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.
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.
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.
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.
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.