Wadler's Blog

The Right is looking for things to get worked up about. I started following Nick Szabo on Twitter because of his good articles on economic history and on cryptocurrency. When I found he was a supporter of Trump and other Right wing stuff, I started to unfollow him, then I thought of David Brin's admonition that the two sides listen to each other. So I didn't. Along with a lot of looney stuff, the Right is particularly energised by the Left's growing dislike of, and action against, free speech. Allowing inoffensive free speech is nothing: the Soviet Union had that. Both Left and Right are ramping up the rhetoric and civil war is in the air, and not only in America. We don't need it. I'm particularly concerned that many reasonable people who only see a small part of the disagreement will perceive that the Left wants to limit free speech and will think that that proves they are (as the Right relentlessly claims) aiming for a Left dictatorship.
 

It's dangerous the way all of this is going... Alex Jones is scum and full of BS, which is why I don't pay attention to him. But the majority banding together to silence a minority they dispise is the anti-thesis of free speech. Too many people are quick to point to Twitter terms of service and ask for the to be enforced against those they disagree with and convienently ignore that by calling for someone to be silenced they are violating those same terms. I can hear the cries of "but it's not the same!" and the implication that the rules should only be enforced when it convient to the majority. The arrogance and hipocracy is amazing. I'd rather live in a world with idiots yelling garbage from their soapboxes and being mostly ignored than in a world where voice are silenced because they offend a different set of idiots yelling from their soapboxes.