There was a time when Democrats touted tolerance. Was it ever equally applied?
Either way, there’s been a great term-usage turnaround: On the Left side of the aisle, the word is scarcely anymore heard.
The same goes for a previous promotion of free expression.
In some circles, free speech seems the last thing that should be allowed. It’s “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or even “malinformation” — information which is accurate but might produce an undesired result.
Perhaps the worse thing about free speech, according to some, is that it’s the enemy of free speech:
Former Clinton Official Calls Elon's Free-Speech Vision the 'Dream of Every Dictator'
https://t.co/Chuw5J6tRp— RedState (@RedState) April 20, 2022
MSNBC Warns That Free Speech On Twitter Would Be a 'Danger' to Free Speech — and It Perfectly Captures Where We Arehttps://t.co/dFDDUaBu62
— Alex Parker (@alexparker1984) April 19, 2022
And Joe Rogan — a self-professed man of the Left — has noticed the change.
During Tuesday’s installment of The Joe Rogan Experience, he marveled to guest (and MMA fighter) Jake Shields:
“I always considered myself liberal. My parents were hippies. … [T]here’s a difference between what ‘liberal’ meant then and what it includes now. … It includes now people that want censorship. It includes now people that are intolerant [of] other people’s ideas. And people that think it’s fine to insult people and to be…really aggressive and [terrible] to people online.”
Jake’s noticed it, too:
“I’m an independent. … The current liberals have turned really weird. … They seem a lot more intolerant. … [They’ll] physically attack you.”
“Yes. There’s a lot of that, too,” Joe replied.
Jake’s been there:
“That’s where I first started following politics, when I was at Berkeley. Antifa were there…beating people up over [Milo Yiannopoulos’s] speech.”
“Antifa…got tolerated by people on the Left,” Joe said.
It’s thuggery:
“They thought of [Antifa] almost like the thug branch of the Left. … Because people were so upset that Trump was president, they kind of tolerated a lot of this that I don’t think they would’ve tolerated in a more rational, sane time.”
We definitely crossed a ghastly line with the advent of “Punch a Nazi.”
“Who gets to decide who the Nazi is?” Joe asked. “If you’re talking about Hitler, yeah, go punch Hitler. … But you’re not talking about a Nazi. You’re talking about someone who might vote for Trump.”
Recently, of course, Joe became something of a “Nazi” himself — left-wing celebrities came out in opposition and tried to get him thrown off Spotify’s platform. They didn’t believe in tolerance for what he wanted to say.
Judging from events over the past few years, contemporary “tolerance” only allows for what one side of a debate believes. Anything else may be “hate speech.”
We’re living in unusual times. Not long ago, the idea of America was inextricable from that of free speech. The country embraced common values, maybe the greatest of which was this: “I disagree with you, but I will fight for your right to speak your mind.”
In fact, it’s still inextricable, which is to say that we can’t lose free speech — because if we do…we lose America.
-ALEX
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