It's really depressing how the popular discourse around these topics so consistently fails to address any kind of bad-faith reasoning on topics like this.

Politicians complaining about free speech almost uniformly are referring to speech they don't like. Just like when they say they want to be "moral" its their morals, and when they say they want safety it's safety for a certain kind of person.

But the media (institutional AND social) ends to just accepting their stated motivations at face value. And at this point it's making us all look like idiots.

Freedom of speech is now defined as the person with the most power or who screams the loudest has the final say. That is what happens when you elect a dictator.

> elect a dictator

It has been that way in the US since the supreme court decided that money is equivalent to speech. And the effects have been ramping up ever since. If there is only so much bandwidth in communication, then using money to monopolize airwaves directly reduces the speech of those who cannot afford the excessive cost that results. Monopolize here is used in the sense of dominating the available supply (of bandwidth) and bidding up the price.

Citizens United must be overturned.

You let the Nazis have their speech and now they are running the country. Let's see how they respond to your well reasoned arguments.

Who is "we" here? I can't count how many times I've argued against just an apparently broadly-held view that free speech ends at the first amendment and isn't a general principle that should be practiced at, eg., universities. Looks like when I argued that here, I was told that I should pick a different term for the principle of free speech in order to disambiguate from the first amendment (they recommended calling it 'my personal content preferences').

Likewise uncountable is the number of times I've said normalizing free speech restrictions against the other side will come back to bite you once they're (inevitably, especially given these tactics) in power.

I can see how 'pro-speech' might have appeared to be a right-leaning position when violations were typically against right-leaning expression, but I never got the sense that either side really gave a damn.

Majority of that was bad faith argument designed to create exactly this situation. And it succeeded.

Bigots got salty that they were told to shut up or prevented from speaking in the most blatant instances, and made it their mission to gain control and turn the tables.

Yes

Because they're massive hypocrites, a concept that is surely familiar to you.

Even if I were to agree with you in principle, surely they only indulge in hypocrisy when it is convenient to them, and avoid it when it harms them immediately and directly. You arguments are childish and amount to "[people I dislike] are [dumb/mean/poopooheaded]" and aren't internally consistent or explanatory.

Only one here supposing they would be harmed is you

If it interferes with their opportunity to engage in their favorite narratives, such as espousing racial ideology, this turn of events can't have done anything except impair that.

And you don't seem to be making the argument that they did this without realizing the consequences, or anything of that nature. Perhaps you are confused, I see that alot from people who don't use punctuation.

>If it interferes with their opportunity to engage in their favorite narratives, such as espousing racial ideology, this turn of events can't have done anything except impair that.

Yet they did it.

>And you don't seem to be making the argument that they did this without realizing the consequences, or anything of that nature. Perhaps you are confused, I see that alot from people who don't use punctuation.

I'm not. I don't need to make any arguments. It is a fact that it was done and it is a fact who it was done by. There is no disputing that. You can guess whatever reasoning you want, I do not particularly care. It was done by the Texas Board of Regents, not liberal woke purple haired coast elites. Get a grip already.

> Perhaps you are confused, I see that alot from people who don't use punctuation.

Funny coming from the poster with a bunch of posts that are flagged. I didn't even flag them!

You should ask them, not me. Maybe also read the article while you're at it.