To be fair, I still haven't fully grappled with its significance in its entirety, but at least I'm pretty sure that I'm on the right track.
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Freedom of speech is suddenly a "conservative" value. Why is that? Have we really given this concept the time that it truly deserves?
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This isn't that much of a revelation, but freedom of speech has become a conservative value because the left has utterly abandoned it.
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I'm still a liberal, and I still support and defend freedom of speech, but the paradigm of the left has shifted from liberal to progressive.
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Freedom of speech USED TO be a progressive value, especially considering the historically radical nature of ideas of "individual rights."
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That individual rights became a mundane, non-partisan part of our value system speaks volumes about the success of the American experiment.
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Yet progressive obsession with "power" has completely inverted the understanding of what freedom of speech actually did.
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Freedom of speech ALWAYS guaranteed the right of those without power to speak up against it. It's why we were able to expand legal equality.
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Yet because of the wonky progressive understanding of history, freedom of speech is now understood to be a tool of oppression, somehow.
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Because Nazis use it. Because white supremacists use it. Because racists use it. Because people they dislike use it to disagree with them.
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Yet just like Pepe, we're running into a situation where it's only a known feature of the "enemy" because it was specifically ceded to them.
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Freedom of speech is an invaluable tool, that allows for the non-violent political paradigm to exist. But it is just that, a tool.
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It is madness to cede the exclusive use of such a useful tool to your enemy, just because you don't like what they supposedly do with it.
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It's the same "Hitler liked dogs, therefore if you like dogs then you're a Nazi" fallacy all over again, but as a full political doctrine.
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Hitler was supposedly a vegetarian. Imagine if progressives tried to claim that eating vegetables made you a Nazi. That's what this is like.
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Hitler drank water. He also breathed air, and used the oxygen to fuel his daily Nazi activities. Are water and air Nazi tools of oppression?
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Freedom of speech is important. So important. Unimaginably important. It's like the water and air of our discourse and political system.
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Refusing to recognize it as a right because the other side used it is to intentionally cripple your freedoms, rights, and your discourse.
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It's like refusing to eat vegetables. Like refusing to drink water. Like refusing to breathe air. You'll end up anemic, weakened, and dead.
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And if you claim that air and water and vegetables are only the purview of your enemies, guess who is going to be all the stronger for it?
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Freedom of speech is the lifeblood upon which your freedom and your rights depend. It is the reason that you are not ACTUALLY oppressed.
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When you claim that freedom of speech is a tool of oppression you sound like a fool. It's a page directly out of 1984. "Freedom is Slavery."
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I am anti-fascist. I am anti-totalitarian. I am anti-authoritarian. So that means that I support freedom of speech with all of my being.
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If you do not support freedom of speech, and claim to be any of those things, then I will laugh at you like the ideologue that you are.
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If you do not support freedom of speech, I will oppose you. Even if that means that you will accuse me of being a fascist or a racist.
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I know what I am and what I am not. And frankly it doesn't matter. What matters is that I protect freedom of speech from people like you.
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I've said it before. Wherever there is anyone advocating authoritarianism, you find someone who dreams themselves the authority.
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Every authoritarian dreams themselves the leader of the system they impose, never to question what would happen if they weren't.
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We have to have this conversation every month now, and it's always the same. Hate speech is free speech. That's the entire point. I'm sorry.
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Labeling people that you don't like "white supremacists" in order to shut them down doesn't actually work, and disempowers the accusation.
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