Free Speech for Our Enemies?

And so here we have another one where uh although you're gonna take the unpopular position, which is good. Which is good. Uh but the proposition here is free speech is worth upholding even for our enemies. And I I did agree with that. You disagreed. So let's hear it. So obviously there's another one that requires a good amount of context, right? Uh I think that freedom of speech is one of those things that exists inside of morally uh you know, kind of homogenous polities. Uh so when you have uh a very small amount of space between you and the guy next to you, disagreeing is not really a life or death issue, right? Uh if one guy says, hey, we should have 5% taxes, and when the guy says we should have 7% taxes, we probably don't have to shoot it out. Though maybe, you know, the American Revolution was started on something similar.

Uh but that said, I I think that when we have these issues that ultimately we're relatively close on, freedom of speech makes perfect sense. Uh once we get to the point where the question is uh should we mutilate children and should you go to jail if you refuse to mutilate a child, uh then the question of free speech gets pretty far away, right? Now all of a sudden the state's uh actions are no longer one of small differences, they're one of existential differences. They're one that will more or less decide who lives or who dies, who's allowed to live as they would, as they would naturally, and those who will be oppressed uh directly. And in those moments, obviously there's some level of uh speech that becomes so volatile that it creates a rift in society that will tear it apart. Uh that said, I'm generally, as we kind of discussed previously, inclined towards liberal debate.

Inclined, you know, even if I don't think that's the best word for it, I mean uh uh in that exchange. You you actually had a a reasonable defense of free speech in your book, I believe. Uh around the that free speech was necessary. Uh uh, I think it was around the ability to criticize corporations. Uh you wrote the book, so you shouldn't immediately know the references. Okay. Um, well, so I did uh I did agree with this one. I think at least in terms of, and we also may not want to live in the same kind of society. This is a this is also an important difference. You know, I think something that uh one of the reasons I think you know we have some alignment is I think we very much recognize the enemy. We very much recognize the problem. And I think we see that nearly universally agreed. What we want on what we might want on the other side, you know, might not be the same thing, which is of course perfectly fine.

It's a large planet. Uh, you know, but for me, I think free speech, free speech to me is is is one of my you know most deeply held beliefs. It was a big part of my previous work attempting to allow very unpopular speech to continue to be distributed. You know, it once you adopt you look, again, uh, you know, my my my company was was keeping a bunch of unpopular speech about you know COVID online, uh, you know, and so those those people were enemies. You know, the people who you know wanted to fight against the vaccine mandates or the people who uh you know uh thought that you ought to be able uh you know uh to to go outside regardless of the uh of a potential pandemic. You know, those those people were enemies of the people who were elected. And so if you don't have a principle where people can continue to speak in as many situations as possible I you know I I think it's tough because I think I think I you know power is real power will cement itself power will critique dissent power will attempt to quash descent maybe is a better way of putting it and so if you don't have a principle by which people can say unpopular things and so on I you know I I do think that trends towards you know something relatively dystopian the one thing that I would say here is I I I would at the same time agree that you know people could say words I'd be like well I don't want you in my neighborhood right I like I do I you know I do I do agree with this and I think it does also get fuzzy you know at what point um speech becomes a threat or becomes a promise you know I'm I'm very libertarian and so I definitely get the idea of you know hey if someone's saying like hey we want to seize all these people's property is that speech or is that a threat you know I think that can get fuzzy from my perspective but this is one that I definitely want to hold on to because I I all of my views they very much come from seeking the truth from trying to understand what's true about the world and I think that that involves people being able to say unpopular thing.

You know as a young kid one of my heroes was in this the whole story's fake it was all political but as a kid, I really liked the story of Galileo. You know, this idea that uh this man had discovered this truth about the world that was unpopular and he would he was nonetheless correct, you know. And so I I do I to me that's part of why this one is important to me, that we want to allow people to say unpopular things because that's part of seeking the truth to allow people to express a very unpopular uh you know opinion. And so that's why I ultimately uh agreed on that one, which by the way, again, uh the audience uh agreed with me. So you're obviously right. We all you know we all know democracy is so I know it's it's uh well democracy is wrong when I disagree with it, and when I'm right, uh democracy is populism or democracy.

What do you mean? Yeah, okay.