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  • Aaron VeghAaronvegh@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:07 PM

    This passage from The Cave and the Light by Arthur Herman stopped me in my tracks. On John Stuart Mill, who established our modern sense of liberal individualism, talking about freedom of expression — even of expressing total BS — as essential for maintaining civil society.

    Allowing men and women to say what they believe, Mill argues, and pub- lish what they think is true promotes the spread of new discoveries and truths while pushing out the false and misleading. This is what is sometimes re- ferred to (somewhat misleadingly) as "the marketplace of ideas." Mill's analy- sis owed less to economics than it did to the Romantics. Freedom of speech adds to the creative intensity of life. The free exchange of ideas will prevent a culture from growing stale and rigid. Even debates about issues that seem entirely settled, like whether the earth is flat or if the Holocaust happened, can serve this purpose of wakening us from "the deep slumber of decided opinion." It is a fact, Mill argues, that "the fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors."
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  • Aaron VeghAaronvegh@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:07 PM

    Think of it: that whackadoo that says Alberta should secede or women can’t lead causes an allergic reaction in wider society to reaffirm those values. It’s happening now with Trump too.

    This is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.

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