Remember, like a month ago, when it was revealed that pretty much the entirety of the "evidence" used by the Liberal government to invoke the Emergencies Act against the Trucker Convoy was completely fabricated by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network? And how they passed it on to the MSM, like the government-controlled CBC, who parrotted it word for word without verifying anything?
This is what happens when the government gets to control which reporters are allowed at press conferences.
Federal government coordinating with private corporations (NGOs, "news stations/journalists," banks, etc.) to stamp out dissent through censorship, asset freezing, and propaganda. It literally does not get more fascistic than that.
Once they have their power completely solidified and they are confident it'll never get overthrown, they'll come out of the closet on it. But it'll be how amazing it is now and to not pay attention to those rumors of people starving in the streets or super-long breadlines.
if they emulate the china model they will pretend to be free until someone tests them on this and learns it the hard way. Makes it easier to avoid sanctions from other countries.
"That's what Europe did. And I think that's what we'll have to do here."
These may be some of the most terrifying words I've ever heard.
"Local medias...you know, at some point companies will have to understand that they're actors, and not the government."
I wish the people in government understood the purpose of government. Specifically representational government, at least. Your job, government, at least in theory, is to protect the rights of the people, not to say "we're the government, so you have to do what we say." You serve the people, not the other way around!
Online platforms and Social Media but not the MSM which are arguably the worst for it.
I wonder if this is just governments slowly catching up to enact changes now that they've lost their control over one of the largest social media platforms out there.
I tend to agree with the government, tbh. If I was in power the last thing I would want is for my enemies to be able to say whatever they wanted. What we need to do is not advocate for freedom of expression but to remove the current leadership, replace them with our own and then squash any rebellion from people like the ones we replace.
We are in a culture war. It's time to stop playing nice. Only one culture we reign supreme and the way you reign supreme is you eliminate all those with an opposing value-system.
This is an understandable point of view, but it is totally wrong and destructive in the long term.
We once had an old, patriarchal regime in the United States that checked most boxes people talk about here - anti-communist, anti-feminist, nominally patriotic, America first, with just as brutal views on racial differences. This regime was called the Johnson Administration. It drafted 60,000 young men to die "for their country" on a worthless piece of land in SEA and brought about the demise of traditional authority by so doing. If the anti-communists want you to sacrifice your life to take Hill 431 that'll just be taken by the VC next week, communism and free love hippie chicks start to look pretty good.
The obvious rebuttal is that Johnson also brought in the Great Society, Civil Rights Act, and Hart-Cellar, so by those standards he was a leftist. No actually, we know from history that he was under no utopian illusions. He was just a conniving retard with really stupid ideas that enjoyed a mandate of power. And because the Greatest Generation thoughtlessly trusted him, for the most part, he got away with it.
Good governance is hard and unrewarding, and some people on the hard right have horrible ideas, while others are just enriching themselves or chasing the next dopamine hit. I reserve the right to call them out.
I would argue freedom of expression is destructive over the long-term because it gives your enemies a way to grow in your society. Oppressing your enemies seems to be the best thing to do if longevity is your goal.
What good is freedom of expression if people are using freedom of expression to undermine your society?
Longevity is a slippery thing. In the absence of monarchies and divine mandates, dictatorships also beg the question of succession, which has never been solved. The US is often called a young country, but all its rivals are substantially younger.
More generally I would move the premise one step back and ask why we had a society worth preserving, to which free expression is a large component. When you look at squalor and truly staggering losses of life, totalitarian regimes account for most of it. Preservation of the state is not the highest virtue if the people are just grist for the state, and if there is no free expression, who are they to say otherwise? Revolt is the only speech left, but a state that restricts speech could never allow the 2nd amendment to exist either.
I think the answer is in some form of separation, whether that involves deportation or secession.
I've always liked Benjamin Franklin's quote on this subject:
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. - Franklin
I like this quote because it highlights the inherent redundancy and ineffectiveness of libertarian ideology. I 100% agree with Franklin but here is the issue, if only good people are capable of freedom because presumably good people won't use their freedom to commit evil, what good is freedom then? If you will only use your freedom to be good then you have no use for freedom because your actions are already restricted by your virtue. Therefore, the only people who benefit from freedom are those who are not virtuous and if these people aren't virtuous then why would you as a virtuous person want those without virtue to have freedom? You wouldn't.
So to me, freedom is useless. What we should advocate for is to control evil. Oppress evil and when you do so you won't actually oppress good people. Good people will always feel free when you oppress evil because good people will never utilize their freedom to do evil anyway so if you restrict people from doing evil, you are not actually transgressing on the freedom of those who are good people.
Freedom of all speech isn't needed. You only need freedom to say good things.
What determines good and evil? The men in charge. Don't like what they think is good or evil? Replace them with your own guys.
Oppress evil and when you do so you won't actually oppress good people. Good people will always feel free when you oppress evil because good people will never utilize their freedom to do evil anyway so if you restrict people from doing evil, you are not actually transgressing on the freedom of those who are good people.
