Secondary Boycotts

[Sasaki Kojiro]

These groups will end up soon with too much power over who can say what but how can it be stopped? I think we're going to have to live with this going on forever.

I'm hopeful that this kind of thing will jump the shark. They tend to blow things way out of proportion, and they keep going from cause to cause, I think eventually people are going to learn to ignore it. Most do already probably, so I guess I mean they'll learn to mock it.

You are presenting a false dichotomy here. I don't think there is one "main" threat to free speech. The funny thing about boycotts is that people lose interest sooner or later and advertisers come back after everything has died down. You can't say the same about government laws or money in politics.

I stuck that bit in because you said it was one of the biggest threats. But look at it: government law frees up corporate money in politics (good decision I think, but that's no matter). Corporation (or union or whatever) buys ads. That's all minimal compared to the fact that the media coverage has a good chance of being poor, that the "experts" they call in come from ideological groups whose answers are completely predictable, and the politics junkies eat it up.

The solution? Certainly not government regulation, as that would be impossible to implement without collaterall damage. No, the answer lies in Jens Stoltenberg words of "more democracy, more openness". We must educate ourselves to have more respect for opinions which differ from our own.

More respect for other opinions, and more shame at petty attempts to shut them up.