People are not your enemy
People are not your enemy. If you have an enemy, it is the ideas that they hold, not the person themselves. This distinction might seem self-evident to many but you could make the argument that this truth is thee issue of our time. Our agreement with or against this statement shapes the very foundations of our worldview because our agreement with or against this statement shapes the tactics and methodology of our pursuit of progress/victory.
If the ideas are the enemy, then it is the ideas that are the problem, and therefore to defeat these ideas, they must be confronted and combated. To fight an idea, you must draw that idea out and defeat it in the open under the sun. It is in the open and in the light where bad ideas lose. If your ideas can’t win in the open, I am not telling you that you might not have good ideas; I am promising that you have bad ones.
Many have misunderstood how to fight against an idea. They naively look to banning ideas or information, not understanding that this is a deep and core attack against the person and not the set of ideas.
How you fight something is how that something fights back. If you fight ideas in the open you get open debate back, and history has shown that the better ideas do indeed win. If you fight people and not their ideas, those people ultimately do what people have always done when under attack, they pursue non-peaceful means of retaliation. It is that simple. It is a guaranteed cause and effect. This is what we must avoid.
Banning ideas works as well as banning the news that you have a cancerous tumor. It works great as long as the news isn’t real. But if it is real, you die. If you ban an idea that is not real, the effect is nonplus. If you ban reality, the inevitable indomitable will of people to live in reality will rise up and destroy not just the chains but those whose hands hold them. What is real always wins in the long run; it is why things on this earth have gotten better and better over the centuries and millennia.
As just stated, what is real wins always, and it does this winning by word or by blood. When you ban the former, you get the latter. When you do ultimately eliminate people's ability to create change by word, there will certainly be blood.
Banning ideas is the genesis of genocide. You don't deserve to live always starts with you don't deserve to be heard.
And while the lack of willingness to openly debate ideas is a red flag that both your methodology and rationale are in need of maintenance, the pursuit of shaming and banning ideas out of existence is far beyond a red flag; it is a sign no less significant or illiberal than a white hood. Efforts to ban ideas don't need to be proven to be authoritarian or tyrannical; that is what they are, no further evidence is needed.
If you support the banning of ideas you disagree with, I hope your feelings are hurt; I hope you are offended, for your beliefs align swimmingly with history's most wicked and murderous. You should be embarrassed to hold such an anti-liberal idea, and you should be deeply ashamed of yourself. It’s time to grow up.
The good news is that today is a new day, and we can all do something better.
If you support the free expression of ideas, it is about damn time you stood for it in a way that cost you something. If not now, when? I don't mean sell your house to buy billboards or get yourself fired from your job; I mean have that conversation with that person… you get it.
Be honest with yourself, and play your unique part in humanity's victorious struggle towards equality and liberty. I believe in you.
The open exchange of ideas is thee way forward, it is a cornerstone of civilization and the linchpin of progress.
It is up to us.
Hold Tension, Be Vast.Remember, restoration alone brings victory.