Free Speech

Lately I've been reading a bit about free speech, as well as just general political topics. Who would've guessed that seven years of being politically tuned out would make you want to get up to speed on what's going on at some point. Something I've noticed is that the more left-leaning progressive side seems to have a surprisingly authoritarian take on free speech, claiming that the government should regulate hate speech, some extremists even calling for it to be criminalized. Personally, I believe the government has no place in dealing with such matters. The most action I believe the government should take on speech is investigating someone making genuine threats toward somebody (obviously), but they should have no say in how people voice their political opinions, no matter how unnacceptable. No matter how racist or bigoted someone's opinions are, if you completely censor them and hide them from society, then you rob people of the ability to have genuine conversations about why these things are so unacceptable to believe. If all they're ever told is "no you're wrong go away" and completely chastised for how they think, it will only further radicalize them, whereas the other option would be to let them freely discuss their views, while allowing their opponents to freely criticize those views.

Imagine a high school student who, for their entire life, has always been told that fascism is bad. Naturally you and I both know that fascism is bad, as well as why it is, but this person may not fully understand it because all they've been told is that it's bad by the people who do understand. Now imagine they come across some fascist board online praising the ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini and the like. For the first time in that student's life, they're being exposed to why (some people may think) fascism is good. Now to that student, they're being taught what the schools and teachers "don't want them to know" and so they feel that in some sense there's something important there. This is why you have so many young boys online today claiming that they've "escaped the matrix" and calling everyone else "sheep". This is what happens when, instead of talking about something honestly and openly, you hide it and pretend it doesn't exist. People will find it, and obsess over it because it's been hidden from them all their lives. That's why the "catholic schoolgirl" stereotype exists, just replace fascism with sex, and why college students drink so much, just replace fascism with alcohol now.

Anyway, this may sound like some insane schizo rant (and maybe it is who knows) but it's just something I happened to be thinking about when I opened the page so that's what I wrote about :3

P.S. Speaking of schizo rants, I just played Milk Inside of a Bag of Milk Inside of a Bag of Milk and I highly recommend.