But one thing you can be sure of, is that it'll be damn unlikely for any "1st world" country to participate in one any time soon.
We must be viewing different news... without further rotting the thread, it looks like it could/is happening right now.
Okay, Dao. It might not be funny the second time around, but...
Depending on how one, or one society, defines, legislates, and protects or guarantees free and equal speech, the concept can either be used to silence portions of the population or engage civil society in the most vigorous political discussion.
People do act in their own interests, and in fact often do so with some knowledge (however obtained) of what the best of those interests are. Individual actors are neither entirely self-interested nor predominantly altruistic, but they intend in most cases to survive. If we drink bleech, then in most cases we do so because we trust it to facilitate reaching some desired goal.
Democracy in and of itself owes no allegiance to free speech or freedom, however one defines them. The progenitors of democracy denied citizenship to upwards of 80% of their populations. Political systems and particular rights are separate competing memes. Especially in a thread like this one, we'd do well to remember that.
As it stands, different democracies address free speech, and the survival of democracy, in various ways. The US, for example, pays lip service to free speech while effectively guaranteeing it (through liberal interpretation of the "Freedom of the Press" clause) to only a few multinational media conglomerates.
Another way free speech might be conceived would include equal airtime, equally funded, on all available media for multiple diverse voices: the fuckwit skinheads get equal time with Edward Said and Ted Turner. In this case it would be very easy to simply change the channel or turn off the /(medium)/. I suspect the counterargument here is that expecting a vibrant political culture to emerge is a bit optimistic given poor voter turnouts nad the common folks' need to put food on the table versus watching, listening to, or reading manifestos and platforms. One response, then, is to remind the reader of specific examples of vigorous public involvement in politics: in this case I'll trot out the Lincoln-era US. Literacy was at a high point, voter turnout was admirable. And the average citizen could follow a three hour speech and respond with pertinent inquiries about small details of an individual's platform. I reckon I could demonstrate that as media narrowed the number of available voices (see Gore Vidal's "one political party with two right wings" statement), interest and involvement in the public sphere diminished. Claiming that today's voter basically justifies closing down free speech is teleology of the worst order.
Naked racism, corporate propaganda, &c. are indeed afforded column-inches. It is the alternatives that are rarely provided the same courtesy. Guaranteeing equal representation would not only allow a population to make informed decisions, it would allow the more adaptable, long-term meams to compete with their sickly brethren.
Actually I think it went differently last time. Score one for specific dependence on initial conditions as well.
SMS, I hope some of the above addresses your intial post regarding moderate and extreme positions/memes. It was intended, in general terms, to address a free playing field that unfortunately doesn't exist.
Free speech laws are free market laws for memes. The most successful idea is not any more likely to be the most moral idea than the most successful business is to be the most moral business. Maybe we cannot trust the government in power to decide what can and cannot be published, but is this landscape really ideal?
Your analogy is very telling. The economic free market is as much a fantasy as the free memetic market. Unless of course one claims that the restricted versions of both are the most powerful meme because, well, look at them: they've won. They haven't. News makers work their asses off every day to (re)fix the idea that things are best the way they are now. For example, with every protest they must tirelessly work to discredit tens of thousands of individuals willing to risk their very lives to say "this must end."
Dao's alternative, a radical restriction of reactionary voices, appears to be nothing more than a reversal of fortunes. We certainly cannot trust the government we have now, though.
And, um, depending on whether one decides to believe memetics pretty much follows the same logic as genetics or that the two are merely analogous, adding concepts like "survival of the fittest" damges the credibility of the thesis. Nature will let just about anything slink by as long as it doesn't catastrophically autoimmolate itself before breeding. Presumably, memes are the same way. There are no more Shakers. |
