No Stupid Questions

This was a criticism that the Nazis used against liberal democracies. They saw this as a fatal weakness and used it as a justification for keeping in power themselves, once they had achieved it.

Various dictators have said much the same as well.

However, looking at the track record of democracies vs dictatorships or single party states, I think that the data will show that pluralist democracies typically last longer.

A democracy without freedom of speech is not a real democracy as people will not discuss their actual thoughts.

Less. If everyone can say what they want, people can ignore most of it. If someone is locked up or killed for what she said, other people start thinking what she said might be important.

Of course there's less division because people who disagree with the dictators are killed.

I'd argue no.

The problem of a democracy is that it's largely unsatisfactory across the board. At most, you'll get most of what you want, but that little bit you didn't get can be the basis of radicalization. If we'd just been a bit more demand, less willing to compromise, we could've gotten it all! And when you get less that most of what you want, the population is left with even greater feelings of disappointment in their political leaders. Free speech will be used to exploit these vulnerabilities. Free speech can also alleviate the pressure of these vulnerabilities on democracy.

In contrast, a dictatorship basically demands people act like the decrees of the dictator are everything they want. Only uncritical speech survives in the open, while the critical speech is underground. It is much more demanding on a critical individual than democracy, because their public life must support the dictatorship, while their private life is filled of thoughts that oppose the public. And it's not like they're safe sharing their critical thoughts either, it's always a potential avenue of self-destruction, both of the individual and of the dictatorship. As such, critical thoughts in a dictatorship must be policed strictly, invading personal privacy short of literally digging around in people's heads, to ensure and reassure the ruling power that all is well.

I'm not sure but I don't think that it's much different. At the same time that you're abler to voice dissidence under a democracy, the value of doing so is smaller - because everyone else is also doing it, and they compete for the same political reach.

Thanks to

all of you here :

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For your interest in this discussion. I cannot decide for all of you of the final conclusion ... but after careful pondering here is what I say :

The strongest point would be this :
from(@[email protected] )

(...) And when you get less that most of what you want, the population is left with even greater feelings of disappointment in their political leaders. Free speech will be used to exploit these vulnerabilities. Free speech can also alleviate the pressure of these vulnerabilities on democracy. (...)

But this would work only if debates go well enough. The following is relevant here :

from(@[email protected] )

I’d argue that debates aren’t useful without a neutral, mutually trusted media source that listeners from both sides would refer to for fact-checking. The US has debates but the soundbites that partisan media air are the main way people consume them. Few people watch the whole debate, and few want to because they’re mostly just hot air. (...)

I feel this whole social process is really critical (at this point in time) so, thanks again to everyone here.

no

No, but you have to remember, freedom of of speach doesn't result in the right to insult or humiliate people, let alone call for violence. Freedom of speech should always be kept in check with protection against discrimination or violence.

The moment people start to try to split up societies (see what Trump does in the US) they're on the road to dictatorships like Russia and China has.