Freedom of Speech More Than Government Fiat

I'm not the only one thinking about the impact of mass banning of social media because of political preferences but it's rare to have people actually talk about it in ways that strike at the heart.

Synova in "Why it doesn't matter what Parler allowed" is a solid example of clear thinking. Sometimes people bury the lede. She doesn't.

Because allowing people to say scary things in public (or mean things, or false things) doesn't inflame anyone. It attracts people who are already inflamed.

And there's no way around that little inconvenient fact. Everything else discussed in this article evolves from that simple, basic, well-known thesis. Things that I've been saying a long, long time because much of this has been coming for a long, long time.

That's a shame because some of the people who are most adamant about the private strangling off of speech have been some of the most adamant that their own must be heard, whether one likes it or not, whether the means of delivery is accepted or not; their message must be delivered – at the end of a fist, the barricade of a highway, the burning of your business.

For over a year we've been told those are just modes of speech. Those who won't be heard just use that violence as an amplifier. Not only is it necessary, it's noble. They have chosen to take on the burden of millions of voices in the position of Exemplar of Prophecy.

If a cop shoots one of yours – whoever and however they may be related to you by any means that you feel suffices – it is good and just for the mob to come for that cop and his family, for him to find no place of respite, for the crusade to bring him down to be joined or for those who refuse to be marked as heretics.

If your voice can't be heard or won't be heard, it is just and right for you to destroy the works of others in the course of setting that justice right. They, after all, "didn't build that."

That's what we've been told. That's what we've observed, month after month, week after week, day after day.

Riot is a holy calling. If dissent is the highest form of patriotism, riot is clearly the holiest form of dissent.

Violent jihad in the streets has replaced the idea of "good, passionate speech" as the mechanism of change in the minds of something over 1/3 of the population, if we go by polls.

The State religion (in the Roman sense) is now "woke safetyism." One of the religion's holy rites is the public performance sacrifice of goods and history.

So – having created a new religious observance based on outrage and manifested through violent public action, 24/7 media marinade, and the handpicked chosen of the elite telling us how good and honorable it is to sacrifice yourself for the new High Church of the Woke, the scene is set.

There are very few religions which can have an elect (pun fully intended) without a devil. (Even you Buddhists don't escape from this truth: "unhealthy attachments to the world" are your devil and must be rejected.)

Ironically, the new High Church has forgotten an important principle. Or perhaps they've simply become confused as to their place in the narrative.

Would you really insist that your enemy be allowed to continually abuse you? Would you really protect the voice of the Devil himself all in order to ensure that YOU could always speak? Yes. Because it's important. Because it's necessary for all ideas, even the extremely bad ones, to exist in the public sphere. Perhaps even especially the extremely bad ideas, so they can be observed in the sunshine.

All this time the High Church has been laboring under the belief that they have been treated as the devil, so it is good and right that they turn on their pursuers having carefully and considerately burned down the forest of law within which their pursuers might hide.

Unfortunately for them, this is simply not true. They made for themselves a devil and started chasing it, cutting down a swath of the law before them in the heat of their pursuit. And now they have the unmitigated gall to look surprised when the devil they've made takes up the methods they've established and started turning 'round. Having razed the forest of Law, what they have left is nothing but naked force and hypocrisy.

In the eyes of half of the population, the efforts of their most aggressive pursuers must seem – do seem – to have delegitimized all of the tools they'd like to bring to bear.

For a current example, did constantly punishing people for questioning the November election make anyone question it less? Did slapping a "fact check" on a post so that everyone knew that bad thought was happening make anyone question the election less? If you were in charge of making sure that distrust of the election grew larger and larger, you couldn't possibly have come up with a better plan to turn merely inflamed people into legitimately aggrieved people.

Having constructed their new spirituality, having carved a swath through the rule of law (including actively creating funds for the defense of those caught in the very act of breaking the law and deliberately loosing those arrested in the very act of breaking the law, creating a protected class – themselves – to whom the law simply does not apply), they fed their devils on righteous stew then started chasing it, all the time throwing it ever more meaty and delicious chunks. Screaming about the things that they would do to it when it was caught. More and more who would have normally stood aside and let the spectacle pass were drawn in by ever more aggressive encirclement and taunts, threats and imprecations, while the holy raised up their saints.

When an oppressed people do what oppressed people do, so we've been told for years is the right and just thing for them to do, and turned on their pursuers in small numbers – the High Church started standing behind the thick logs of trees that were no longer there.

They look ludicrous trying to do so. The Emperor not only doesn't have clothes, he's standing there naked and playing with himself while daring the populace to say something about it – and when they do, they are hustled out of the public square as quickly as possible.

The High Church of the Woke has cut down the forest of laws. They have made their own devils. They have instructed the world in what they think is just and now they deny even that justice, the one that they promoted, from those they consider not human enough to be worthy of it.

Let's go back to Synova for one more quote:

The concepts, the ETHOS, of free speech (and no, the ethos of free speech does not apply only to government) was not come up with on a whim. It wasn't developed because those old smart guys wanted to say bad things or insult people. The idea of free speech was developed contrary to our normal desire to force people to be good and it was HARD.

"… our normal desire to force people to be good…"

That's a very telling bit, and it's probably one of the things which Synova and I would strongly disagree with when it comes to looking at the nature of the human condition and the power of individual decision.

I don't believe that we have a normal desire to force people to be good. I think we have a normal desire to force people to leave us alone and a general desire that other people do things that we like and avoid things that we don't like. Some people have a very strong desire that other people do things that they like and avoid things that they don't like, to the point where force and coercion are perfectly sensible means to an end for those people. While those people make up a relatively small proportion of humanity, because they are willing to enforce their will on others they get their way quite a lot.

"If you don't try, you don't succeed" is just as applicable here as anywhere else.

The ethos of free speech is grounded in the expectation that we will leave you alone if you leave us alone, and if you don't we will encourage the people who have an innate desire to force you to do things that we like in ways that you won't like. The ethos of free speech acts as a cultural check on the first action of this week's selected devil to be turning around on his pursuers and ripping them apart as devils are expected to do.

The High Church has cut a swath through the trees and chased their devils to the edge of the ocean while making sure that any reason that they had not to turn and face their pursuers was taken away and any place to hide from their wrath was cut even with the ground.

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

-- Revelation 6:16

From the perspective of a militant atheist, there is very little difference between a hunted devil and the wrath of the Lamb, once it's turned. They both like to scourge. They both seem to enjoy salting the earth. And being in front of them is a terrible place to be – especially when you have neither trees nor mountains nor rocks to hide you from their burning gaze.

And this, children, is why we don't lay low the thicket of laws when it's convenient, why we don't forge our own devils, why we don't cut out the tongues of those who would say things we don't like in the public square, why we don't decide who can make a living and live by their own lights just because we'd prefer them to do so by our lights, and why you should always remember that the tactics you employ can and will be employed against you.

Because we know what happens when they're pushed into the shadows. We know. Everyone knows. Everyone so vigorously opposing the ethos of free speech KNOWS. It's just that for some reason they don't care.

This is the moment at which I bring in one of my favorite quotes from Aleister Crowley (if you don't think that I can quote both Aleister Crowley and Revelations in the same article, you don't know me very well):

The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.

-- Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

The High Church of the Woke believes that they have attained full mastery of the rules and thus have already transcended them, but all they've succeeded in doing is cutting them down without understanding them, without understanding their purpose, without understanding their use, and now they will suffer the fate of all Will Workers who do not understand their tools or how to put down what they have brought up from essential salts.

That fact should be dawning on them in somewhere around a week from now.

Perhaps we shall see an understanding somewhere along the way.