Is it true everyone has a right to his or her opinion?
Politically, yes. Intellectually — NO.
It’s crucial to make the distinction. You don’t have an intellectual right to assert that one plus one equals three. You have a legal right to say it to anyone who will listen; but you have no right to be believed.
It’s true with less obvious assertions. Nobody has a right to be right — or to be seen as right.
When a culture loses sight of this distinction, free speech goes out the window. Because when the wrong demand to be heard, and accepted as right, then they quite naturally become more and more threatened by evidence that refutes their view.
That’s exactly what happened in America. The evidence against socialism has been mounting for decades. But proponents of socialism and other “woke” philosophies do not care. In fact, they accuse YOU of violating THEIR right to free speech by offering counterpoints to their arguments. For example, check out Facebook or Twitter on a daily basis.
The glorification of falsehood always starts as a benign, almost pollyannaish truism. “Come on, now. Let’s all get along. Everyone has a right to speak.” But it never was about the right to speak. It was about the right to be wrong.
Politically, one does have a right to be wrong. You have every legal right to publish books promoting falsehoods, and find an audience, if you can. Today, it’s certainly not that hard. It’s hard to understand why the leftists are so threatened by free speech. They’ve got just about everyone in their corner, without even firing a shot (at least yet).
But it’s the mark of a true totalitarian dictator to accept no dissension. That where the road from, “Everyone has a right to his or her opinion” inevitably leads.
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