Amerika

Anything left in the hands of the Left will quickly be weaponized into the opposite of its original meaning.

For example, “freedom of speech” meant the ability to air religious, cultural, social, philosophical, and political opinions, including publishing them, without government stopping you or allowing pogroms against you.

The point was to establish an environment where any opinion could be heard, avoiding viewpoint discrimination:

When the government engages in content discrimination, it is restricting speech on a given subject matter. When it engages in viewpoint discrimination, it is singling out a particular opinion or perspective on that subject matter for treatment unlike that given to other viewpoints.

The new “free speech” allowed a great flourishing because all ideas were exposed to light and critique flew around, basically hammering out a lot of details. This exposed the Left since their ideas, which are based on a supposition that they bring an Equality Utopia someday, are by nature unproven, therefore suffer from criticism or simply the presence of alternatives.

To stop this process, the Left began to pollute public discourse by encouraging nonsense and obscenity as free speech, driving people back toward majority consensus collective opinion:

The controversy in this case began in April 1968, when Paul Robert Cohen wore a jacket bearing the words “Fuck the Draft” into a Los Angeles courthouse.

He was arrested and charged with violating a state breach-of-the-peace law prohibiting disturbing of the peace by “offensive conduct.”

Cohen appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed his conviction in a 5-4 vote.

For the Left, this was a great victory. By reducing free speech to the ravings of the rabble, and forcing us to accept obscene types of speech as being just as viable as saner ones, they ensured that the press would become more popular.

They did this so that they could have control of the narrative, knowing that people are afraid of losing social status — per Tom Wolfe, who writes convincingly on this topic — and therefore will follow whoever seems to have a plan.

Then, having invested themselves with the dominant paradigm, they will defend it since they have bought it with some pain, and to reject it would be to admit that what they have been doing so far is a waste of time.

If you want to know why society delights in humiliating you and wasting your time at jobs and school with the irrelevant, it is this: the more absurd and destructive they make it, the more you defend your place in the system.

Cohen v. California will go down in history as a mistake. Free speech always applied to oratory and written analysis, like essays and white papers, because that is what needs defending.

Some clown shouting obscenities, publishing porn, or wearing a jacket with FUCK THE WAR written on it does not need defending; this person already has the Crowd behind him. If anything, we need defending against his entropy, as does our culture.

Tags: cohen v. california, free speech