free speech: hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders

recalling the true purpose of the republic

chesterton of the eponymous fence once opined that “ every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things” and this seems ever more apposite as we find new institutional means to steer the SS western society onto the rocks.

forgetting who the actual bad guys are is societal trouble, but mistaking any who stand against them for the villains they sought to suppress is civilizational suicide.

“where did all the good men go?” asks the dullard who’s been jailing them in droves for doing what good men do and inverting a right to property and self defense into a license to steal because “marginalized.”

this, of course, takes us right back to chesterton and his famous admonishment of those who would tear down fences whose purpose remains obscure to them. perhaps they were there for a reason…

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

for those in the back who seem ill at ease with shape rotation, the “fence” is what is called “a metaphor” and it stands for many, many things including rights, traditions, positive law, and the manifold other instantiations and expressions of evolved civilization and inhabited human stories.

some clever boots in california decides that “gee, the people being arrested for auto break-ins and stealing from stores all seem to be some “marginalized group”” and then through the hard imposition of the soft bigotry of low expectations decides that this is a racial issue rather than an individual one and that any variance in outcome must be some sort of systematic prejudice rather than simply an aggregation of personal decisions. and they decriminalize stealing in the name of racial equity. and then they wonder why all the stores are shutting down.

this seems an inevitable outcome of mistaking “the marginalized” for “those deserving of greater status and accommodation” as opposed to considering that “maybe they were marginalized for a reason.” i wrote about this recently and i think the core question of that essay remains:

isn’t it basically the purpose of a high functioning civilization to marginalize those who oppress and infringe upon the citizenry?

what, after all, is the point of a social contract if not to willingly surrender certain freedoms (like taking, without permission, that which belongs to another) in exchange for the others in the society you inhabit agreeing not to take your things and to aid you in deterring and perhaps punishing those who do?

this is the sort of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” golden rule that has been so historically vital in the underpinning of golden ages.

and it’s being broken all throughout the west because we have mistaken marginalization for status instead of the rarefication engine by which society defends itself.

you cannot have an “adult” society if you excuse people from acting like adults and being responsible for themselves.

such sentiments are how you sow the discord and dishevelment that makes a society fail.

whether it’s because you’re too shortsighted to see this coming or because failure is your aim is ultimately immaterial.

the effect is the same.

when you “shame shaming” and prevent the miscreant from being called out as such because “progressive” you undermine the foundations of society.

and they break. because a society in which no behavior is seen as shameful cannot possibly be self governing.

people always want to bog down on “how can we make perfect rules to cover every instance?” but his is a sucker bet. you can’t. like trying to define pornography or art, it always loses resolution at the edges.

all these things are always “golidlocks zone” issues. too much is as bad as too little and “just right” must emerge and evolve in the middle as a sum of bottoms up sentiment, practice, and positive law style “trying stuff and seeing what works.”

you can’t just make a rule. practice must emerge and self-correct. it must flex and adapt.

and predominantly, it is not “we the people” who threaten this.

it’s the rogue comets of top down imposition that destroy solar systems in their collectivist utopian dreams of benign dictatorship that throw everything into chaos and devolution as they seek to impose that which is not only inhuman but anti-human as “progress.”

if you internalize one thing, internalize this:

the true and vital purpose of the high functioning civilizational republic is to marginalize one group of people in particular, and that group of people is “politicians.”

they would like you to forget this, to erase history and delete the erasure and proclaim themselves the solution and the saviors instead of the problem.

but whoo doggie is that a playbook with a crimson history painted in the blood of those who mistook it for safety.

it never works. it cannot work. it presumes motive and knowledge than cannot exist. it takes the evolved and sacrifices it to unintelligent design by people too unrealistic or dogmatic to realize the disaster they impend (or worse, who do not care).

quite literally: marginalizing such would-be suzerains IS post enlightenment civilization.

it constitutes the republic, marrow and integument.

this was the genius of our framers. it was the genius of the enlightenment. and the darkness that has spread all too far comes from those who would tear it down and this is why we must all become free speech absolutists.

there is no other way.

there is no compromise, no accommodation, no “just a little.”

like martin luther nailing his proclamations to the church door we must proclaim to leviathan:

“hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.”

