Sunday, February 2, 2020

No, Free Speech Absolutism Is Not A Moral Position, It Is Moral Abnegation With Self Satisfied Preening

There is certainly no rational reason for anyone who believes that egalitarian democracy is the best -no, make that only legitimate - system of government to lift a finger to support the ability of its enemies to make progress toward overthrowing or defeating it.  

Anyone who really, truly believes in equal rights, in the common good, in economic justice would have to value those enough to deny the enemies of those any chance of winning and over throwing them.  Otherwise, their claims to support those are PR window-dressing. 

The kind of "objective" "impartial" "leveling of the playing field" "liberalism" of the ACLU, Common Cause, etc. betrays the truth that those who would empower, to any extent, the enemies of equality, the common good, economic justice, environmental sustainability, etc. are the tools of the enemies of the good. They can pose as "principled" promoters of fairness but that is a pseudo-moral scruple that ignores the substance of what they enable by enabling, to any extent, the enemies of the good.  Any "fairness" you spend on fascists is wasted, any "niceness" you extend to Nazis is not nice, and there are alliterative illustrations of the same kind that could be made about enabling Stalinists or Maoists but as they have absolutely no prospect of gaining power in the United States or, really, anywhere much, these days, that's a waste of time.  Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, they already have the upper hand in the United States and they are increasingly gaining it in Europe. 

There is nothing "fair" about enabling fascists' ability to lie, cheat, gull, sway by appeals to the weaknesses, ignorance, moral defects of people into putting fascists into power.  Even when such idiot "liberals" who supported that cretinous campaign were pressed appealed to the belief that such "unpopular" groups, such as fascists, Nazis, Klansmen, etc. would never gain power, would never be able to put their hateful programs into effect .  WHICH, AS A STAND MADE BY AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE, LARGELY FROM THE NORTH, IGNORED THAT EVEN AS THE ACLU TYPES CLAIMED THAT THAT MUCH IF NOT MOST OF THE COUNTRY DID, IN FACT, LIVE UNDER SUCH DOMINATION BY THAT ILK.   

No, the moral position to take is to do whatever you can to thwart them.  To deny them a platform from which to do again what they did for decades and centuries, establishing dangerous habits of thought that create the conditions for them to sway people by appealing to their worst proclivities. 

Only idiot, wealthy, white, mostly men but some women, as well, could be stupid enough to believe that what was the reality for Black Americans, for Native Americans, for Latinos, for Poor People, etc. would never happen here because it was alien to their own, affluent, experience.  And you can say the same thing for the members of the media, especially in the upper reaches of "journalism". You could find many minorty members who bought into that nonsense, for whatever reason they did, their own experience should have told them otherwise.  

No, it not only can happen here, it has happened here for most of our history.  That is history as it really was, not in the lies that we were told in our sanitized school textbooks, certainly not in the even blgger lies peddled by Hollywood and the theater and historical novels.  That real history is what the "level playing field" that the Constitution of 1787 promoted, and it was certainly not so in any way.  The cost in blood to make what progress against it as has been made since, the "liberals" of that ilk have pissed away, is a terrible price to think will have to be repaid so they can preen in their superior free-speechyness, supported with donations from porn merchants and mass media barons and other such fans of "free speech" in the ACLU style. 

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