> I'm really tired of people hiding behind free speech and "but what if someone had something important to say!".
But who is going to decide what we are allowed to say and what not? We all know “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. It’s very easy for someone to “manufacture consent” if you can take all the opponents out.
> So the answer is: it has to be decided democratically.
Okay so the voters have to choose what other people are allowed to say? Either we all have to say what the democrats want us to say and then what the republicans want us to say?
This is, by far, one of the saddest statements I have read on this site. You are not wrong. The world around us serves as a clear proof of that and yet I still want to believe in the 'aspirational nature' of the values that are supposedly guiding US as a country.
I think the problem comes from an unconscious belief that the Constitution is self-executing, thus is something that can be taken for granted because it'll always be there protecting them. That they can elect someone like Trump and it's fine because he's confined by the Constitution. Ultimately, the Constitution and its amendments are just words on paper: their worth comes from the People's demand, substantiated with an implied threat of revolution, that those words be obeyed. When your society acquiesces to the tyranny of partisanship within your institutions, particularly within the Supreme Court and it's self-proclaimed right to amend the Constitution at will, your Constitution only continues to exist through inertia. Elect someone like Trump who has no regard for the law unless it's useful to him, and that inertia slows. To quote Danielle Allen: "I have seen time and again people who just stop reading at that period after 'pursuit of happiness'." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqiFMiQeXNQ)
That "mostly" is doing a lot of work. Why should anyone with an, shall we say innocent opinion have their opinion quashed simply because they are not an expert? Which, by the way, is also a strange requirement, there were plenty of bona fide experts disagreeing with each other during the pandemic, but the experts going against governments promoting lockdowns also had their voices severely limited.
As Mill put it, so eloquently:
> If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
