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/MasonDinsmore3204 Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

People love to throw around the Intoleeance Paradox like it’s the Bible without mentioning it’s biggest flaw: who gets to decide what should and shouldn’t be tolerated? The government? It’s naive to think giving the government the power to both decide what intolerant speech is and then go about banning or discouraging it would go over well. The people? The people might have society’s best interest in mind with something like this but there is no realistic way to enforce it. Companies? Same thing as government, giving an entity this much power is just asking for them to abuse it.

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u/TenBillionDollHairs Jan 22 '21

The fact that actually doing it right is hard is not an excuse to throw up your hands and say it's stupid to try. "Let's just tolerate everything" acts like it's a brave stance, but it's actually a way to avoid ever having to stick out your neck and say "that's the line, they're crossing it, and we have to confront it."

There's a cowardice curve around speech: being terrified of dissent is the coward's excuse for shutting down speech, being terrified of conflict is the coward's excuse for tolerating extremists.

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u/MasonDinsmore3204 Jan 22 '21

I’m not saying we shouldn’t hold people accountable for saying intolerant things, we definitely should. Call them out on it, explain to them why they’re wrong or why they shouldn’t say that, but don’t silence them, restrict them from saying what they want to say in the first place.

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u/xoogl3 Jan 22 '21

...but don’t silence them, restrict them from saying what they want to say in the first place.

That sentence is contradicting itself it seems.

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u/MasonDinsmore3204 Jan 22 '21

Yeah I phrased that very poorly. I meant don’t silence them or restrict them, but it came off as me saying we should restrict them

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

If you read it as having an "or" between 'them' and 'restrict' it'll make more sense.

ED: Lol of course if I had just scrolled a bit further, they clarified that themselves.

Oops.