@Maholmire @dcc @pwm

> I’m inclined to believe that you may be a libertarian yourself as well.

You know, very recently, freedom of speech was considered a left-wing value. The fact that both of the two major parties have gone hard-line authoritarian doesn't make me a libertarian. Reagan was asked why he left the Democratic Party and he responded that he didn't leave the party, the party left him. I'm effectively an anarchist. But you ask "What kind of world should we live in?", "What would be ideal, given that we live in *this* world?", or "What's the best way to push things, given that none of us is the temporary dictator?" and you get different answers.

Freedom of speech is a philosophical concept in my case, not as much a political one. Law just overlaps with philosophy a lot, and politics is mainly concerned with ruining the law.

> Just been wondering how you grapple with the age-old problem of advocating for the rights of degenerates whose views you cannot or will not condone but nonetheless support their ability to hold and express them.

This is a philosophical question rather than a political question.

There are a lot of levels: people tend to segment it into "tolerance" and "acceptance". But if you consider what bothers you to see anyone doing anywhere on earth (say, ritualistic child sacrifice), or anyone doing in your country, or in your town, or if your friends or family do something, or what you would tolerate from your own children, then finally yourself, the one thing you have ultimate authority over, and these are all very different. The farther you are from something that is happening, the less you know about the group doing it, the less whatever they're doing affects you, the less authority you have to speak. That's the first division; the second is what you'll help with, what you'll ignore, what you'll try to discourage, and what you'll try to stop by force. So, for example, I would not shoot heroin, I might physically stop a member of my family and drag them to rehab, I might discourage a friend or neighbor but not force them into rehab, and some dude I've never spoken to on the other side of the earth that is sucking the HIV out of random dicks in exchange for fentanyl has nothing to do with me: he can do that if he wants, I'm not going to stop him. Where would I get the authority to tell him to stop, let alone compel him by force? Obviously it's stupid to do that but maybe he'd rather do something stupid. It's his business, not mine: he's a grown-ass man, he can do what he wants.