Category: Free Speech
-
I Walk the Line
Over at Facebook. The line between saying what needs to be said and being de-platformed. I don't much cotton to book burners and their latter-day equivalents. Free speech and open inquiry! Not for their own sakes, but in pursuit of the truth. Not 'my truth' or 'your truth,' but the truth.
-
Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill
Substack latest. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism, but Mill takes it too far.
-
A Dozen Observations on Free Speech
Substack latest. Wherein I exercise, responsibly, my right to free speech on a topic of great importance. Your rights: use 'em or lose 'em. And don't forget: the Bill of Rights is just paper unless Pb gives it weight.
-
To speak the truth, one must be free to speak
Here: One of the two men who had joined us for the conversation shared an anecdote from a family member in America. The family member’s little girl came home from school after receiving the standard antiracist indoctrination in whiteness and white supremacy. The child said, “I don’t understand this. Don’t all lives matter?” The child’s…
-
Don’t Talk Like a ‘Liberal’!
A Substack sermon.
-
Is it Wise to Speak Out?
To focus the question: is it prudent for conservative dissidents to speak out against 'woke' madness? That depends. This will help you think it through. I wrote below: In the present political climate, if I exercise my right to free speech I may lose the right. Use it and lose it. This is because vast numbers nowadays do not…
-
The Joshua Hochschild Affair
The Decline of the West proceeds apace as leftists infiltrate all of our institutions. The universities, for example, have devolved into leftist seminaries in which groupthink reigns and the traditional purposes of the university have been forgotten. Large numbers of contemporary collegians seem to have no appreciation of the classical values of open inquiry and…
-
Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill
Given the extreme polarization in the political sphere, the Left's totalitarian crack-down on free speech gives aid and comfort to the opposite extreme and the notion that all speech must be tolerated. One finds this extremism in John Stuart Mill. I show what it wrong with it in a penetrating entry enshrined at MavPhil: Strictly…
-
Free Speech and the First Amendment
The free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the citizen's right to free expression from infringement by the government, not from infringement by any old entity. My home is my castle; you have no First Amendment rights here, or at my cyber-castle, my weblog. So it is no violation…
-
The Right to an Opinion
The right to express an opinion does not absolve one of the obligation to do one's level best to form correct opinions. Note however that the legal (and moral) right to free speech guaranteed to the American citizen by the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution remains even if one shirks one's moral (but…
-
An Example of White-Supremacist Hate Speech
This is ugly stuff. You have been warned! I link to it because of my commitment to free speech and open inquiry.
-
‘Conservative’ Andrew Sullivan Gets the Boot
The defenestration of Andrew Sullivan by New York Magazine shows once again that for the Left one cannot be too far left. This is rich: The latest study of Harvard University faculty, for example, finds that only 1.46 percent call themselves conservative. But that’s probably higher than the proportion of journalists who call themselves conservative…
-
Up with Free Speech! Down with the History-Erasing and Deplatforming Left
-
Is Speech Violence? Culture War 1.0 and Culture War 2.0
Peter Boghossian: The rules of engagement relate to how we deal with our disagreements. In Culture War 1.0, if an evolutionary biologist gave a public lecture about the age of the Earth based on geological dating techniques, creationist detractors would issue a response, insist that such dating techniques are biased, challenge him to a debate,…
-
Liberty Forever?
A re-post from 12 October 2012, shortly before Obama won a second term. Things are worse now. The last seven years have been hard on Lady Liberty despite our great gain in 2016. Liberty, if not quite dead, is moribund. The insanity spreads, as witness Journalists Against Free Speech. .………………….. How many Americans care about…