strength in disunity

I’m always amused by discussions on freedom of speech. The reality is that nobody believes in freedom of speech. If you meet someone who claims to be a freedom of speech absolutist and you question them closely you’ll discover that they believe in freedom of speech, except for x and y and z.

Since everybody believes in limits to freedom of speech the issue that matters is – who gets to set the limits? In practice no amount of legal or constitutional guarantees will make any difference. It’s all a matter of power. The ideal is for no one group to have enough power to set those limits on its pwn without challenge. In our present situation the Economic Right and the Cultural Left have close to total power. They control political debate. No-one can seriously challenge their power.

The reason why the 1950s and 1960s seem in retrospect to have been freer is simply that at that time power was more evenly divided. There was a powerful Economic Right but there was a powerful Economic Left as well. There was a Cultural Left (we just called them social liberals in those days) but there were other groups with sufficient power and influence to challenge the liberal agenda. There were social conservatives (in those days we called them normal people). Christianity was a minority religion but it still had some political clout. Feminists existed but you could disagree with them without having your life destroyed. Homosexual activists existed but you could disagree with them too without kissing your career and your livelihood goodbye. All of these groups could influence politics but no single group could control the political debate.

It was an unstable and even slightly chaotic situation but there’s a lot to be said for not having any one group calling all the shots.

While I intensely dislike both the Economic Right and the Cultural Left I’m not sure I’d really like to see the Economic Left and the Cultural Right holding the same degree of power. I think the collapse of Christianity has been disastrous but I wouldn’t want to live in a Christian theocracy.

What I would like to see is more of a balance of power, so that both sides end up having to compromise a bit. But I have no idea how that can be achieved. Woke Capital’s power is pretty much absolute and they have no intention of allowing a resurgence of either the Economic Left or the Cultural Right.