Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end

Re:Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end by russdill on Thursday September 01, 2022 @03:43PM (#32681984)

Tolerated is taking on a wide range is meanings here. On one the of the spectrum, absolutely no, part of a free society is not forcing people to tolerate speech they find intolerable. If I go to a TED talk about fixing poverty and the speaker talks about his plan for eugenics and a final solution, I will walk out. In the other end of the spectrum, the government may disappear people who's speech they or the society that votes them in intolerable.

You can be anywhere along that spectrum without it being some inevitable slide towards the government disappearing people. Freedom to associate is a form of expression.

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Re:Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end by paisawalla on Thursday September 01, 2022 @11:43PM (#32686340)

Toleration here means commitment to combat the bad ideas in the sphere of debate, and not to work the refs e.g. by appealing for bans. It doesn't mean you have to listen to it, but that your strategy for opposing it is to debate against it, not prevent it from being said and heard.

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