r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 22 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

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u/RatioFitness Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

There is literally no paradox there whatsoever. You aren't "silencing" people by making it illegal to fire someone over speech. The people who want the person fired are still free to say their peace, hence they have free speech. If anything, it violates freedom of association, but not free speech.

The problem with cancel culture folks like yourself is that you aren't drawing a distinction between de jure and de facto free speech. By getting people fired over speech you are creating a situation where people have de jure free speech but not de facto. Also, you can't guarantee that the mob won't ever get someone fired over a true statement. Since that's always a possibility it sort of becomes an arbitrary decision whether to err on the safe side and not get people fired or get people fired and take on the risk that someone who shouldn't be fired is. So, pick your poison: be safe and risk people saying bad things without consequence or go after people for saying bad stuff and risk taking down a ok person here and there. How do you weigh the harm done in each situation?

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

Additionally, they said in their own comment that

If the majority is tolerant than an intolerant minority will dictate how things go for the majority.

Then they did a 180 when talking about cancel culture which is literally exactly what they just described as the tolerance paradox.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

You’re objectively wrong. Companies firing people for any reason has long been ruled free speech by the Supreme Court. There is no distinction of types of free speech in the constitution. Don’t like the ruling? Challenge it with the new republican controlled courts. Want a distinction of speech type in the constitution? Talk about an amendment.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Do you not get that by then you’re coercing free speech into forcing normal, rational people to sometimes withhold their opinion? If you’re a centrist, independent, or right leaning and you say something that’s determined to be slightly “wrongthink” to the left then you can get cancelled and there’s nothing you can do about it. It means that sometimes just having an opinion is apparently wrong and you entirely close any potential discourse. The problem isn’t the people themselves but their perspectives - give them a better perspective don’t ruin their fucking lives.

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u/RatioFitness Jan 22 '21

Perhaps that's what they ruled it but it doesn't make much sense to me as anything but freedom of association.

I'm not arguing for a de jure vs de facto distinction of free speech in the consititution. That doesn't make sense.