Damian Counsell
@damcou.bsky.social
There was no need for you to cite "counterexamples" from current US politics, because, right there, in my essay, *my own* main examples were from a Shadow Cabinet that won a landslide win, plus Sturgeon, who was First Minister. It's quite a feat to miss all that, given that there are photos of them.
November 6, 2025 at 11:39 AM
There was no need for you to cite "counterexamples" from current US politics, because, right there, in my essay, *my own* main examples were from a Shadow Cabinet that won a landslide win, plus Sturgeon, who was First Minister. It's quite a feat to miss all that, given that there are photos of them.
Thank you for inverting the essay's argument: That it's precisely because censored social media is irrelevant to most voters that hanging out on it with people who only agree with them tempts *the politically successful* to do things *in the real world* that eventually repel voters.
November 6, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Thank you for inverting the essay's argument: That it's precisely because censored social media is irrelevant to most voters that hanging out on it with people who only agree with them tempts *the politically successful* to do things *in the real world* that eventually repel voters.
Classical liberalism very much is not. Here's Mill making the most pessimistic case for free speech imaginable.
!["[T]he dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries.
"To speak only of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out; and, most likely, would have been so in England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen Elizabeth died. Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman Empire. It spread, and became predominant, because the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism.
"It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.
"The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as t…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ks6ix4c3d3egx7kewxgewv7j/bafkreibgd7u2lk5xe3db4oau44akigaqqjejrf5iayu2xqvypewrmnrxhm@jpeg)
March 17, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Classical liberalism very much is not. Here's Mill making the most pessimistic case for free speech imaginable.
Every bad ideology, from Marxism to libertarianism, is insufficiently cynical about human behaviour in general (not politicians' specifically). It's this lack of cynicism that makes bad outcomes inevitable. If you assume the worst, but reward the best, things tend to turn out better for everyone.
March 17, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Every bad ideology, from Marxism to libertarianism, is insufficiently cynical about human behaviour in general (not politicians' specifically). It's this lack of cynicism that makes bad outcomes inevitable. If you assume the worst, but reward the best, things tend to turn out better for everyone.
The people (politicians) who devised those regulations were insufficiently cynical about how the people and organisations subject to them would behave when subject to them at the same time as they were trying to make a profit/meet targets/house enough people quickly enough.
March 17, 2025 at 1:10 PM
The people (politicians) who devised those regulations were insufficiently cynical about how the people and organisations subject to them would behave when subject to them at the same time as they were trying to make a profit/meet targets/house enough people quickly enough.
It wasn't the general public that spontaneously tried to blame, for example, the Grenfell disaster on "Torys" and "Tory cuts"; it was the political class. After it was properly investigated, it turned out that the "appalling incentives" were well-intentioned—not cynical—"green" regulations.
March 17, 2025 at 1:08 PM
It wasn't the general public that spontaneously tried to blame, for example, the Grenfell disaster on "Torys" and "Tory cuts"; it was the political class. After it was properly investigated, it turned out that the "appalling incentives" were well-intentioned—not cynical—"green" regulations.