Why Free Speech Matters To Me.

My two main reasons for being a huge advocate for free speech is freedom and politics. If we're not free to say what we want, then we can't possibly consider ourselves free people. When your voice and thoughts are being suppressed by others, you are now officially being oppressed.

Whenever I write about this topic there's always that one guy that says "Acktuuually you can't walk into a movie theater and scream fire" So to that guy, before we even get started... "Go screw yourself". There I said it, I've expressed my free speech and disdain for you, now block me and report me for being a terrible person. :) That in itself is a form of soft-censorship and an affront to my free speech.

Seriously though, there's always the exception to every rule. Where we draw those lines are important. With great power comes great responsibility and as with all things in life we have to use common sense. When we can no longer share our theories, political views, and opinions, we can no longer learn and grow as people. It seems more and more we find those types of topics the target of censors and those who would suppress our free speech.

At one time everyone thought the world was flat, not just a few idiots on the internet. We thought the solar system revolved around our world and not the sun, and the church dictated a lot of what people were allowed to believe, read and speak. Could you imagine living in a world that didn't break free of these dogmas and dictates? Those who spoke up often faced being burned at the stake or hanged for their heretical point of view. Without free speech and those who spoke up before us, this is the world we would be living in.

Lately, it seems there is always someone trying to control what others read and write. In many ways, we're already soft-censoring ourselves in the guise of political correctness. "You can't say that it's offensive!" We've now moved on from political correctness to anything that we don't agree with or that makes us uncomfortable should be banned as well. The truly horrifying part is you actually have to explain to some people why freedom of speech is important. They just don't get it.

Yes, there are people out there that spread disinformation. By saying that we need to stifle those people's right to free speech is essentially saying that you think me and my fellow men and women are too stupid to think for ourselves and do our own research. I get it, but you really need to do your own research on everything you read and hear these days! By creating a "Ministry of Truth", who is to say what is true or false? That my friend becomes a slippery slope to go down. The solution is worse than the problem.

I think to distill it down to its purest form, censorship and stifling a person's ability to speak freely is a form of control. If you control the narrative, if you control what people read, say, and think, you essentially control them. It's that simple.

Free speech matters because there is more than one side to every story. I don't want to live in an echo chamber where everyone parrots what the last person said. I want to be challenged. If I'm wrong then tell me. I want to be free to disagree. I want the ability to change my mind based on new information found. I don't care about your sensitivities. (Well actually I really do, but for the sake of this blog post, your sensitivities are irrelevant to free speech)

Without free speech, we lose our voice. We lose our right to choose. If someone is suppressing one side of the story, or we're unable to find the information we're looking for, then we remain in a state of ignorance. We lose our ability to grow and learn. We lose our ability to make educated choices based on the information available to us.

I don't want to live in a society where the "Ministry Of Truth" tells me what I can or can not say. I want to be able to do my own research. I want to find the information available and make my own decision based on the information I've found. I want to express my point of view freely without concern of being punished for expressing it. This becomes impossible without the right to free speech. I don't want to be controlled!