What any person should understand before utilizing the ability of speaking his mind is this: Once you say something, it is then an “act” and no longer just “a thought.” At the time of this essay, there is no law against having an idea or thought, yet, once you introduce those thoughts to another person, you will produce an effect upon them – and it can be intense.
Greg Lukianoff did not seem to express any restrictions to free speech on campuses, in his video; therefore, for this essay I will assume that he has none. Additionally, since he declares: “this matters to our larger society” I will also assume that his argument does not only apply to the University campus.
I deduce that while he contemplated free-speech, and consequently, brought forth the fruit of that contemplation in the form of an all-encompassing-free-for-all, Mr. Lukianoff may have neglected to incorporate basic principles, and logic. Unfortunately, he has fallen for the same sophistry that much of our current society has: that every man has the right to say whatever he thinks, which in truth; he does not.
To demonstrate my point, I will use this quote from Mr. Lukianoff; “One of the great harms of speech-code and campus censorship, is that it leaves students with the false impression that ‘censorship’ is what good, compassionate people do.” In order to check the validity of that declaration we can ask Mr. Lukianoff: if a pervert approached a child to 'speak his mind' would the good and right thing to do, involve "stopping him?" Not every thought or opinion has a right to be spoken.
When “Freethinkers” initially began to assemble, they did so in hiding, like thieves. They knew that if they were to speak their erroneous and distorted thoughts in decent society, they would be flogged or tossed into jail; yet, they also knew that in order to influence others to think as themselves, they needed to be unrestrained. After a few decades of groundwork they succeeded in penetrating the local government, move forward a few more years, and they eventually passed laws - To protect Error. Truth and morality had no need to be protected by law; it was the moral-norm.
To be clearer: the freedom of speech laws (especially the current codes) are not situated to protect the rights of the decent, they are there to protect the depraved and to provide a platform for the purpose of spreading their errors.
Nowadays, because universities have been permeated by the so-called “open-mindedness” of fallacious thinkers, it is those who are decent and right-minded who must fight for the opportunity to communicate what is right, in public; while the foolish talk uncontrollably.
Later on in the video, Mr. Lukianoff mentions the term “armed-camp mentality” as if it were an awful thing. I believe that we are forever at war against Error and Iniquity, and neither of these two should have had any entitlement to be expressed under the forged standard of “Freedom-of-Speech”.
