[Genuine Realist]

I think worth its own thread.

(1) FWIW, the often quoted example of the limitation of free speech by analogy to yelling fire in a crowded theatre, is taken from an Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. opinion in a 1919 case, Schenck v. United States, in upholding the conviction o a war protester handing out anti-war material in front of a draft center. His free speech activity was considered too dangerous to tolerate. Like that outcome? (The more you learn of the actual jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes - the author of Buck v. Bell, 1927, the eugenics case - the less you like him. He shares that dubious distinction with Woodrow Wilson, in that familiarity breeds increasing contempt.)

(2) Almost every attitude most college educated Americans take for granted as truistic, particularly on racial issues, was at one time considered highly dangerous, toxic speech.

(3) Getting to the particular case of Atlas, the illusion is that censoring his speech would delete these ideas. Not so - what would happen is that they would retreat into inchoate conspiracism rumors, dark whispers, all the stuff we know and love, somewhat akin to the anti-vaxxers. Of course you can't eliminate that altogether. But public discussion serves as a valuable disinfectant. I'm not the first to use that metaphoir 

(4) Also, even extreme ideas can serve as pushback against bureaucratic overkill. It forces the powers-that-be to reexamine and  justify. Even when Fox News is at its worst, it performs one valuable service - it forces the other elements of the MSN to rebut it - and every once in a while, that turns out not to be so easy. It would be too political to go back 40 or 50 years to when there were only three networks, every one got their news from Walter Cronkite, and nary a discouraging word was heard. Suffice it to say that today's hurly burly is infinitely better. I much prefer no consensus, to a bland unthinking one.

I remember some of the controversy about closing golf courses last spring. I'm not a golfer, but that seemed to me to be absurd overkill - obviously, you can play an open-air game (not sport) in a socially distanced manner. (Tennis, too.) It may have been bureaucratic thoughtlessness - or, worse, it might have been reverse racism. Since we have to ban inner city sports like basketball, we have to ban country club sports like golf, lest we be accused of facilitating White privilege (even though the distinction lies in the manner of play). I wonder how many other blanket prohibitions could have been tweaked here and there, to save one job on Monday, and another on Tuesday. Reaction to that sort of nonsense is appropriate, and often begins with ludicrously overstated critiques,

If you don't get the pushback, you do not have the bureaucracy thinking - and health bureaucracy can be as stolid and inflexible as any other. Lock 'em all down.

(5) To state the obvious, the First Amendment does not guarantee Atlas' right to speak, any more than any other private citizen's. But it does codify the basic openness that we value in this society. 

And to end where I began, ANY speech with which you disagree can be characterized as too dangerous to tolerate. The game's as old as the Alien and Sedition Acts in the Adams administration. But in fact very little is. You disarm it by rebutting it, not by prohibiting it.

[Genuine Realist]

I think worth its own thread.

(1) FWIW, the often quoted example of the limitation of free speech by analogy to yelling fire in a crowded theatre, is taken from an Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. opinion in a 1919 case, Schenck v. United States, in upholding the conviction o a war protester handing out anti-war material in front of a draft center. His free speech activity was considered too dangerous to tolerate. Like that outcome? (The more you learn of the actual jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes - the author of Buck v. Bell, 1927, the eugenics case - the less you like him. He shares that dubious distinction with Woodrow Wilson, in that familiarity breeds increasing contempt.)

(2) Almost every attitude most college educated Americans take for granted as truistic, particularly on racial issues, was at one time considered highly dangerous, toxic speech.

(3) Getting to the particular case of Atlas, the illusion is that censoring his speech would delete these ideas. Not so - what would happen is that they would retreat into inchoate conspiracism rumors, dark whispers, all the stuff we know and love, somewhat akin to the anti-vaxxers. Of course you can't eliminate that altogether. But public discussion serves as a valuable disinfectant. I'm not the first to use that metaphoir 

(4) Also, even extreme ideas can serve as pushback against bureaucratic overkill. It forces the powers-that-be to reexamine and  justify. Even when Fox News is at its worst, it performs one valuable service - it forces the other elements of the MSN to rebut it - and every once in a while, that turns out not to be so easy. It would be too political to go back 40 or 50 years to when there were only three networks, every one got their news from Walter Cronkite, and nary a discouraging word was heard. Suffice it to say that today's hurly burly is infinitely better. I much prefer no consensus, to a bland unthinking one.

I remember some of the controversy about closing golf courses last spring. I'm not a golfer, but that seemed to me to be absurd overkill - obviously, you can play an open-air game (not sport) in a socially distanced manner. (Tennis, too.) It may have been bureaucratic thoughtlessness - or, worse, it might have been reverse racism. Since we have to ban inner city sports like basketball, we have to ban country club sports like golf, lest we be accused of facilitating White privilege (even though the distinction lies in the manner of play). I wonder how many other blanket prohibitions could have been tweaked here and there, to save one job on Monday, and another on Tuesday. Reaction to that sort of nonsense is appropriate, and often begins with ludicrously overstated critiques,

If you don't get the pushback, you do not have the bureaucracy thinking - and health bureaucracy can be as stolid and inflexible as any other. Lock 'em all down.

(5) To state the obvious, the First Amendment does not guarantee Atlas' right to speak, any more than any other private citizen's. But it does codify the basic openness that we value in this society. 

And to end where I began, ANY speech with which you disagree can be characterized as too dangerous to tolerate. The game's as old as the Alien and Sedition Acts in the Adams administration. But in fact very little is. You disarm it by rebutting it, not by prohibiting it.