[Rafe Opsimath]

This matter needs to be analyzed in the larger context of the degeneration of political discourse. There’s an advantage to be gained by assuming that issues are merely rhetorical, by binarizing the debate, and by demonizing your opponent instead of responding to what may be valid challenges.

Old-fashioned moralists use these tactics when they advocate censorship based on notions of obscenity or sedition. They advocate that society be allowed to decide which ideas, images, and discourse should be sanctioned or censored, according to their own definitions of what is acceptable. As support, they may invoke scripture or legal precedents based on similarly faulty reasoning to try and paint the debate as being exclusively rhetorical. They may be challenged to define ‘obscene’ in an objective sense; they may be asked whether censorship really solves the problem or exacerbates it. However, they ordinarily refuse to answer such criticisms, preferring to define the issue as an either-or choice between civility, democracy, and righteousness on the one hand, and exploitation, degeneracy, and chaos on the other. By stigmatizing dissent as treasonous or immoral, they effectively silence their opposition.

Unfortunately, moral crusaders can be found throughout the political spectrum. Everyone realizes “PC” is usually a straw man invoked by right-wingers to instill a siege mentality among their faithful, but there certainly are those who use the same tactics as the old-fashioned moralists in order to promote an agenda ostensibly more liberal but in fact just as dangerous to free thought.

By advocating censorship based on notions of hate speech, moralists are endorsing the same approbatory apparatus which will determine which ideas are acceptable in a supposedly free society. As support, they offer the writings of like-minded ideologues. They may be asked to make explicit the objective definition and limits of hate speech; they may be informed that hate-speech statutes have traditionally been used against the people they were intended to protect; they may be criticized for reliance on the very system that created and continues to benefit from the inequalities they’re trying to eradicate; they may be criticized as fostering conformism instead of the diversity they say is their goal. Instead of responding to these challenges, however, the moralists prefer to define the debate as a binary choice between diversity and righteousness on the one hand, and intolerance and privilege on the other. By demonizing anyone who disagrees with them as racist, sexist, or homophobic, they effectively silence opposition.

The question is not how we make people think like us, but how tolerant we need to be concerning opinions which differ from ours. The oppressed and disenfranchised in our society rely on the broadening of discourse and the legitimization of dissent, not in promoting a siege mentality where certain ideas can neither be expressed nor heard.

-Rafe