In the wake of the Capitol Hill protests, there will be a rise in calls for censorship. I acknowledge the validity of some of the arguments made by the censors, and would like to give them respect in the best way I can - by arguing against them.

Firstly, I would like to address the “paradox of tolerance”. As I understand it, The Paradox of Tolerance is an idea that posits that in order for a tolerant society to exist, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. The idea goes that tolerance cannot live peacefully with intolerance.

I think that the existence of laws and rights protects people from the intolerant in all meaningful cases. The intolerant cannot simply destroy the property and health of certain groups. In this case, it is not the tolerant that is keeping peace, but a third party - the police.

If the intolerant, however, should attempt to remove these protections, they will quickly run into the problem of rights. I concede that if the intolerant gathered enough members, they could overrule these rights. However, the idea of intolerance of intolerance only handles a small subset of threats to the rights of a nation. There are many other threats to rights that could arise.

A point about this paradox that people tend to miss is that this paradox is not really a paradox at all, but rather an argument from contradiction. If you read it like that, you will see that this is arguing that there is no such thing as a truly tolerant society. This actually makes perfect sense, even outside of the context of politics.

You could say that part of being a tolerant society is “tolerating” property rights. But another part of a tolerant society is “tolerating” theft of property. Obviously, these two concepts cannot coexist.

One of the nice things about writing instead of debating is that I don’t have to defend my argument very much, only inasmuch as it communicates a point. If I were writing this for a larger audience, it would be a nightmare arguing against it. Not because it is a particularly good idea, but because there are so many different ways of interpreting any of the ideas expressed in it.

What is tolerance? I interpret this as meaning “respecting one’s natural rights”. But you could also interpret tolerance as “not casting judgement on a person”. In that case, the assertion that tolerance cannot coexist with intolerance is incorrect. I can definitely cast judgement on a person and respect their rights. This is how things like the justice system continue working – even though some of the worst people imaginable are put on trial, we still let them have rights.

Furthermore, what is a tolerant society?

So, in reality, arguing about this with the internet is all a game of weaseling semantics.

Free speech has a death count. During the Capitol Hill protest, four protestors and a policeman were beaten to death. Additionally, the Capitol Hill protest indicates a threat of violent insurrection. Who is to say that they won’t try it again? A nation governed by mob rule is not a democracy. It is, instead, a government by those who are able and willing to effectively utilize violence to achieve their ends.

It is evident to me that the boomers who were behind this attack were mostly spurred on by online rhetoric. This makes sense from my perspective. The world of right-wing boomers is truly a place to behold.

The argument is that if banning certain speech makes society safer, we ought to do it.

The problem with having safety as a goal is that you can never have a perfectly safe society. There will always be some danger to you. Additionally, there are diminishing returns in making sacrifices in the name of safety. That is, small gains in safety begin to have an enormous cost.

Consider the fact that car accidents are a leading cause of death in America. We could increase the safety of our people by banning cars, but the cost would be extreme.

Sacrificing a principle in favor of increased safety is surely different than sacrificing things that are essential to our daily life, right? I disagree. There is really no end to the number of principles that can be sacrificed in favor of increased safety.

In terms of censorship, consider the BLM protests. Many people died as a result of the BLM protests, and much property was destroyed. If we censored BLM propaganda on the internet, we could make our cities safer. Those who died in the protests would not have died, those who lost their businesses would not have lost their businesses.

There is a percentage of the population that is naturally predisposed to violence. These individuals are spread out across the population, which means in any online group there is almost certainly a small percentage of people that could become violently unhinged. When these people are exposed to impassioned rhetoric from either side, there is a chance that they will be convinced by the argument, and will do something crazy.

Banning an online community doesn’t remove people from the population, it just means that a certain idea cannot be espoused any longer. This means that the crazy people will not join the community and carry out violent acts in favor of that group. However, the crazy person will join another community, and likely carry out violent acts in favor of that group.

The only way to stop impassioned people from committing violent acts, in my estimation, is to stop people from becoming impassioned.

Sacrificing free speech may give you increased safety from fringe extremist groups. However, it makes you less safe from the most dangerous groups - the government and big corporations. The threat of government infringement upon your rights is both much more real and much more dangerous. It is the government that has a dedicated fighting force, trained to kill and with a budget in the billions. And it is Big Corporate who has the greatest power and omnibus to trample upon your rights. If we sacrifice our principles now, we set precedent for doing so, which makes it easier to censor more.