Is free speech dead?in Global

YeshuaRedeemed

MayCaesar

Free speech has always had a difficult time existing. The government has always sought to control it in order to establish the informational dominance over the population, and the people themselves have always tried to marginalize the ideas they did not agree with by systematically attacking those promoting them.

I see a lot of what Cicero talked about over 2 millennia ago. Many people act like the current assault on free speech is a novelty on the West, while in fact the issue has persisted for as long as the Western civilization - any civilization - has existed.

Do you think saying anything unpopular was well received in the past? People who openly said that slavery was immoral, for example, at the time would often be hunted down and killed by extremists. Those who dared to suggest that a woman must be equal to a man would be shunned and have nation-wide witch hunts on them, at the time when not only the Internet, but even a telephone or radio did not exist, and the information took weeks to get from one coast to the other.

I think what is different this time, however, is how the academia reacts to it. Universities have always featured forward-thinkers, people who supported liberalization and anti-conservationism, who denounced the social norms and spoke out against the governmental control.
This time, universities seem to predominantly be on the anti-freedom side. This time, students as a whole do not march in support of freedoms, but march in support of restrictions of freedoms. People who try to silence those who disagree with them and to deny them the right of self-expression are no longer just ignorant peasants; they are now students and professors.

I do not see it as an indication of principal societal changes, however. Rather, I think, the role of universities themselves has changed over time. In the past, the role of universities was to prepare well-versed critical thinkers, and the actual material taught was secondary to the development of the ability to think independently.
Nowadays, however, universities focus on the practical skills. You are not supposed to get any more intelligent by the time you graduate; you instead are supposed to have the skills that the employers seek. This focus on the learning versus thinking leads to the situation where people inhabiting universities are no longer the brightest thinkers that want to hone their abilities; they are now practically-oriented mainstream people that want to get a well-paid job.

It is no surprise that modern students are not laying their lives down for freedoms any more and, instead, defend the concepts opposing freedom. Freedoms are not easily sellable, and, in fact, they can be counter-productive, as freedoms increase competition, while the university graduates want to avoid having to compete with others and, instead, land a job with ease.

Nothing changed; the intellectuals are still there. They are just not the dominating group in the academia any more. This does not make their influence any smaller, it is simply less direct. They will keep guarding the free speech, just as they have for many centuries. And even if a few setbacks occur and authoritarianism wins over on the West, it likely will not persist for long. We have already been there, we have had entire World Wars as a consequence of exchanging freedoms for false securities, and the civization always turned back to Western values eventually, each time a bit stronger in its resolve. I doubt the current wave will change anything long-term.

Zombieguy1987

YeshuaBought said:

First you're pro-free speech.

Then you're anti- free speech when it comes to abortion, religion etc.

Pick a side

John_C_87

@YeshuaBought ;

Is a verbally expressed dislike a freedom of speech or filed grievance?
Is something that is investigated, found, and printed publicly a freedom of press or a filed grievance?
Freedom of press is a creation that is established by its creator to be of no cost and no self-value. Not self value at no cost, not high cost with out self-value.


The united states constitution which is the document of amendment describes the common defense to the general welfare which is of record set to preserves tranquility. Is free speech dead? No it has been misfiled by the organized educational institutions. Look under G for grievance instead of F for free the confusion is the order in written freedom of press may not set the precedent of the legality.  

John_C_87

The united state of free speech held by constitution cannot die. The democratically accepted basic principle of free speech is set in contradiction to the legal precedent of free speech. In order for free to be proven as taking place there is a condition of assignment of cost and without self value that needs to be address. Free speech must establish itself as to how it holds independent from filed grievance common defense to the general welfare is also required as a state of the union in basic principle to a constitution combined with united state.