I see that quote from time to time. It’s falsely attributed to Voltaire, as I understand, but … I don’t care who came up with it. It’s an interesting perspective on who has power in a culture. E.g., if you can’t criticize the Nazis, or the church, or left-handed people, then — by definition — that group is controlling speech. That’s not good. <\/p>\n
The quote came to mind when I read this. <\/p>\n
\u2018Fundamentally Unfair\u2019: Female Athletes \u2018Terrified\u2019 to Rebuff Transgenders, so Hall of Fame Swimmer Speaks Out<\/a> <\/p>\n What’s to be done about this? <\/p>\n The First Amendment proscribes the government from limiting speech, but the government isn’t the culprit here. Rather, a tiny minority of activists are controlling the speech of the rest of the country. Assuming that we value free speech in general,<\/i> and not simply government assaults on free speech, we need to address this. <\/p>\n How did we get to such a place, and how do we stop it? <\/p>\n While there are lots of competing factors, I think the most obvious villain here is simple cowardice. It’s very much like the parental cowardice that allows a 2-year old to run the home. It’s an unwillingness to say no when threatened with a temper tantrum. <\/p>\n It’s come to the point that people say things they know are not true<\/i> simply to avoid a temper tantrum from the activists. That is a very disturbing thing. <\/p>\n We stop it by refusing to allow bullies to control the conversation — in any place at any time. <\/p>\n But we don’t only have to stop it, we have to heal it, and I think the answer there is a proper education, where people are required to understand and even defend a point of view they don’t like. <\/p>\n I’ve never been on a debating team, but I’ve heard that it’s common for people to be assigned a position to defend — irrespective of whether they agree with that position. <\/p>\n That should be part of our educational process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I see that quote from time to time. It’s falsely attributed to Voltaire, as I understand, but … I don’t care who came up with it. It’s an interesting perspective on who has power in a culture. E.g., if you can’t criticize the Nazis, or the church, or left-handed people, then — by definition — … Continue reading ““To know who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2559,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions\/2559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}