Why Today’s Protest is an Example of Free Speech at the Core
How Popular Speech Silences Hate Speech
Amidst today’s news coverage of the Boston protests, one key American principle: the marketplace of ideas. Rather than focusing on the fringe groups quarreling with law enforcement officers, the flawless execution of law enforcement officers maintaining peaceful crowd control, or the overall cooperation between protestors and policemen, it is important to highlight the democracy underlying today’s event. At the core of today rested an important historical milestone; Democratic voices prevailed today.
What is the purpose of Democracy?
Democracy offers an experimentation for ideological analysis; it becomes a simple input versus output test. Voices are input and messages are output. Events like the Boston protest significantly depict Democracy in action; in order to understand the prevailing message, one must understand the messages input in the Boston marketplace.
What was the original protesters’ idea?
The group desperately trying to divert association from the Unite the Right Rally had one strong message: we demand free speech. Their underlying message demanded that hate speech ought to be included in the free speech. Their message demanded that the public ought to hear their hate speech.
What was the counter-protesters’ idea?
The counter-protesters had many messages because they consisted of many groups; of the various groups counter-protesting, some included the Black Lives Matter Movement, LGTBQ Pride, and Antifa. Their unifying message demanded that hate speech ought to be drowned out by the overwhelming demand for tolerance. Their message was successful on a numerical level.
How was it successful?
The mere crowd sizes between the groups showed that many voices outweighed the few voices. The original protesters, consisting of a laughable couple dozen, had their freedom to voice their opinion. Their opinion, however, was not validated when the discussion shifted away from their objectives and towards the coverage of the massive couple dozen THOUSANDS of diverse voices heard this day.