It's been more than a year since I sparked some outrage because I posted that I was reading Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier.
Obviously, I don't have the following that Winston Marshall has; but, I got a similar backlash to Marshall posting that he was reading a book by Andy Ngo.
Namely, the backlash was, "How dare you let those ideas near your mind?!"
What I was asked personally by a former friend was if I'd be willing to read a pro-trans book. Of course, that was coming with the assumption that Shrier's book was anti-trans. That comes with the reality that the dude hadn't read the damn book before judging it.
If you think that it's anti-trans to say that Chloe Cole exists, and we shouldn't be removing healthy organs from children, you're a part of the problem. If you think that it's anti-trans to raise a red flag when you realize that there was a 400% increase in young girls in the UK identifying as trans, you're a part of the problem.
Still, there's a grander problem.
Even if Shrier's book were devoid of compassion, and calling for kids with gender dysphoria to be put into camps -- which it is not and doesn't -- we have to regain a certain amount of intellectual honesty.
I was receiving backlash before I even opened the damn book.
I've read Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. I let those ideas into my brain, and I didn't become a communist. I've read Mein Kampf and The Goebbels Diaries. I let those ideas into my brain. If my commentary on the Israel/Hamas war over the last year hasn't convinced you that Hitler failed to convince me, I don't know what to tell you.
So much of the problem with the greased precipice that is abridgments of speech is that people turn stupid and judge the books by their covers. They judge you for even picking up the damn book.
The most important book that I ever read was Defending My Enemy by Aryeh Neier. The first copy that I bought had a Nazi flag prominently shown on the cover. If I had been reading that book on a college campus, there's a good chance that I would have been assaulted by some ass who didn't know that the book was written by a Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust.
I trust myself to let bad ideas into my mind. I'm capable of reading a book and not being taken in by it.
Do I trust everybody to be able to read a book and not be taken in by it? No.
Still, as a basic matter of ethics, I have to give people the benefit of the doubt. I can't defend my right to read whatever I want while trying to prevent you from reading whatever you want.
I'm actually fairly pessimistic.
I think that most people see free speech advocacy as something that's rooted in the idea that truth will ultimately win, and that Frederick Douglass was right when he said that five years of free speech would "banish the auction block and break every chain."
I would like to believe that. What I believe is that free speech is important because it gives truth a fighting chance.
We may lose this fight. Just like I carry a gun for self-defense, and know that I'm gonna probably lose if there's a bad guy with a rifle, I know that I'm fighting an uphill battle; but, the odds are more even if we have our rights.
Nobody should ever be punished or threatened for reading a damn book. The irony isn't lost on me that the people who were sending me less than kind messages for reading Irreversible Damage were the same people who didn't know the difference between censorship and curation in government schools.
Even if it's the dumbest book imaginable, like A Winkle in Time, you might actually learn something by reading it.
As Mill said, "He who knows only his side of the issue knows little of that." We should embrace that wisdom.