Political libertarianism has succeeded in savaging public institutions using fundamentalist ideas about…

Political libertarianism has succeeded in savaging public institutions using fundamentalist ideas about ‘freedom’. Of action, but also of speech. We’re in a bind now, this fundamentalism stops beliefs from being regulated. Fish knows it. /1 https://t.co/MapyR46V50

Beliefs and knowledge have always been regulated, it’s why we have education and universities. But libertarians have been so successful with their bullshit, that even the mention of the regulation of belief invokes Big Brother authoritarianism. /2

Beliefs are regulated by peer review, not by governments. By a community of scholarship. It’s not the case that all opinions are equal, just as you either know how to plumb a toilet or not, when you work as a plumber, knowledge in every field is regulated by the community…/3

…of expertise, in that field. Freedom of speech fundamentalism levels the entire playing field, and makes every dimwitted opinion and prejudice as loud as knowledge regulated by institutional scholarship. The urgent task our democracies need to survive is to excise the…/4

…cancer of sponsored propaganda, working 24/7 to disrupt and destroy basic civilised life. The people who spout freedom of speech ideas spend millions creating think tanks and organisations to do the exact opposite, to dominate the flow of belief and opinion. /5