America's Changing View of Liberty

America, it feels, is at a familiar crossroad. This crossroad is one on which every generation must cross. It is a distinctively American issue that is a result of the grand experiment we embarked upon over 200 years ago.  The idea of creating a society that attempts to promote both liberty and equality, simultaneously,  is no easy task. Naturally, the coexistence of these two ideals creates a certain level of tension.  Liberty necessarily makes equality almost impossible and equality often requires the suppression of liberties.

All of the American major political, social, and economical struggles, both great and small, were a result of the friction these two ideals create.  Emerging after each struggle is a new generational understanding of liberty and equality that lasts until the next event or idea gains traction to challenge the status quo. Not surprisingly,  the distinguishing factor between our two major political parties are these two ideals. Republicans tend to emphasize liberty over equality and Democrats favor equality over liberty.

I bring this all up to state that we are currently in the midst of a major revision of our understanding of liberty.  Conversely, our ideas about equality have been in a constant state of revision. However, because equality does not operate in a vacuum, most of those changes in equality effect liberty. There is no doubt that the changing conceptual understanding of equality threatens the traditional, liberal understanding of liberty.

Liberty used to be understood simply that people were free to pursue their life in their own way, on their own terms. This included speech, expression, religion,  and most importantly consciousness. But it also included property, both real and intellectual, along with other economic freedoms of choice, creativity and innovation. The limit and extent of one's liberty was encroachment or denial of another's life, liberty or property. In essence, I am free to do and say what ever I want as long as it does not lessen my neighbors, so to speak.

Currently, liberty is under assault. Not so much from the government as it is from the people themselves which makes thus a much more difficult and complex issue to understand.  There are those, individuals and corporate bodies, who are waging a war to silence, cancel, and censor ideas, concepts, and beliefs with which they take umbrage. They are doing so in a very strategic and deliberate manner to appear to stay within the ideals of liberty. They do so by claiming that the verboten ideas are "harming", "threatening", "violent", "aggressive", etc. This is largely a departure from the traditional ideas of liberty.  Speech or expressions had to  actually infringe on an individual's liberty or present a clear and present danger. The new standard is that if one claims they feel "unsafe" or "harmed" that is sufficient grounds for silencing and censorship. Essentially, certain political ideas have been labeled as "dangerous" under this new standard.  This sort or censorship and suppression is found on college campuses across America.  Unfortunately,  it has found its way into many homes and businesses.

I will agree that there is certain types of speech and ideas that are so egregious that they might warrant some sort of action. Actual calls for real violence, for example.   But in our current iteration of freedom of speech, it can depend on who is making calls for violence and against whom. No progressives or liberals seem to bat an eye at anyone making threats towards Israel or when democratic officials and politicians make inflammatory comments towards conservatives. 

Also, verifiable false claims, or those without sufficient evidence or facts should be checked. But the problem is that many issues, regardless of what people say, are not settled.  In fact, too often the validity of a claim is based not on evidence but rather its service to an established narrative.  For example,  lab leak theories were considered false, not because of the evidence, logic or facts,  but because it was contrary to a narrative.  Consequently, people expressing those ideas often faced silencing or restricted access from social media giants.  Bret Weinstein has been demonetized for his conversations and promotion of the controversial treatment of Invermectin for COVID.  This action was taken due to "misinformation".  There are many ideas to which the left think the science is settled and the facts are on their side.  Thus, they don't want anyone challenging their monopoly on the 'truth".  The irony is that liberals used to be for free exchange of ideas!

However, there are so many less radical forms of speech that are under threat.  It is bat sh*t crazy that Facebook and others harass the satirical news site, Babylon Bee. The Bee takes aim at all sorts, including their own tribe, but people want them silenced because they are "punching down". In reality, the Left hates to be mocked for their absurdity and wants to punish the Bee for their audacity. Also, anyone who dares push back against the LBGTQ+ mafia are dealt with swiftly and harshly.  We are even punishing those for comments or actions that happened years ago, when the context and culture were different.  Liberal media giant CNN, sends much of its airtime taking aim at Fox and promoting their silencing. Or, woke workforces attempt to demand their employers take action against political taboo ideas, like Spotify employees did with Joe Rogan. Rogan is not a evil, dangerous, or radical. But he is fearless and explores topics in manner that conflicts with America's Politburo.

I realize this is not a First Amendment issue, because it is not the government making laws, it citizens and corporations that limiting liberty.  In some ways, this suppression is worse than government sanction suppression because there is no real way to adjudicate these issue.  It is similar to de jure discrimination versus de facto discrimination of the pre Civil Right's era. Moreover, social media (unfortunately) is how most of us engage in our political discourse. Tech giants can silence and marginalize who ever they want, with little or no impunity. Many other corporations involve themselves because they have week kneed, thin skinned execs who are afraid of the Twitter mob. They end up taking action against their own fellow citizens.

The problem is that those who can throttle speech (social media giants, media, and publishers) are well insulated from public outcry. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, are too useful and ingrained in our current culture that most people won't push back and demand that they preserve the liberty of expressing ideas, even those that can hurt someone's feelings.  When someone is demonetized, most if us don't care, we simply find new people to follow.

I am not advocating an oxymoronic policy of requiring people and entities to publish ideas. Forcing private individuals and companies to help express ideas with which they disagree is the different side of the same coin. What I am advocating, however,  is that people toughen the hell up and deal with ideas with which they are jot comfortable.  We need a robust level of discourse and dialogue, not the opposite.  Unfortunately,  it feels our new version of liberty is that your speech or ideas can be suppressed by those who claim those ideas or words are inflicting pain.  Of course, that is not true...as always, the real issue is about power and control.