Those who intend to violently curtail freedom of speech operate from an obsession with discord or from a desperate appetite for limited classifications for singularities which otherwise amount to complex subject matter.
In the lion’s share of cases, it appears as though a select few impassioned chatterboxes monopolize the headlines with explosive rhetoric designed exclusively to make your blood boil, to deliberately obfuscate the ongoing conversation, and to persuasively nudge passive bystanders into accommodating their half-baked demands.
Of course, the unquestioning or preoccupied bystander generously yields to the moment’s inertia as a way of sheltering oneself from the onslaught of ridicule which might otherwise overwhelm him.
What’s more, the average individual faces little difficulty in accepting these demands, as his connections and relationships seldom, if ever, present such a problem.
Where those problems present themselves, however, one always reserves the option of avoiding them or any association with them.
So, in the majority of cases, one will scarcely encounter an individual who feels sufficiently passionate about freedom of speech to cause a fuss when that freedom falls under threat.
Instead, the individual will ordinarily yield without question, acquiescing to demands which immediately operate at relatively thin margins before introducing a whole subset of unanswered questions about allowable speech and the range of permissible mistakes.
The freedom of speech serves positively and unambiguously as the very foundation of freedom.
It serves as the manifest expression of one’s freedom to think, to contemplate and to opine.
The freedom to flourish is everywhere a function of the individual’s freedom to fail, to make mistakes and even to offend.
In fact, this foundational freedom serves as the fundamental method for the achievement of continued social equilibrium, whereby worldly outlooks dynamically evolve to contest each other with the benefit of documented history, evolution of intellectual thought, and testable scientific evidence.
Just as with the greater array of human liberties, the freedom of speech exists unspectacularly at the most abstract level, posing a threat to the casual thinker and activist whose intolerance for alternative thought inspired that visceral and undying enthusiasm for limiting it, not to elevate civilization onto the vaunted podium of righteousness, but rather to insulate impetuous persons and their tender brains from the kinds of thoughts which threaten to undermine their arguments or imperil the very foundation of their -ism-based lives.
The severe heartache of being questioned might prove to bring so many to their knees that they might finally admit how lazy they were in assuming they had all the answers.
How could anyone possibly live with the agony of this sort of defeat, after realizing the hollowness of their dangerous assumptions and hasty conclusions?
Why, they might have to actually learn and question everything they ever thought they knew.
For so many in the modern world, this appears as an evil to be extinguished by any and all means, just as the struggle of exercising or competing, the pain of burning oneself on the stove, the grief of failing an exam, the discomfort of determining who we are and what matters to us individually.
We could conceivably ignore or conceal the valuable lessons presented by these miseries, but the ensuing danger lurks in inhibiting our understanding of real threats, limiting our fullest potential, stymying our possibility for growth, and ultimately obscuring the most achievable semblance of reality.
Unfortunately, for the excitable button-donning, poster-waving activist, the sum total of this struggle serves merely as an inconvenience which could theoretically be washed away if only we had the courage to empower men with guns by the letter of law to rid the world of it all.
Of course, the resultant dystopia would ultimately serve as no problem either, as the activist might live to fight another battle with only a different set of munitions or perhaps on an entirely different front.
And if not, it will have reportedly been the fault of some other abstract, as there is always someone or something else to blame.
And in the case of government, bureaucrats will predictably contend that the result was the consequence of too few laws, too few enumerated powers, too little funding, or some combination thereof.
That's the beauty of activism and the nature of government bureaucracy.
They are truly the physical embodiment of "heads I win, tails you lose."
And while they tighten the clamps around your lips and around the limits of allowable opinion, they will chatter through the night until you can say no more and you've become exhausted by the mental gymnastics required to remain politically correct.
Then, and only then, will government have finally achieved the highest mark of success, whereby subjects live silently in fearful obedience of the Leviathan of government which intimately monitors their every word and every thought, which stands prepared to pummel anyone who dares to commit the high crime of unfashionable opinion.
And where government fails to punish the transgressors, its subjects dutifully seek justice on its behalf, shouting to the heavens for mercy and recompense, publicly smearing the image of the individual who dared to honestly speak his mind.
In the end, the opposition to the freedom of speech operates from a fundamental misunderstanding of their implications or otherwise from a categorical distaste for freedom altogether.
For, a foolish opinion need not be censored, as its unconquerable enemy of logic stands always prepared to expose its faults.
