Comment by thaumaturgy
9 years ago
The only honest answer I have right now is, I don't know. I posted a comment elsethread essentially asking for opinions on this.
I have my personal ideals -- gay marriage is fine, racism is not -- but those aren't perfectly congruent with what I think a society should codify as law, especially where free speech is concerned.
I think a lot of the debate people are having is over whether they want a nice society or a free one. A completely free society isn't very nice; a perfectly nice society isn't free. Somewhere in the middle is where most of us want to be, but we keep getting hung up on hypotheticals and the ideals behind rallying cries like "free speech!" and so no actual progress is being made.
In this particular case, CloudFlare isn't claiming to be developing a new policy -- they aren't refusing service to all neo-Nazi groups -- and I would support any florist's right to refuse service to a couple if they showed up and went out of their way to piss off the florist, regardless of their sexuality.
But there's an awfully big gray area in there and frankly I support CloudFlare's position a lot more because I like lgbtq people a hell of a lot more than I like neo-Nazis.
I think we would both agree our views on Nazis are summed up by a scene from the Blues Brothers haha. I appreciate your honesty, that's incredible to admit, and I completely agree.
A free society can be nice as well!
"nice" and "free" are not symmetrical concepts.
Being nice but not free works for today, but has no guarantee of working for tomorrow. Being free means that we have the ability to evolve our ideas and work towards niceness for all of the future as well.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
An unfree society gives up the ability to evolve and dies, even if it buys us convenient niceness on a short term. An unfree society lowers our chances of being nice tomorrow.