Comment by mcdonje a day ago
I was with you until your 3rd paragraph. Why are you carrying water for climate change accelerationists and racists?
The examples don't even make sense historically. Haven't you noticed that most governments are failing to decarbonize, and government force against citizens is usually against the left?
Racists deserve free speech, and our society is better for it. When racists are silenced, anti-racists become complacent, stupid, and ironically, racist because they lose the ability to recognize racism.
Defend everyone's free speech. Don't require the necessity of unfair accusations. The destruction of people's lives over unfair accusations is simply a failure of due process and the desire of people to join a mob for safety. You should hate that no matter what you think about the right to free expression and belief. Anyone who would earnestly defend mob justice led by demagogues and supported by people afraid to be targeted next has a particular demagogue who they back.
Because in a free country you have the right to be a climate skeptic and a racist?
Being a racist is mostly useless and self-serving, but if you make any particular scientific position illegal, it's identical to having state defined science. That's how we got people passing bills to define pi and Lysenkoism. It's how we institutionalized chattel slavery and sometimes teaching black people to read punishable by death.
The goal of government isn't to promote your "correct" opinions. The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on their behalf.
>The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on their behalf.
I fully agree with your position here, but do you think the government has a roll in making sure the public is not misled or believes things that "experts" consider to be false? Do you think expert opinions should carry more weight that the average Joe?
I think my position is that the government is a tool we, the taxpayer, should use to investigate things and educate us of its findings. That this should be done in an open and transparent way so that we can trust the results. I don't think for profit companies should responsible for educating people. (sorry for the tangent)
It is the most unpopular speech which is at the greatest risk of being censored, and so there is it also the best place to hold the line on free speech. If you don't defend the right to say racist things, then you've already conceded the fight for free speech and are now just negotiating your surrender.
You don't have to be a racist to be accused of racism.