Only a tyrant introduces violence to a non-violent assembly armed with thoughts.
In the lion’s share of cases, it appears as though a select few impassioned chatterboxes monopolize the headlines with explosive rhetoric designed exclusively to make your blood boil, to deliberately obfuscate the ongoing conversation, and to persuasively nudge passive bystanders into accommodating their half-baked demands.
Of course, the unquestioning or preoccupied bystander generously yields to the moment’s inertia as a way of sheltering oneself from the onslaught of ridicule which might otherwise overwhelm him.
What’s more, the average individual faces little difficulty in accepting these demands, as his connections and relationships seldom, if ever, present such a problem.
Where those problems present themselves, however, one always reserves the option of avoiding them or any association with them.
So, in the majority of cases, one will scarcely encounter an individual who feels sufficiently passionate about freedom of speech to cause a fuss when that freedom falls under threat.
Instead, the individual will ordinarily yield without question, acquiescing to demands which immediately operate at relatively thin margins before introducing a whole subset of unanswered questions about allowable speech and the range of permissible mistakes.
The freedom of speech serves positively and unambiguously as the very foundation of freedom.
It serves as the manifest expression of one’s freedom to think, to contemplate and to opine.
The freedom to flourish is everywhere a function of the individual’s freedom to fail, to make mistakes and even to offend.
In fact, this foundational freedom serves as the fundamental method for the achievement of continued social equilibrium, whereby worldly outlooks dynamically evolve to contest each other with the benefit of documented history, evolution of intellectual thought, and testable scientific evidence.
Just as with the greater array of human liberties, the freedom of speech exists unspectacularly at the most abstract level, posing a threat to the casual thinker and activist whose intolerance for alternative thought inspired that visceral and undying enthusiasm for limiting it, not to elevate civilization onto the vaunted podium of righteousness, but rather to insulate impetuous persons and their tender brains from the kinds of thoughts which threaten to undermine their arguments or imperil the very foundation of their -ism-based lives.
The severe heartache of being questioned might prove to bring so many to their knees that they might finally admit how lazy they were in assuming they had all the answers.
How could anyone possibly live with the agony of this sort of defeat, after realizing the hollowness of their dangerous assumptions and hasty conclusions?
Why, they might have to actually learn and question everything they ever thought they knew.
For so many in the modern world, this appears as an evil to be extinguished by any and all means, just as the struggle of exercising or competing, the pain of burning oneself on the stove, the grief of failing an exam, the discomfort of determining who we are and what matters to us individually.
We could conceivably ignore or conceal the valuable lessons presented by these miseries, but the ensuing danger lurks in inhibiting our understanding of real threats, limiting our fullest potential, stymying our possibility for growth, and ultimately obscuring the most achievable semblance of reality.
Unfortunately, for the excitable button-donning, poster-waving activist, the sum total of this struggle serves merely as an inconvenience which could theoretically be washed away if only we had the courage to empower men with guns by the letter of law to rid the world of it all.
Of course, the resultant dystopia would ultimately serve as no problem either, as the activist might live to fight another battle with only a different set of munitions or perhaps on an entirely different front.
And if not, it will have reportedly been the fault of some other abstract, as there is always someone or something else to blame.
And in the case of government, bureaucrats will predictably contend that the result was the consequence of too few laws, too few enumerated powers, too little funding, or some combination thereof.
That's the beauty of activism and the nature of government bureaucracy.
They are truly the physical embodiment of "heads I win, tails you lose."
And while they tighten the clamps around your lips and around the limits of allowable opinion, they will chatter through the night until you can say no more and you've become exhausted by the mental gymnastics required to remain politically correct.
Then, and only then, will government have finally achieved the highest mark of success, whereby subjects live silently in fearful obedience of the Leviathan of government which intimately monitors their every word and every thought, which stands prepared to pummel anyone who dares to commit the high crime of unfashionable opinion.
And where government fails to punish the transgressors, its subjects dutifully seek justice on its behalf, shouting to the heavens for mercy and recompense, publicly smearing the image of the individual who dared to honestly speak his mind.
In the end, the opposition to the freedom of speech operates from a fundamental misunderstanding of their implications or otherwise from a categorical distaste for freedom altogether.
For, a foolish opinion need not be censored, as its unconquerable enemy of logic stands always prepared to expose its faults.
Only a tyrant introduces violence to a non-violent assembly armed with thoughts.
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