Naval Ravikant: "Freedom of speech is a natural right. You can open your mouth and you can talk. It's their God giving to you from the day you're born. And then when the government steps in and tries to take it away, that's sort of the ultimate form of control. It may be helpful to think about it in physical terms. ;

Forget digital where you're being censored in the so-called town square, but it's more imagine somebody came to your house and every time you tried to say something and they didn't like it, they would put a hand over your mouth. That lets you understand immediately restrict freedom of speech to have censorship, you need violence. ;

It is inherently linked, censorship is inherently violent. It prevents you from saying what you would say the physical instantiation will be to put a gag on your mouth like in a prison or in a Gulag or in a concentration camp. ;

So I do not think that is something we can let slide easily. Misinformation, hate speech, all of this stuff is complete nonsense because who gets to define misinformation? Who gets to define hate speech?

The test of a good system is you establish the rules and then you put your worst enemy in charge and then you see how fair it is. So to the people who wanna censor misinformation, great. ;

Put Donald Trump in charge of deciding what is misinformation, what's hate speech and you will very quickly regret the power that you gave out. So to me, that is a bright line. That is a bright line. ;

The first amendment, anyone who violates the first amendment, anyone who basically says that no, I get to decide or some godlike censor who gets to hear everything and say everything gets to decide what is acceptable and can be said and can't be said Those people are you know, I have no quarter with them ;

Those people are my sworn enemies because they are going to drive the world into ruin All the progress that comes in science comes from original blasphemies from things that you were not about to allow to say.

You were not allowed to talk about you were not allowed to think about and if you want to start muzzling people then I would say because of these inherent violent tendencies we should be starting by showing you what muzzling is and muzzling you first. ;

People talk about the fire in a crowded theater ruling a lot. That one comes up a lot. They're like, there are limits on freedom of speech. It's actually not true. If you go and you look at the fire in a crowded theater ruling, I believe it was being made against a draft dodger trying to get put him in jail for not going to war and subsequent Supreme Court rulings and cases and commentaries have made it pretty clear that that was a wartime ruling that even those members of the Supreme Court regret. ;

And there are basically no limitations on free speech like a lot of internet commentators like to think there are. And then I think related to that, and this is why I'm a big proponent of the Second Amendment, because any rights, any rights that we always are challenged by from the government or from statists, they have to be defended. Otherwise, it's just an idea. ;

Look at what's happening in Britain where freedom of speech is essentially on the run. If you don't have the ability to stand up for yourself, then all of these rights will be taken from you. The logic of violence dictates the structure of society. I hate to say it, but at the end of it, it's still nature. We're still animals and nature is red in tooth and claw. If you do not have the ability to defend your rights and your beliefs, they will be taken from you.

If you look at the COVID lockdowns, the lockdown started ending first in the West, in the red states. And why in the red states? Because that's where people love freedom in their arms, so the government can't stop them. It's 40 million intransigent Americans with guns that keep basically the world free. ;

If the US were to fall and turn into an authoritarian regime, I don't think Australia, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, all these countries, Western Europe, would survive for that long on their own. Most of the world is run by authoritarian societies, or at least half of it, roughly. ;

So it's not a pretty place. North Korea is a giant gulag. It's try speaking freely in the Chinese state or the Russian state. So if we don't want to end up that way, we need to have freedom of speech. And if we need freedom of speech, then we need to have the right to bear arms to the backup of freedom of speech."