Socrates quotes
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
Socrates

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Socrates

"In a moment, we got from the sublime to the
ridiculous".
(- Longrinus).

Dear Foxy,

For all that,

"Pan metron ariston", "moderation in everything", and as Oscar Wilde would have added, "kai metron", "including moderation". I'll drink to that:)

Spocebo, Dziekuje, kai efkharisto.

Joe

And I thought I was the one who said I can't let a lie or misrepresentation go unchallenged, in fact I might have actually said, I'm not one to "let one get through to the keeper".
What our resident authority on everything has said is mostly fiction and the rest is of her own opinion and very acute imagination and view of the world.
Now taking each paragraph and let us critique them.
Speech is speech, and we all have the right to say what we feel the need to say.
The recipient's reaction is irrelevant, unless you set out to upset them, and you were successful, then you achieved your goal.
We are human, and as such are created with emotions.
Every right is absolute, depends on where you live.
No-one should interfere with another's personal beliefs or fears, it's PERSONAL!
We most definitely do not need to hear about the holocaust, it was a very bad part of history, and that's where it belongs.
What idiots can truly say that if we keep talking about a bad part of history that it will stop it happening again.
I can't believe, NO, I don't want to believe I am surrounded by such fools.
If someone is going to do bad or harm, they will get inspiration from the harmful things of the past, NO STOP KEEPING IT ALIVE!
Prejudice is just another human emotion, and therefore MUST NOT be challenged, because if you do you will raise it's profile and only give it oxygen and in fact causing more harm, than if you simply ignore it, especially if it does not involve you.
There are many issues everyone feels strongly about, that only gives you the right for you to do what you wish for, to and about yourself.
It does NOT give you the right to predicate, badger and shame or guilt trip anyone else into your particular weaknesses and failures.
If someone truly wants to help, then stop pushing childish ideals and bringing them down by not standing up for themselves or affected emotionally by some words.

Dear Foxy,

I feel very strongly about free speech and science. As a Jew I am aware of our history and of the history of dissenters in general. There are martyrs to free speech. Hypatia was martyred by a mob of Christians in 415 CE. She had aroused feelings against her partially because of what she had to say, partially because she was one of the last pagans in Alexandria and partially because she was a teacher and scientist against Paul’s injunction that women should be silent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

Another martyr to free speech was Servetus burned at the stake in 1533 CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus

“He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.”

Servetus was burned at the stake for heresy. He voiced doubts about the Trinity.

Another martyr to free speech was Giordano Bruno burned at the stake in 1600 CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Giordano Bruno … was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist.[3][4] He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no "centre".
Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation.
…

The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600.

Free speech and science are often connected.

The scientists were condemned for their questioning of the church more than their science. Of course, when science conflicts with ideology woe to the scientists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

Marxism-Leninism was as intolerant as Christianity.

David,

As usual, I agree with everything you write. I saw your last line and thought of Lysenko before i saw your URL citation.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the Chinese have gone as far as the Stalinists with idiotic and blatantly anti-scientific theories like Lysenko's. But some of Trumpf's scientific propositions have the ring of Lysenkoism about them :)

Drinking disinfectant ? Shining strong lights ? Closing your eyes so as not to count positive covid cases ? What next - not counting deaths ?

The Chinese leadership seems to have eschewed all of the Stalinist ideological idiocies and not replaced them with anything at all, except raw Chinese power, and the right to perpetually rule. But in a sense, they may be in their Brezhnev-Kosygin phase, no new ideas, and yet impulsions to openly invade and expand the Empire (one suspects, before it's too late).

Of course, in order to get out of this crisis, what the world may need desperately is rough-and-ready co-operation, not some vicious struggle for supremacy, between a badly damaged US and a shaky alliance between China and Russia.

So who knows what relations between countries and regions may look like in a couple of years ? I hope we all learn some lessons from this catastrophe.

Joe