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If our world were one where people’s brains aren’t poisoned by the inability to re-evaluate the facts at their disposal when they don’t suit their preferred narrative, then sure, in that world, I can see free speech as an absolute, fundamental principle. After all, if people are willing to research and find the best product in the marketplace of ideas, then having the widest range of possible ideas is ideal.
In the real world, though, we’re seeing how the fundamental limitations on the human brain to accept new information when you don’t want to believe it allows any idea to be picked up at the marketplace: even discredited, harmful ones. I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that the U.S. is currently demonstrating the failure mode of “unlimited free speech:” electing racist, sexist oligarchs to power because they can spout a simplistic us-vs.-them narrative that makes the people voting for them into the heroes of the story; violent clashes between authoritarians and protestors; conspiracy theorists posting about their ideological opponents in deliberate attempts to provoke hate-mobs into harassing and threatening them.
I think it’s high time (or rather, past time) that America re-evaluates its commitment to free speech at any cost, before said cost rises past its current watermark of “tragedy” and into “atrocity.”
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In contrast to Nina, I don’t think that the Dems will retake the House. Whether this makes me more or less cynical than her is a matter of perspective.
Haaretz confuses me. At times, they uncritically publish IDF propaganda. At other times, they publish stuff like this:
The more I read on the ACLU, the more I wonder if the staff that left because of Skokie meant an ideological purge that results in the absolution I have always known all my life.
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Keep in mind that this is not a controlled unbiased sample.