is that this justifies blocking the entire opposition because they are declared to be violent criminals who have abandoned rational argument, or expansions of the definition of "violence" to mean (warning: irony) any rational debate about sacred cows.

I never made or implied any such claim, you're not arguing in good faith here.

Then your response was a non-sequitur because the context here is that entire platforms are being blocked and the "paradox of tolerance" was put up as a justification.

My response was not a non-sequitur.

You claimed the paradox of tolerance allowed no principled way to draw the line between what should and shouldn't be censored, I quoted the principle as stated verbatim. And rather than make an argument against the paradox of tolerance as written, you decided to switch to ad hominem.

If you want to actually convince anyone of anything, you're going to need to argue against what people actually say and believe, rather than strawmen.

What do religions say about pronouns?

Let's say there is a village somewhere who are not tolerant of X. Let X just be any outsiders, but it can be anything.

I can perfectly tolerate those people - as long as they do not come to my village to tell me what to do, but stay among themself.

It is called live and let live.

Nobody's arguing against your strawman.

If your intolerance is in your own tightly sealed sandbox that doesn't impact me, sure, knock yourself out.

Erm, we are talking here about virtual villages and whether intolerant people should have the right to have one. And since I am sanely tolerant, I say yes.

Even though there exist no tightly sealed boxes and everything is connected to everything in the long run - I do not want to impose my ideology on others, I can tolerate people I despise, as long as they leave me in peace. And my experience is, that they often think like that, too. Except for the fanatics with world conquering motives, sure. But planning for a coup d'etat is no longer free speech btw., but preparation of a crime.

Any sane person would support free speech principles. Harm from restrictions of free speech far outweighs harm from hate speech, etc.

>Any sane person would support free speech principles. Harm from restrictions of free speech far outweighs harm from hate speech, etc.

A reasonable position. And one I, for the most part, support.

However, the other side of that coin is that private actors (i.e., not the government, at least in the US) have free speech rights too. And that includes the right not to allow or support speech on their private property.

As such, if you attempt to force private actors to host/support speech they do no wish to host/support, then you are violating the principles you espouse.

I wonder if the victims of hate speech would agree with that.

There are no victims of hate speech. There are victims of hate crimes, like murders, rapes and beatings. Speech doesn't cause physical harm, violent actions do. Thus, violent actions must be stopped, not words.

Oh, and if you will claim that speech insites actions, i ask you one thing: who determines what hate is? In Russia, talking about corruption and opposing Putin is extremism and hate speech.

If a mobs screams racist obscenities at someone is that a hate crime?

Screaming anything is not a crime.

Well, that's not true. Death threats are. And my point was that, even though it may not be a crime, there's still someone who would be a victim.

> Well, that's not true.

If you want to argue that some spoken words can be prosecuted in some jurisdictions, chose another opponent. I state my personal opinion that anything spoken should be protected under free speech rights, and even the death threats. Yes, because words do not kill. Killing requires action, and actions must be stopped, not screaming.

You didn't say "shouldn't be a crime" you said "is not a crime". And I'm not saying that words directly kill. I'm saying words have their own power that can absolutely hurt. Speaking words is an action and it can cause harm.

Politicians can declare anything a crime, and same act can be legal and criminal in places spaced 2 meters apart, that's why there is no point arguing about that. Regarding speech "crimes", see my earlier comment about Putin's Russia.

Thus, sane people MUST fight against criminalising any kind of speech, because speech is not a crime. Just like sane people fought against slavery, segregation and Holocaust, all of which were legal.

Are you of the belief that words can never hurt? It wouldn't bother you to have a crowd of protestors making untrue accusations about you loudly and vocally, where your family and employers could hear, ruining your reputations and relationships?