I agree, but that concern wasn’t my point of posting this.
As I wrote in post #1, liberals used to be all for “free speech” by anyone, including the KKK and holocaust deniers. They would “preach” that no one should be punished just for what they say, and that’s what Chomsky says here.
Today, though, the left wants to completely shut down and annihilate Bible-believing Christianity, and conservatism.
I think this is because the Left senses that they are close to permanent, transformative power. Once that is achieved, free speech becomes unnecessary. Chomsky was writing at the peak of the Reagan years. Any suppression of controversial speech back then would almost certainly include Chomsky’s pals on the Left, and that would be unacceptable.
But that was then, and this is now.
I ran across an online program not long ago which honored
the late Mario Savio and his work. Savio was a free speech
advocate at UC Berkeley back in mid 1960s. Many of his
fellow activists and his widow paid tribute not to his
work as a campus free speech advocate but as a left wing
activist. The message was clear; the left’s definition of
free speech applies only to them.
Bernie Sanders is far more dangerous to America than
Donald Trump could ever hope to be.
But Chomsky was defending a college instructor’s “right” to preach lies, to deliberately spew untruths in a college class.
now, whether a person (a preacher for lack of other definitions) even like Jim Jones can “preach” anything he or she believes are true about things that CANNOT BE PROVEN - that’s why “faith” matters and people are “converted” to a different religion. They are not “convinced” or “argued” or “paid” to declare their religious values. We use different words for different reasons.
But.
On matters of fact, you CANNOT plead “free speech”. The sky is blue - except when it is cloudy. The sky is not falling. The earth is round.