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You never addressed the central question of if you're in favor of censorship then who gets to decide who does the censoring? Who gets to decide what is true or

You never addressed the central question of if you're in favor of censorship then who gets to decide who does the censoring? Who gets to decide what is true or false, or what is misleading v.s. true? The issue is that different people disagree about what is true and what is lies, and that is the entire point of why we have free speech. Reasonable people can disagree. Who decides which reasonable party gets to forcibly muzzle the other? A true patriot is someone who will give his life in the fight to protect free speech, and he will fight to protect even the speech he personally disagrees with. The people who are against free speech are the true fascists, even though they ignorantly think they're against fascism. The truth is they don't know how to fight fascism. Censorship ain't it. Censorship is nothing but a cornerstone of dictatorships. EDIT: Another way to say it is that freedom of speech is required for healthy democracies, because an open debate about political ideas is how societies reach a consensus. The minute you give one person the ability to stop another person from speaking, you have created a dictatorship. Speech is a human right and the most basic of freedoms, and our Founding Fathers put it in our constitution to stop people like you from eroding our freedoms.

jgeada 6y ago
Nice jingoism, repetition of statements of faith (but not fact). This is clearly a waste of time. Nobody is arguing against freedom of speech, what every other country objects to is is unrestricted freedom of speech, meaning protection of lies, propaganda, slander, calumny, defamation and inciting of violence as being acceptable forms of free speech. I can explain it to you, I can't make you understand this: no other country in the world, no other people in the world, accept that unrestricted free speech is a good thing. Moreover, those countries believe it so strongly that there are laws against it. European countries are functioning democracies. Clearly your point that unrestricted free speech is essential to democracy is false. I'm not going to bother responding any further.
- WClayFerguson 6y ago
  America already has restrictions on speech including slander laws, defamation, and inciting violence. So yes there is nuance to this issue like all others. Nuance seems to be something the left is incapable of comprehending lately. If you try to make "lies" and "propaganda" also be illegal that' where the nuance begins and where your argument fails, for all the reasons I already gave, and will not bother repeating, except to say that reasonable people will disagree about what truth is and what is propaganda. So if you outlaw lies you must appoint some people to become the arbiters of truth, and you need to admit you have not answered how that can be done. All you've done is hurl insults and propaganda of your own, which according to you should've been censored.

jgeada 6y ago

Nice jingoism, repetition of statements of faith (but not fact). This is clearly a waste of time. Nobody is arguing against freedom of speech, what every other country objects to is is unrestricted freedom of speech, meaning protection of lies, propaganda, slander, calumny, defamation and inciting of violence as being acceptable forms of free speech. I can explain it to you, I can't make you understand this: no other country in the world, no other people in the world, accept that unrestricted free speech is a good thing. Moreover, those countries believe it so strongly that there are laws against it. European countries are functioning democracies. Clearly your point that unrestricted free speech is essential to democracy is false. I'm not going to bother responding any further.

WClayFerguson 6y ago
America already has restrictions on speech including slander laws, defamation, and inciting violence. So yes there is nuance to this issue like all others. Nuance seems to be something the left is incapable of comprehending lately. If you try to make "lies" and "propaganda" also be illegal that' where the nuance begins and where your argument fails, for all the reasons I already gave, and will not bother repeating, except to say that reasonable people will disagree about what truth is and what is propaganda. So if you outlaw lies you must appoint some people to become the arbiters of truth, and you need to admit you have not answered how that can be done. All you've done is hurl insults and propaganda of your own, which according to you should've been censored.