(here i stand, i can do no other)

because there exists no other place to stand.

this is the inch you may not yield.

kitten luther - i can haz rights?

what’s being torn down was vital and what’s coming is a special sort of ugly and the ability to not only dissemble and lie about it but actively accuse those seeking to resist it of being the black hats is vital to the effort.

who is the bad guy? only the state gets to say!

anyone liking where that one leads?

yeah, me either.

a stunning number of americans have no idea about “the twitter files” and the fact that most social media had become a theme park for 3 letter agencies monitoring, suppressing, and shaping speech. they do not understand what all the hullabaloo at the supreme court with murthy v missouri is all about.

hell, half of them are cheering for this and think that speech suppression is “being the good guys” just like “sticking up for the poor robbers who just wanted to smash and grab a convenience store until they were stopped by a predatory shopkeeper trying to protect himself and his livelihood” “opposes structural racism.”

it’s all the same suppressive stupid from the same bucket of “sacred miscreant” ideology and whether that miscreant is a drug addict, a politician, (or both) makes no difference at all.

twitter (aka “X”) is becoming the front lines of this fight as the US government seems to have removed all protection for elon now that he has “gone offside” and has come after him on numerous fronts and is perhaps encouraging proxy wars against him in other lands.

and this takes us to brazil.

michael shellenberger discusses: (text here)

“Three days ago I published the Twitter Files for Brazil. They show that Moraes has violated the Brazilian Constitution. Moraes illegally demanded that Twitter reveal private information about Twitter users who used hashtags he considered inappropriate. He demanded access to Twitter's internal data, violating the platform's policy. He censored, on his own initiative and without any respect for due process, posts on Twitter by parliamentarians from the Brazilian Congress. And Moraes tried to turn Twitter's content moderation policies into a weapon against supporters of then-president Jair Bolsonaro.”

this is a microcosm for everything.

canada is all over this. the EU is all over this. there has not been a concerted push to control media and messaging like this since the 1930’s, and now, as then, it’s being done as “modern government for modern people for their own good and safety.” and now, as then, this is a bald faced lie.

and if you think this “can’t happen here” then i have some pointed questions to ask you about “what color is the sky on your world?” because it can, it has, and it is and if you trust the government, then go find your history teacher and ask for a refund.

and it’s time to start fighting back.

we can argue about whether elon’s stance is sincere or a cynical choice to maximize trust and profits as a form of marketing, but i’m going to raise a simple point on that one: “who cares?”

the beauty of a free market is that profit maximization and consumer satisfaction and service align through the wonder of consumer sovereignty. this idea that they stand in opposition is a nonsense nearly always created by some form of market interference.

this is the arena.

so let’s go.

we are in for a nasty fight here with entrenched, compromised interests.

legacy media models are failing. the newspapers and television shows that were once "the media" have lost share, lost trust, and lost viability.

so they cling to government and not only offer to act as censors and water carriers, but positively beg to be. it's the only way they can stay in business. they are wards of the state. lackeys. henchmen. it's all that's left to them.

failing media favor censorship because it underpins an oligopoly that allows them to persist.

the modern informational sphere and agora is moving to a reputation economy. it's not about credentials or platforms. it's about who you can trust.

every sick and dying statist system will seek to dominate media and censor those who oppose it. they will claim it's "for your safety," but this is not "protection," it's subjugation. and it's a race to the bottom.

only ideas which cannot win hearts and minds in open and honest discourse resort to gaslighting, propaganda, and suppression of dissent.

hate speech, misinformation, and accusing everyone else of the very "interference" these groups so assiduously undertake is always the thin end of the wedge they use to get you to admit one deadly dangerous idea:

that it's "OK to suppress speech if there is a good reason."

this is the great lie, the trojan framing used to pull you over the line where you no longer have a speech right, only a privilege that can be revoked at need. once you surrender even one case, your right is gone. it's no longer yours, it's theirs.

rights are binary.

they either stand paramount to and sacrosanct from the interference of the state or they do not exist at all.

and it's time we remembered this and started drawing the line and fighting for the first inch rather than the center of the slippery slope.

censorship is the inversion of civilization and a free republic.

the cure for wrong speech is always more speech.

i’m still not sure that the corporate model of the public square will be able to stand against these forces. it’s too fat a target, it’s too easy to attack. i wrote about this in my seminal substack and explored the need to move to protocols and distributed systems instead of walled gardens. and it’s probably correct in the long run, but in the near term, it’s not there yet.

so this is the fight we’re in.

those who would dominate our mindshare and media fear one thing above all: that we the people shall come to know our own minds, freely and frankly.

that neighbor shall understand neighbor, that devoid of the glare of the gaslights, like mind shall encounter and affirm like mind for that is the very essence of civilization, of social contract, and of society.

it’s where emergent order comes from.

and it does not need them.

and that means that those who would censor and shape us are civilizational wreckers, the antithesis and alkahest of community and commonality.

if you think this is not your fight, you are wrong.

if you think you can go along to get along, you’re fooling yourself.

this is not going to go away.

failing ideologies get more desperate and avaricious, not less.

there is no “safe quantity.”

there is no “compromise” or “special case.”

there are only rights of the people or the prerogatives of the state.

and they cannot coexist because the choice is binary

choose wisely.

you want our words?