| There's something I've been thinking about lately and its the fact that I learned about the Black feelings of the Hasidic (Jewish) community moving to Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood of Jersey City only after the mass shooting that occurred their earlier this year. I saw a news report from the neighborhood and a resident mentioned how they have seen a big shift in their neighborhood and longtime residents were getting harassed to sell their homes for the incoming Hasidic residents as they were looking to leave Brooklyn for cheaper real estate. I bring this up in relation to free speech because it seems to me like there was no outlet for the residents to speak up on what was happening. It looks like there was a chilling effect and some discussions may just not have been had. I think its important to provide that forum to air grievances so that a chilling effect does not occur and people feel like they are a frog slowly being boiled alive. I don't think Democracy is the model for all nations today, but I do think that as countries develop and have a certain educated populace that they will trend in that direction. Its better to be enfranchised, then completely trust the decisions made on your behalf elected by a group of technocrats but it requires a populace voting in good faith and of a certain education attainment overall. We must keep an open dialog and forum for people to speak freely. I like to think of confronting prejudice as a first responder running towards danger. I don't cower from having those conversations, I'd much prefer to deconstruct them. I have to say though that the internet makes that hard since it is easy to find echo chambers. I really want to see communities like r/politics on Reddit better try to foster rich, insightful discourse because I really don't see it that way now and if someone feels differently, I would love to hear from you. I personally think Reddit should create a new "Featured Comments" feature like they have in comments on NYT and appoint mods of different biases to choose Featured Comments on highly upvoted content. In the US House of Representatives they give members of the house equal time to address the floor and should we try to virtually recreate that type of forum as well? |