(December 25, 2014 at 8:12 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote: The best reply to silly, stupid, or offensive speech is not banning. The best reply is a thorough and public deconstruction.
^This!^
And that sentiment can also be taken as my response to the proposal in another thread that Fox News be shut down. You can't silence every fool, political hack, and religious zealot out there, and the cure would be worse than the disease even if you could. Wide exposure of their dangerous idiocy to as many as will listen is the best course of action. Let the twin disinfectants of reason and ridicule do their work. This is a long game, and the goal should be to marginalize such people by making their views too shameful for most people to embrace. The last thing we should want is the production of a bunch of martyrs.