Love the thread idea. I'm always interested when people are right for the wrong reasons, or when they are wrong for better reasons than their correct opponents. It makes a nice gap that begs to be bridged and creates some of the best opportunities for learning and changing.
One that jumps out to me all the time is supporting free but deplorable speech, for some odd reason like "at least it's out in the open instead of concealed," or "all ideas should compete in the marketplace and the best will win," or "sunlight is the best disinfectant," or "exposing people to bad ideas will make them stronger," and other stupid horseshit. Those are all wrong because they are rationalizing the exposure of good people to bad ideas, and promote a naive (at best) understanding of how people - especially impressionable people - work. One of this idea's bastard children is the celebration of non-fatal bullying and abuse as "character building," which should have been mostly squashed in popular culture by the turn of the century but for the Internet.
No, no, no, no, and fuck no. Terrible ideas are a liability. Exposure to influential but damaging speech is bad. It doesn't make fewer people believe it. It makes more people believe it. Giving it a platform alongside legitimate, decent ideas accelerates the deplorable's influence, helps them reach wider audiences like teens and marks, and once that ball gets rolling it always comes down to how charismatic the deplorable person is, and how far they get before decent people put up enough of a fight to defeat it or they burn out their audience like the religious fevers in 19th century New York, but there is always damage done (Mormons lulz).
The crazy, loud racist fuck in the bar can become your leader. It happens. Detestable-but-free speech is one where we have to be right, and for the right reasons. It should be discouraged in public, it should be boycotted in the marketplace, it should be denied the sunny spot, and warned against to vulnerable people.
And here's something I hope will help clarify some of these situations. Look at the advocates for the "free speech rights" of the Alex Joneses (or for a sharper example if you're older, the David Dukes). The advocates to watch out for are the ones who are always whining about their rights but who never seem to find the energy to condemn their ideas, or who do so merely as a token gesture. It's very common around here if you're looking for it. These are the ones who want the lunatics to slip through and to damage your culture, to sow chaos and hatred, and sometimes for no other reason than their own boredom and dissatisfaction. They aren't the ACLU, in any case. They don't give a shit about learning and the free expression of ideas. They would have you locked up for yours, without batting an eye, if only some charismatic person would come along and give them a nice uniform and a sense of pride.
Thoughts cannot and should not be crimes, and we think to at least a high degree in language, and the utterance of those thoughts cannot be crimes. Only a very few select usages of speech can even be considered criminal acts, and only indirectly and after the fact. But we have to be aware that the words of the monsters and the heroes all come from the same place.
