I’m old enough to remember when the left was all in favor of the First Amendment. It wasn’t so long ago, a mere 20 years, when we heard from them that “dissent is patriotic” — when Bush 43 had told the nation that if you weren’t with him on the war in Iraq, then you were on the side of terrorism.
These days, however, the left is doing all it can to silence anyone who dissents from its omnipotent-government agenda. That makes this post by Arnold Kling particularly important.
A slice:
People want to place some forms of dissent out of bounds. Holocaust denial is a common example. People want to say that Holocaust denial and similar beliefs should be put in a special category. Rather than calling these views “dissent,” they should be called “misinformation” or “hate speech,” and be subject to censorship.
The problem with trying to draw a line between legitimate dissent and misinformation is that some authority must draw that line. And the authority is likely to be biased, particularly against dissent that goes against the interests of that authority.
The drafters of the Constitution understood that no human being could be trusted with the power to stifle dissent. Today’s “progressives,” however, don’t believe in universal rules; they believe that the key to the perfect society is control by the people who think the right way. They’re utterly certain that they’re correct, and dissent is getting in the way of their plans.
I like Kling’s conclusion: “Anyone can be wrong. The challenge is to arrive at beliefs that are more likely to be right. Trusting experts is a heuristic that is often a good choice. But it does not follow that dissent should be stamped out.”