Tom Facchine – The Truth About Free Speech

			People talk all the time about freedom of speech, freedom of expression, even democracy, freedom,
these sorts of things. But they, they lose the plot, right? They they lose the forest through the
trees, they forget that these things are instruments, they're not inherent goods by themselves,
they're supposed to lead or be a tool to lead towards something else. That's good. Right? So what's
is the purpose of freedom of speech or freedom of expression? Just so anybody can say what they
want? No, it's not a procedural? Good. It's, it's supposed to actually lead us to the truth. Right?
The idea is that if we don't have a certain amount, or a certain degree of freedom, to say
		

			something, or write something, or whatever, then the people who are controlling us are going to
cover up the truth somewhere, right? And so it's supposed to be an instrument, or a procedure that
is utilized to lead us towards a certain good, which is the truth. Okay. But what happens if freedom
of expression or freedom of speech actually isn't used in the service of the truth? What if it's
used in the service of power? What if it's used in the service of discrimination? What if it's used
in the service of bigotry, right? And what if the people who are declaring falsehoods and spreading
misinformation are actually using as an excuse, freedom of expression and freedom of speech and all
		

			these sorts of things? Right, that's where we've gotten to today. Right? We kind of have, you know,
some people have a trigger for like the kind of the cold war mentality where we're afraid of the
totalitarian state of 1984, George Orwell, where the government is going to tell us what we can say
and what we can't say, right? But then you have Huxley's Brave New World and that gives us a
different dystopia, which is the dystopia of too much freedom, where everybody is saying everything.
And now you can't determine what's true and what's not. So which dystopia Are we living in? We're
living in the second one, at least in this part of the world, right? We're flooded with
		

			misinformation, lies, slander, bigotry, all these sorts of things. And it's the cover that it's
provided is quote, unquote, freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
		

			And if you look, if you want to really see why this is actually an exercise of power, and not
something that keeps power and in check, then look at who is the target of free speech and freedom
of expression. Who are the people that are the butt end of the joke, and who never are the button of
the GIF, who's never in the crosshairs of freedom of speech and freedom of expression and satire and
mockery and things like this. What we find is Islam, and the Muslims are always in the crosshairs
and are always the target. They want to be able to mock Islam, they want to be able to mock the
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam, they want to be able to mock the Koran and mock the hijab
		

			and mock all these other sorts of things, and they call it freedom of expression. This is just an
exercise of power and has nothing to do with undermining power or keeping power in check, or
arriving at the truth. It's a power play that's dressed up in the garb of freedom, and it's phony