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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
They might not have any. I don't know. But I do know that deciding what should or shouldn't be said based on the social value assessments of you or me is a very fucked up notion. And one that stands free speech on its ear.
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If you are now saying that you can't think of any actual situation where your ideas would have any useful implication, then I too will stipulate that your ideas are useless.
This is how the marketplace of ideas works. Ideas are presented and tested by exposure to other ideas. You have presented your idea and it has failed.
That is not censorship. If I say, we could do cold fusion with a system I have designed that uses corn cobs as fuel, and we talk about it for a while and decide that it has no practical application and then we stop talking about it, that is not censorship or an affront to free speech, that is how the marketplace of ideas works. If you say, hey, here's a great idea, we can find a way to blame disadvantaged groups for their share of their responsibility for their disadvantages, and we talk about it for a while and decide that it has no practical application (for a whole host of reasons), that also is not censorship.
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That sort of thinking is but a few steps divorced from those bizarre hate speech laws they have in Europe. Bad ideas die from exposure. Passively squelching them only causes them to fester.
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This reminds me of that famous court case where the one guy started yelling "fire" in a movie theater during a movie, and the government didn't do anything about it but a bunch of the other people who were trying to watch the movie said, "shut up, you jerk," and then the first guy said, "hey, I'm being censored, you're all authoritarians." Actually, it wasn't a court case, but in the end everyone agreed that the first guy was wrong.
I do think that you have discovered a potentially lucrative career, though. There is big money to be made in claiming to be a free-speech martyr on college campuses, and there is always support for the idea that minorities are to blame for the discrimination they have suffered (see, e.g., Charles Murray, who has been exploiting that schtick for many years). No one really cares about the actual ideas involved. If you can turn this stuff into a book and schedule some college speeches, Bob's your uncle. Just remember us when you're rich.