You hit on a reason as to why the ideas of libertarianism/anarchy have propagated so much today. (ignore their origins for now) It's because a large number of people today feel the government is tyrannical or evil and want to throw the whole system out because they don't see a viable alternative. If the government did what people thought was "good", there would be less thought put towards libertarian ideas.
What determines good and evil? The men in charge. Don't like what they think is good or evil? Replace them with your own guys.
But this overlooks or leads to the problem that we don't have a unified polity or nation. The evil men do represent a large number of people, whether through trickery or because the people are evil. You can't just replace them with your own guys. You have to replace or dominate the citizens who put those guys in power. The only solutions I see are:
-> Balkanization: Split up the country smaller units with your good people controlling one region and bad people are forced to another region.
-> Total War against all your neighbors until they submit, a la the French Revolution.
Both lead to some bloodshed, maybe the first less than the second.
I 100% agree with Franklin but here is the issue, if only good people are capable of freedom because resumable good people won't use their freedom to commit evil, what good is freedom then? If you will only use your freedom to be good then you have no use for freedom because your actions are already restricted by your virtue.
There's a massive problem you didn't identify: good people don't always know what is good. This is where freedom of expression, through inquiry and discussion, has corrected a massive catalog of errors that would have destroyed the US otherwise.
Free expression, through the power of discovery, has also guaranteed the supremacy of the US, which is taken for granted.
Franklin's quote is absolutely correct, but it's descriptive, not prescriptive. You are advocating for things we "should" do, but that word is premised on the virtue that we would lack. In fact once the virtue is gone, all that remains is corruption and deterministic natural selection. You would be better off trying to secure your personal future instead of worrying about dying in the workings of an amoral system.
Arguably, none of the expression that benefitted the USA was evil expression and there is a lot of expression that has poisoned the USA. A society that allowed the good expression and not the bad would be healthier than the USA.
If we had psychic foreknowledge, it would be possible to outlaw all "bad" expression. Otherwise there is a necessary discovery process enabled by free expression.
Arguably, none of the expression that benefitted the USA was evil expression
The fact that you had to use the word "arguably" demonstrates the above.
The easiest one that comes to mind is some guy here that thought it was OK for pharma companies to release placebo batches of medicine as PRODUCTION goods outside of medical trials.
There's also the DeSantis idea that we should invade Mexico and subject ourselves to Iraq part III, Rick Santorum's idea of yore to ban contraception, and the post in this chain about banning free speech.
Remember, like a month ago, when it was revealed that pretty much the entirety of the "evidence" used by the Liberal government to invoke the Emergencies Act against the Trucker Convoy was completely fabricated by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network? And how they passed it on to the MSM, like the government-controlled CBC, who parrotted it word for word without verifying anything?
This is what happens when the government gets to control which reporters are allowed at press conferences.
Federal government coordinating with private corporations (NGOs, "news stations/journalists," banks, etc.) to stamp out dissent through censorship, asset freezing, and propaganda. It literally does not get more fascistic than that.
I would respect them more if they would just admit they are on the way to a ditctatorship/oligarchy.
Well, Dear Leader is the one on record as saying he admires China's dictatorship.
Dear Leader also descends from Cuba's Dearest Leader.
Once they have their power completely solidified and they are confident it'll never get overthrown, they'll come out of the closet on it. But it'll be how amazing it is now and to not pay attention to those rumors of people starving in the streets or super-long breadlines.
if they emulate the china model they will pretend to be free until someone tests them on this and learns it the hard way. Makes it easier to avoid sanctions from other countries.
"That's what Europe did. And I think that's what we'll have to do here."
These may be some of the most terrifying words I've ever heard.
"Local medias...you know, at some point companies will have to understand that they're actors, and not the government."
I wish the people in government understood the purpose of government. Specifically representational government, at least. Your job, government, at least in theory, is to protect the rights of the people, not to say "we're the government, so you have to do what we say." You serve the people, not the other way around!
Canadian government serves The Crown.
Don't worry Canadians, Pierre Poilievre owned a liberal reporter the other day. It's all gonna be alright.
Most of Canada hates the retarded liberals and NDP and their supporters.
Cant wait til things pop off and people start to get dragged into the street imo.. i hope things pop of instead of a slow death.
Online platforms and Social Media but not the MSM which are arguably the worst for it.
I wonder if this is just governments slowly catching up to enact changes now that they've lost their control over one of the largest social media platforms out there.
LOL
I tend to agree with the government, tbh. If I was in power the last thing I would want is for my enemies to be able to say whatever they wanted. What we need to do is not advocate for freedom of expression but to remove the current leadership, replace them with our own and then squash any rebellion from people like the ones we replace.
We are in a culture war. It's time to stop playing nice. Only one culture we reign supreme and the way you reign supreme is you eliminate all those with an opposing value-system.
This is an understandable point of view, but it is totally wrong and destructive in the long term.
