The Weight of Words

I have been mulling over free speech [since my previous post](https://brennan.day/free-speech-and-the-indieweb/) on the topic. Despite the response my blog post got from BD's crowd, I myself am certainly not anti-free speech.

I've come to realize that my fundamental difference with absolutists is that I believe giving everyone a seat at the table, including those who would erode the rights of everyone else sitting, if given the opportunity, only permits free speech in the short-term. I believe taking extraordinary measures with extraordinary circumstances is necessary to allow everyone else to maintain their freedom of speech indefinitely.

John Rawls, and his notion of [reasonable pluralism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/), is a society built on real disagreement, but that doesn't owe a seat to every disagreement, only to the ones that accept that other people are allowed to exist and be wrong. A reasonable doctrine would never use power to erase the doctrines sitting beside it. The unreasonable ones are the ones that would. The accommodation a free society extends isn't unconditional tolerance dressed up as principle, and the unreasonable doctrines are the ones that would resort to ["the oppressive use of state power" to erase the rest](https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2356&context=lawreview). No amount of politeness in the meantime changes what they're asking for a seat to eventually do.

Beyond this, I've written before about how [I'm limited by Canadian law as to what I'm allowed](https://brennan.day/i-need-to-stop-making-promises-i-cant-keep/) to host on my transformative works archive [fanfiction.lol](https://fanfiction.lol), and I certainly don't agree with that whatsoever.

Anyways, while there were quite a few responses to my post on free speech within the IndieWeb that seemed to miss the main point I was trying to drive home, there was one anonymous comment in particular that I found myself agreeing with:

I'm not understanding how [Brennan]'s opinions became so important to some.

Now this, I can sympathize with. If I wanted prestige or clout I would be doing everything I could to get a job at an institutional publication with name recognition. Instead, I write here, wholly independent and on my own. My opinion is certainly not important, and I am not a good person, and I am often a foolish one, as well. The scant [bylines I have](https://brennan.day/press) are from chance, mostly.

Now, that doesn't mean I just write whatever-the-fuck, I have [standards](https://brennan.day/standards). Why? Because no matter what, words have weight—and I try my best to be mindful of what I write and speak into the world. As I've written before, humanity has [long thought the act of writing is magic](https://b