I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say Something I Hate

Regardless of how you feel about censorship (and we can quibble with whether private companies wiping out any trace of intellectual dissent on their platforms is censorship or not) I think we have a bigger problem.

And the problem, like most problems we’re facing, is not the fault of any corporation or government or scapegoat group of the month.

The problem is with you and I.

You and I want to silence each other.

We don’t want to converse, we don’t want to make a case, we don’t want to listen. We just want to use any means, private or public, to make the other person and their ideas go away.

This is not good.

There are ideas out there you and I hate. I think that’s pretty much a given.

I mean really hate. Like we feel sick even knowing they exist. Humans think them, believe them, and express them. And we hate that, too. Some of us even hate those ideas so much that we don’t even regard their proponents as human.

But when did it become our instinct to forcibly silence?

Force is always tempting.…