We once had an old, patriarchal regime in the United States that checked most boxes people talk about here - anti-communist, anti-feminist, nominally patriotic, America first, with just as brutal views on racial differences. This regime was called the Johnson Administration. It drafted 60,000 young men to die "for their country" on a worthless piece of land in SEA and brought about the demise of traditional authority by so doing. If the anti-communists want you to sacrifice your life to take Hill 431 that'll just be taken by the VC next week, communism and free love hippie chicks start to look pretty good.
The obvious rebuttal is that Johnson also brought in the Great Society, Civil Rights Act, and Hart-Cellar, so by those standards he was a leftist. No actually, we know from history that he was under no utopian illusions. He was just a conniving retard with really stupid ideas that enjoyed a mandate of power. And because the Greatest Generation thoughtlessly trusted him, for the most part, he got away with it.
Good governance is hard and unrewarding, and some people on the hard right have horrible ideas, while others are just enriching themselves or chasing the next dopamine hit. I reserve the right to call them out.
I would argue freedom of expression is destructive over the long-term because it gives your enemies a way to grow in your society. Oppressing your enemies seems to be the best thing to do if longevity is your goal.
What good is freedom of expression if people are using freedom of expression to undermine your society?
Longevity is a slippery thing. In the absence of monarchies and divine mandates, dictatorships also beg the question of succession, which has never been solved. The US is often called a young country, but all its rivals are substantially younger.
More generally I would move the premise one step back and ask why we had a society worth preserving, to which free expression is a large component. When you look at squalor and truly staggering losses of life, totalitarian regimes account for most of it. Preservation of the state is not the highest virtue if the people are just grist for the state, and if there is no free expression, who are they to say otherwise? Revolt is the only speech left, but a state that restricts speech could never allow the 2nd amendment to exist either.
I think the answer is in some form of separation, whether that involves deportation or secession.
I've always liked Benjamin Franklin's quote on this subject:
I like this quote because it highlights the inherent redundancy and ineffectiveness of libertarian ideology. I 100% agree with Franklin but here is the issue, if only good people are capable of freedom because presumably good people won't use their freedom to commit evil, what good is freedom then? If you will only use your freedom to be good then you have no use for freedom because your actions are already restricted by your virtue. Therefore, the only people who benefit from freedom are those who are not virtuous and if these people aren't virtuous then why would you as a virtuous person want those without virtue to have freedom? You wouldn't.
So to me, freedom is useless. What we should advocate for is to control evil. Oppress evil and when you do so you won't actually oppress good people. Good people will always feel free when you oppress evil because good people will never utilize their freedom to do evil anyway so if you restrict people from doing evil, you are not actually transgressing on the freedom of those who are good people.
Freedom of all speech isn't needed. You only need freedom to say good things.
What determines good and evil? The men in charge. Don't like what they think is good or evil? Replace them with your own guys.
You hit on a reason as to why the ideas of libertarianism/anarchy have propagated so much today. (ignore their origins for now) It's because a large number of people today feel the government is tyrannical or evil and want to throw the whole system out because they don't see a viable alternative. If the government did what people thought was "good", there would be less thought put towards libertarian ideas.
But this overlooks or leads to the problem that we don't have a unified polity or nation. The evil men do represent a large number of people, whether through trickery or because the people are evil. You can't just replace them with your own guys. You have to replace or dominate the citizens who put those guys in power. The only solutions I see are:
-> Balkanization: Split up the country smaller units with your good people controlling one region and bad people are forced to another region.
-> Total War against all your neighbors until they submit, a la the French Revolution.
Both lead to some bloodshed, maybe the first less than the second.
And I fully agree with those solutions. They are the same solutions I come to as solutions so they're obviously the only solutions.
There's a massive problem you didn't identify: good people don't always know what is good. This is where freedom of expression, through inquiry and discussion, has corrected a massive catalog of errors that would have destroyed the US otherwise.
Free expression, through the power of discovery, has also guaranteed the supremacy of the US, which is taken for granted.
Franklin's quote is absolutely correct, but it's descriptive, not prescriptive. You are advocating for things we "should" do, but that word is premised on the virtue that we would lack. In fact once the virtue is gone, all that remains is corruption and deterministic natural selection. You would be better off trying to secure your personal future instead of worrying about dying in the workings of an amoral system.
Arguably, none of the expression that benefitted the USA was evil expression and there is a lot of expression that has poisoned the USA. A society that allowed the good expression and not the bad would be healthier than the USA.
If we had psychic foreknowledge, it would be possible to outlaw all "bad" expression. Otherwise there is a necessary discovery process enabled by free expression.
The fact that you had to use the word "arguably" demonstrates the above.
Such as?
The easiest one that comes to mind is some guy here that thought it was OK for pharma companies to release placebo batches of medicine as PRODUCTION goods outside of medical trials.
There's also the DeSantis idea that we should invade Mexico and subject ourselves to Iraq part III, Rick Santorum's idea of yore to ban contraception, and the post in this chain about banning free speech.
if mexico isn't going to do it, we might as well.