conservative | Objectivism In Depth

Facebook and Twitter have been banning a lot of conservatives and anti-social justice activists recently, like Paul Joseph Watson, Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin), Tommy Robinson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones. This has commonly been called “censorship” by them and others. But in this essay, I will argue that this is not censorship. It is something fundamentally different from censorship: moderation.

Censorship is always bad. Moderation can be good or bad. But even when it is bad, irrational and/or biased, it should not be regulated by law.

What is Censorship? What is Moderation?

According to Dictionary.com, a censor is “an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.”

“Suppressing” here means “suppressing by using the force of the government.” That is, this is the government punishing citizens and/or confiscating their property (the banned materials in question.)

This is fundamentally different than a citizen regulating the speech of another on his property, as a condition of using it. If someone comes into your house and starts denouncing your wife or mother as a slut, you are within your rights to demand that he leave and to assert your property rights by the force of the police. If you and an opponent have been invited to a debate on abortion, and your opponent, or someone in the crowd, starts screaming about how you’re just privileged and your view is invalid, that person can be asked to leave and forced out if necessary. If someone is continually talking loudly during a movie, again, the theater is within its rights to have that person removed.

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It should not take a professional historian to know that the Gospels are inadequate as evidence for their miraculous/bizarre claims, just as it should not take a legal scholar to observe that the claim of a trial witness, that the defendant resurrected a corpse, needs corroboration by physical evidence.

When we weigh evidence for a claim, the physical evidence that is closest to our first-hand experience should be given the greatest weight. Physical evidence further removed from our experience (say, a photograph in an old book, or a digital photo that could have been altered) should be given a somewhat lesser weight. The testimony–without immediate physical evidence–of a well known and trusted friend should initially be given moderately high weight. The testimony–without immediate physical evidence–of a stranger should be given a low weight. The testimony–without immediate physical evidence–of a known liar should be given no weight. Claims that produce no further evidence when reasonably investigated should be dismissed as baseless. (A large amount of mutually consistent evidence that is far removed from one’s first-hand experience can still be properly convincing.) Continue reading →