Morning Memo - 2024-05-14
The Right to Be an Idiot
Free Speech
I think a lot of people believe that free speech is given to them by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Humans have the natural right to speak that comes along with the right to life. The individual has a responsibility to defend those rights.
Some governments have tried to limit that right through the threat of imprisonment or death. Those threats do not eliminate the right, but it may affect the individual’s preference for exercising that right. Silence may seem like a small price to pay to avoid imprisonment or death.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution limits the ability of government to infringe upon the right of free speech. All speech, even hateful speech, should not be restricted by authoritarians.
Among the many who believe that governments dole out natural rights there seems to be a growing number who want to remove the limits of government to infringe upon the right of free speech.
John Stossel has produced a YouTube (which I have linked below) that discusses the warning signs about those who would restrict speech.
Idiocy
Although seldom, if ever, mentioned, idiocy is a natural human right. If you desire to blunder your way through life denying empirical evidence and reason, you have the right to do so. Maybe the Constitution should be amended to protect people in their exercise of idiocy.
Although protected, idiocy should not be promoted.
Knowledge and Understanding
Stossel’s video provides evidence that many governments, including the United States, actually promote idiocy. Any restriction on free speech amounts to a promotion of idiocy.
The slogans being chanted at many of our universities indicate that idiocy has become a valued output at many of the formerly admired universities. Our government promotes idiocy by providing financing to these institutions of “lower” learning.
We seem to have passed the time in which we promote knowledge and understanding in schools from preschool through doctoral programs. Offering verbal challenges to other people’s beliefs, a once revered practice, has now become something that many feel require restriction.
If an individual cannot express his opinion to friends, relatives, strangers, or elected officials, society, if not civilization, faces a limited life.
References
A video by John Stossel about efforts to quash free speech in many places.
Clipped from Protecting Free Speech: The Early Warning Signs From Around The World – YouTube at 2024-05-14.