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Free Speech & Inquiry Are Great!: Some of My Thoughts

Free Speech & Inquiry Are Great!: Some of My Thoughts

Last updated on: September 12, 2025 at 10:48 am by Dave Armstrong

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Free Speech & Inquiry Are Great!: Some of My Thoughts 2025-09-12T10:48:30-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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Photo credit: the late Charlie Kirk speaking with attendees at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville tour stop of the “American Comeback Tour” at HSS Lawn Amphitheater in Knoxville, Tennessee (13 March 2025) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.]

Oftentimes today we see people writing about who-knows-who: someone they refuse to name; therefore, we can’t see his or her comments in context and in their entirety. And they can’t respond. You know: that thing that used to be routine: letting someone defend themselves against a charge . . . Free speech; fair and open and open-minded dialogue . . . quaint and antiquated notions, now becoming as rare as a dodo bird.

This leads to a scenario where we almost always end up bashing a mere caricature of the person’s views, because we have shaped it according to our cynicism towards it, rather than letting readers with a brain and a critical faculty read it for themselves and then compare two competing views.

This is distressingly common these days (especially on Facebook): the other “side” (real or imagined) is caricatured and dismissed as “obvious” examples of imbecility and sheer stupidity, and then the choir joins in and says “rah-rah” and “yes!” and back-slaps and remarks on how profound the bashing of the [quite often] straw man is.

Such childish foolishness immediately disallows or discourages actual dialogue, between one view and another. The “other side” is demonized as beneath contempt. “Why would anyone ever consider such an idiotic view?” etc.

And so by this process, politics and even internal discussions in the Catholic Church (both theological and social) become increasingly polarized. We wind up constantly preaching to the choir, only hanging around people who agree with us, and demonizing anyone who is even slightly different from the fashionable views of our trendy, faddish in-club and cheerleaders’ team.

What good is cynically describing another view, with which one disagrees, and then acting as if the biased, second-hand account is the equivalent of the thing itself? It’s not! The original article or actions or words of a person being critiqued are what they are, and ought to be able to be read, in order to form an intelligent opinion of them: not merely an opinion on a jaded opposition description. Or else we actually talk to the person as a human being: let him or her have their say.

Some things never change. I was writing about very similar behaviors back in 2003 when I left Internet discussion boards and explained why in great detail. In a nutshell, it’s because they weren’t fostering true dialogue: about which I am very passionate.

It’s the same old junk, but I think it is far worse (in degree) now than then. At least in those days, opposing views “slugged it out” on forums. There was still an antiquated notion that there might be more than one legitimate, respectable view on a given topic.

Today, everyone gets into their little comfortable cliques, where everyone agrees with them, and they have fun putting down all the idiots who happen to honestly be of a different opinion. There is almost no interaction across opinion-lines.

Let no one claim that I don’t encourage free and open discussion on my pages. [4-11-17]

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I continue to try to find common cause and areas of agreement with anyone. It’s getting tougher and tougher all the time to even achieve that, since so few people are willing to talk to and find common ground with anyone significantly different in opinion from themselves (and because it takes two willing partners to engage in any dialogue). But I’m a stubborn idealist (a thing that used to widely typify liberals), so I’ll keep trying, no doubt driving myself nuts till I depart this mortal coil . . . [6-19-18]

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Observers from all parts of the political perspective (anyone who values free speech and a free exchange of ideas) have loathed the fact that so often, opponents who disagree on something or other are immediately compared to Hitler or Nazis.

My allowing you to disagree with me is free speech. My refutation of your nonsense is also free speech and reasoned debate. I posted what I did on my blog because I have a right to do so as an American citizen, and because I think that what I said is right and unobjectionable. I will not be shut up.

I am free to post anything, as the blogmaster of my own blog at Patheos (one with a continuous 24-year history), where free speech is actually allowed and cherished. [2-11-21]

*****

I Oppose Leftist Fascist Censorship (The Example of Lifesite News)

Lifesite News is a detestable radical Catholic reactionary website that does, however, include great pro-life material amidst its wasteland of anti-papal nonsense and dangerous quasi-schismatic mindset (that I have refuted many times). In my work as an apologist, which includes aspects of “protecting the flock from dangerous influences”, I have urged people to avoid it like the plague.

But it should not have been banned from You Tube. Such censorship is outrageous and utterly contrary to the tradition of free speech in this country. My personal (orthodox Catholic) opinions of Lifesite News are utterly irrelevant to this observation.

You Tube is choosing to censor and shut down ideas it disagrees with (very unlike myself; I interact with and demonstrate the errors of those I disagree with).

Once an organization starts censoring, where does it end? It’s a slippery slope. I could see with hate speech and that sort of thing, but of course, the left keeps widening the definition of that till it encompasses essentially any viewpoint different than their own. [2-13-21]

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I detest and decry all this [i.e., McCarthyism]. It was an abomination. But one must note that today, these sorts of blacklisting and censorship tactics are widely occurring on the left. McCarthyism is now called “woke awareness” or “cancel culture” and about ten years ago or so it was known as “political correctness.” These are all expressions of leftist desire to censor and obliterate political conservatism, moral traditionalism, traditional Christianity, pro-life expression, and other non-leftist notions.

Recently, this has been utterly obvious in the attempts of Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) to censor conservatives; for example, cancelling President Trump’s Twitter account, and going after many other noted conservatives. Examples are now so numerous as to not even require documentation. This is the new McCarthyism and fascism today. [3-28-21]

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The stupid Facebook algorithm stifles exposure and harms my work. It’s very different than it used to be. It actually censors. I’m disgusted with Facebook and its brain-dead censorship. Patheos, the host of my blog, doesn’t censor one word of any of my writing. I’m completely free as a writer and an editor. And then we have this farce that is Facebook, trying to make sure no one sees anything that isn’t doctrinaire far-left, mindlessly secularist slop or is too “religious” or whatever. I want people to visit and comment on my blog, where there is actual freedom of speech, and where I am the moderator, not the idiots at Facebook.

Before Facebook existed, blogs were all the rage, and websites before them. No one messed with our freedom of speech or censored our posts. I will not be exploited by left-wing fascists. On my blog I am completely free. I was a full-time Catholic apologist for ten years before I ever got on Facebook, and I was doing Christian apologetics for 30 years. I was fine before it existed and I’m fine now after I have rejected its fascism and censorship of my writing and other expressed opinions (memes, etc.). [7-14-21]

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Summary: Excerpts from past writings of mine in which I passionately advocate free speech and free exchange of ideas, and detest fascist censorship, such as regularly occurs on Facebook.

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