Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:33 pm
Well, that doesn't describe the case you already deplored, the case of propagandizing children. It is not the children's emotional reaction or sense of offence that occasions the harm; in fact, they generally feel no personal offence at all, since they know so little already, and in any case are being indoctrinated to a degree that they may well feel no offence at all.
Marx did that sort of harm.
Of course you don't see any difference between forcing children to sit it in classrooms and intimidated into remembering the nonsense they will be expected to regurgitate on tests or be penalized. With rare exception, none of those children would pay any attention to the lies they are fed if it weren't for the threats they (and their parents) are faced with. They are given no choice but to, "listen," and, "read," what is required. That's not an audience to free speech.
No one had to listen to or read Marx or take anything he said seriously. No one force anyone to adopt Marx's theories or to practice them. Those who adopted Mar's views adopted them because they liked them, because it provided with the excuses they needed to carry out their excesses. Not even Marx made anyone do that. As always you blame the wrong thing for what individuals do. It was not, "a sinful nature," or, "Marx's teachings," or anything else that made oppressive dictators. It was the choice of the dictators and the individual choices of all his sycophants and fanatics.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:33 pm
I admit I do not say some things in the presence of idiots who will irrationally react to what I might say in some form of force or violence.
Well, Marx did.
So what? I'm not worried about the idiots threatening others, only me. If what I say incites others to do bad things, that's not my fault. If individuals had any virtues they could never do wrong things because of anything I, or Marx, or anyone else said, and if they cite what anyone said as the reason for their wrong acts, it is only an excuse. When you blame Marx for what evil men have done, you are letting the real perpetrators of evil off the hook.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:33 pm
If you want to prevent the harm you attribute to free speech, suppress the idiots, not the speakers.
Given that the average IQ in certain Western countries is about 98, and in some countries is below 70, your advice to "suppress the idiots" is going to be problematic. Large numbers of people who are substantially vulnerable to propaganda are going to exist everywhere. And even "smart" people can be fooled. For example, Charles Manson's second-in-command was a Rhodes Scholar.
Good grief. You think being a Rhodes scholar is the equivalent of being intelligent? Rhodes Scholar = politically acceptable social justice celebrity.
So the real reason you want to suppress free speech is because you think human beings are so stupid they need intelligent censors, like you, to keep them safe from hearing dangerous things. I see. I guess you'd be for a kind of conservative Christian,
Index Librorum Prohibitorum, banning such evil books as
Das Kapital,
The Communist Manifesto, and while we're at it, why not Thomas Paine's atheistic
Age of Reason, which justified and led all those low IQ early Americans to a violent revolution.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:33 pm
Please give even one example of how a verbal expression, in speech or writing, short of slander or fraud, can possibly do anyone harm.
As above: ...
No, you only mentioned what other people did, not how anything anyone said or wrote harmed anyone. Really, IC, if one is never to say or write anything some idiot might swallow whole, misconstrue, or take to heart and do wrong because of it, nothing of significance can ever be said or written.