Censorship

I am a day late in screaming into the void of the internet to weigh in on the idea of ‘blah blah cutting my opinions are a form of censorship freedom of speech blah blah’ and there are a plethora of reasons for that.

Am I going to tell you those reasons? Probably not. Not because they are shady or horrible, just uninteresting and kind of inconsequential.

So, let me give some background without getting too far into the background because you should do your own research into Canada’s (somehow) surprising history involving the genocide of Natives and stuff. It is very interesting, sad, deplorable, and important.

My gripe is people’s reaction to the idea of canceling Canada Day celebrations.

I have not celebrated Canada Day for the last 15 or so years. Not for any agenda or stance, I just do not have any pride in this country due to the ways it was formed.

Again: if you don’t know, read up on it. This rant will be here when you have, and it will give additional context for what I am on about. TL;DR is we killed a lot of the indigenous peoples who lived here, killed a lot of each other, the church is horrible, BLAH BLAH BLAH! (I’ll stop with the ‘blah blah blah’)

Today, someone attacked a friend of mine online talking as if her voicing her displeasure with the holiday and supporting the idea of abandoning the national day of celebration was a form of censorship, and infringed on the ideas of Freedom of Speech. Her response was polite, yet firm, and their discussion ended with the person basically thinking “I yelled louder therefore I win the argument on the internet” or something to that extent.

The irony is, and I cannot believe that I have to mention this, is this person wanted to use their anger toward being censored to censor someone else. They did not like that someone was voicing how they should feel awkward about voicing their opinion towards this “void” and they latched on swearing that they were being attacked and muted.

Censorship laws and the aforementioned “Freedom of Speech” only applies to the government’s actions towards opinions. It is important, and should NOT be infringed upon. It does NOT apply, however, to individuals or companies. Again, I can say whatever I want to anyone, and they can tell me to shut up. A LYNCH MOB can descend on me for having a “taboo” opinion, and they are fully in their right to do so. That never constitutes an infringement on my Freedom of Speech, simply because they do not pretend to represent a government body of any kind.

Hate-speech is not and should never be protected, and neither should threats. There, you are verbally assaulting a person, and that is different than having an opinion.

I can say “CANCEL CANADA DAY” all I want and if you don’t like it, that’s fine. You can even yell at me in comments or public message boards, and that’s fine. WordPress, Twitter, or Facebook have all the powers to remove my comments, and that’s fine. The only issue would be if the government took my comments at face value and, with no other reason, decided to lock me up.

So no, you snowflake; someone talking about how Canada Day should be canceled is NOT an infringement on your Freedom of Speech, in the same way that you telling someone to shut up is not an infringement on theirs. How you carry yourself in the discussion does say a lot about your character, however. So maybe be nice, and people might at least let you finish your mad ramblings before they politely ask you to leave the stage.