Free Hearing, Not Speech
Control is a key status marker; all else equal those who give orders are above those who take orders. This seems to be the main reason for democracy’s popularity, not that it makes better decisions but that it raises citizen status, by appearing to put citizens in control.
Consider also that we call it “free speech,” not “free hearing.” The usual rationale for “free speech,” which seems persuasive, is that in the long run we as a society learn more via an open competition for the best ideas, where anyone can try to persuade us as best they can, and listeners are free to choose what to hear. Yet that concept would best be called “free hearing” – a freedom to hear and evaluate any case presented, based on any criteria you like (including cost). It is not a right to make others listen to you.
“Free hearing” would apply not just to hearing from adult citizens in good standing, but also to hearing from children, convicts, corporations, robots, foreigners, or demons. We wouldn’t argue if corporations have a right to speak, but rather if we have a right to hear what corporations have to say.
But in fact we have “free speech,” a right only enjoyed by adult citizens in good standing, a right we jealously guard, wondering if corporations etc. “deserve” it. This right seems more a status marker, like the right to vote, than a way to promote idea competition — that whole competition story seems more an ex post rationalization than the real cause for our concern. Which is why support for “free speech” is often paper thin, fluctuating with the status of proposed speakers.
Its a strange situation, everybody supports free speech, but also huge curtails on free speech have been polled as popular.
I think actually the true strength of free speech, at least in the context of strong democracies is what your wrote, that "in the long run we as a society learn more via an open competition for the best ideas, where anyone can try to persuade us as best they can, and listeners are free to choose what to hear." is not widely known enough, instead, free speech is supported because your taught to memorize that free speech is good in government class. Basically your brainwashed in an extremely authoritarian educational system.
Thus people dont even understand what they approve of, and they generally come to plato's conclusion that "bad" things should be banned and "good things"
Like I tend to think its less weird status games and more good old-fashioned ignorance.
I've thought about this for a while and have finally made my call on this and I will be the first person to openly say this out loud.
I. Hate. Free speech.
Democracy and free speech are both overrated and I’d personally be happier without them.
Among many other concepts and all aside from their incessant glorifying, these two both needlessly promote a cycle of collective competition of popularity and productivity and demote personal independence and responsibility. Indeed, they are responsible for what is presently our broken, brutal, and bloody two party system of Democrat vs. Republican and Liberal vs. Conservative. I find the notion that humans are required to duel their ideas under the score of dominance is ironically no different than the nationalism of the Britain of yore. Pardon my revisionism, if it be judged so, but instead of as this brilliant beacon of universal freedom, was America not founded on solely as a nation that separated from its dominant collective so that its people could rule themselves?
That am I'm also forced to recognize people that I normally would not; I have to allow people to get in my personal business, for instance.
For what is popular, I can also say the same for what is unpopular. I must reemphasize that we never needed to submit our lifestyles or ideas for nobody’s sake except our own private one. We made them for ourselves and ourselves alone and if we liked them, then we liked them, and if we didn't then we simply changed them. Just because something is considered popular or unpopular does not make them any more or less significant except perceptively in the culture that they form in.
Even originality is unoriginal.
In the end, it does not come down to which is popular or not, and all of our ideas can be considered arbitrary to the outside if found undesirable. Instead of merely serving the ego, it ultimately comes down to simply living our lives to our choosing. If all of this be deemed “Un-American,” “unpatriotic,” or even “unpopular,” in which case I feel that my point has been proven, then go and deem it so.
So yeah, don’t give me those free country and Orwell lines of crap.
Anyway, I think that once you think about it, free speech has nothing to do with anything ever.
Did we ever really need it for anything else except to criticize to government?
I hate how everyone romanticizes how dialogue and compromise can solve everything an the notion is more sinister than idealistic. If you demand or require that two opposing forces, let us say me and you know what for example, become buddies, you deny those people their autonomy and freedom of association and ultimately achieve social conformity. You will have forced people to give up their being of themselves and their ability to fight their own battles. Then again, I once said that if one side is hellbent on keeping another down, then that side doesn’t deserve to be themselves.
This guy here considers it cultural fetishizing.
http://jeffsharlet.blogspot... … logue.html