@AndToddsaid Regarding masks, this is one of the reasons I think my Right vs Left redefinition/clarification is so important.
One of the applications of my formulation is that Leftists/Collectivists/Big Govt types hold that view because they have contempt for average people.

The first reaction of Government Officials to new information is to suppress it until they can decide what they want the masses to hear.

You can't throw a rock into a group of MAGA heads or Libertarians or Constitution Restorationists without hitting someone who says most people are too dumb to vote or make decisions for themselves.

My ideology, which I think is identical to the philosophy and ideology behind the US Constitution, is that people are more capable of making good decisions when they are allowed to be, and especially when they are trained to be.

One of the reasons there are so many Low Information Voters is they are *trained* to be. They are trained to wait for someone to tell them how to think and what they should do.

This is exactly why thousands (and maybe hundreds of thousands) of college kids took out massive loans to finance them taking time to find themselves in college.

And it is exactly the thought process behind the mask kerfuffle and lockdown kerfuffle.

Contrary to what actual history tells us, they believe we can't make good decisions when given all the info.

or we can't make the decisions they WANT us to make if we have complete info.

and so, with incomplete information, we get things like this stepping into the breach (the quoted tweet, not the mocking one) https://twitter.com/GluedThumbs/status/1305860712137457667

Big Govt keeps us from getting complete information and then uses the crazy things we do with incomplete information to justify not giving us complete information.

My principle is that Wisdom of Crowds is an effective way to make public policy.

I think the govt should have merely told us everything it knew about COVID, everything it assumed about COVID, & what it was doing to change assumptions into knowledge.
Then let us decide ourselves.

Some states/areas would have coalesced around masks, others around lockdowns, others around both, or neither, or something else.
And people actually in fear of their own lives would have gravitated to what *worked*.

Govt officials can't ever be in fear of your life as much as you are.

In fact, they were never in fear of citizens' lives. They were in fear of not getting re-elected.

That explains every bit of policy we've seen enacted.

And every bit of coverage the MSM has made of COVID, because they are overtly trying to help Democrats get re-elected.

So to return to the point, I want to use COVID and Russia-quiddick and everything to teach and remind conservatives that while many of us are stupid, even the stupid ones are really good at finding advantages for ourselves, and we should be trusted with the best info available.

And that includes letting stupid people vote.

It also includes taking steps to prevent Marxist control of all the channels of information, because that obviously prevents the free flow of all necessary information.

Which kind of leads back to your hate speech question.

Information should flow freely, so it can compete and the accurate information can win out. Because it will.

So can we take steps to ensure flow of information w/o violating the 1st Amendment?

And now I'm stream-of-consciousness tweeting.

The POINT is: the biggest problem I see for the GOP, the thing that lets Democrats remain viable in politics, is that the GOP is not committed to letting people have all the information, and grassroots GOP voters agree with that.

Thoughts?