| > I disagree with you on the UK running according to a "constitution". It definitely has none. Germany doesn't have a "constitution" either, and so doesn't Israel, we run on "basic laws" instead which are functionally equivalent. And the UK instead runs on the entire body of its truly ancient laws, court decisions and international treaties. But no one would argue that either of the three nations is not a democracy or a constitutional state (i.e. a state where individuals and legal entities enjoy a reasonably common set of protections). > Free speech alone though only helps public discourse if there is no attempt to "balance" differing views. Trying that has the opposite effect; instead of pointing out flaws and lies in any argument, the mediator simply "gives equal airtime" to conflicting views. That's the perfect way to polarize - choose whom you're with, and whom you're against. There is another bad aspect in "balancing" itself, perfectly illustrated by "flat earth" believers. We don't go and give people who believe that the earth is flat equal airtime to those believing we're on a globe, in fact we don't give them any airtime (except when we need to fill some airtime by laughing about ridiculously dumb people) - but there are enough reckless / profit-addicted media that give airtime to COVID deniers, antivaxxers, "great replacement" and other conspiracy spreaders. Democracy itself can only work on a common set of core beliefs and truths. Once lies are allowed to be part of democratic discourse, the defenders of democracy will have to spend way more of their share of airtime to refute the lies instead of presenting their point of view - a phenomenon/rhetoric tactic known as "firehose of falsehoods", basically flooding the argument with lies (which stick with your followers thanks to repetition as an additional bonus) and making it impossible for the opponent to present their ideas. And sadly, there are more than enough media, politicians and people accepting this tactic. |
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Flat earthers are an easy example as a vast majority of people understand that the earth is in fact not flat. You seem to take that as an example of why we can't allow people to share such ideas, of given air time you worry that more would believe it. There's an easier answer though, people know the earth is a sphere despite the flat earth idea being out there. The idea gets little air time because so few people think its possible or true.
Silencing an idea gives a certain air of feasibility to it, one in charge does need to bother silencing something that is obviously false and easily disproven.
Moving your argument to anything more widely considered than flat earth and the line between lies and truths is much less clear, and therefore the line of where speech should be silenced is much trickier. Covid should have made this clear, health officials and governments have walked back on almost all of the ideas that they claimed to be dangerous lies during the pandemic response. Something unclear can easily be branded as a lie by one with power and a microphone, that doesn't mean it is a lie though and definitely doesn't mean that we all still have free speech rights if the people in charge can silence us.