Typical control thing. The issues and reasons don't matter, it's about being able to set the rules for others while carving out exceptions for themselves. "The only moral abortion is my abortion" is another way it comes out.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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The entirety of conservative thinking is essentially “rules for thee, not for me”
They want to do whatever they want and tell you what to do. It’s all about control. They don’t give a shit about free speech.
You can't just listen to what they say. You have to listen to what they mean. For many people, and I think especially conservatives, the emotional level is the real one. Words exist to promote this hazy dreamscape of feelings.
So they say free speech but they mean "follow my standards of speech"
They mean "I want to be able to say racist shit at Thanksgiving without being hassled by the rest of the family".
They're not actually for free speech, or freedom in general. The people who brainwash their followers into this shit just use the phrase "free speech" as a tool.
Because they are, generally speaking, so un-be-fucking-leavably stupid, that I still don't know how they don't just implode under the weight of their own hypocrisy.
They want to be "right" all the time, so anything that they don't like is "wrong". They don't care that they are incorrect, as long as they are "right"...
Edit: fixed rage induced typos
- The concept of free speech is that the government is not supposed to suppress it, not that anyone should be allowed to say whatever they want to anyone with no consequences
- For people like your gramps, words are weapons. They don't care if they are logically or ideologically consistent. They make all their decisions purely on emotion, and they've learned that "free speech" is a magic spell that sometimes gives them an edge. You can't treat them like honest interlocutors.
The concept of free speech is that the government is not supposed to suppress it, not that anyone should be allowed to say whatever they want to anyone with no consequences
This seems to be contradictory.
My guess is you think consequences are only things the government does? But OP going no contact with their Grandpa because he's an asshole would also be a consequence. "Free speech" in the US sense refers to the first amendment of US constitution which only says what the government is allowed to do.
It's not a philosophical position that anyone holds with any seriousness in the manner of OPs gramps, because like OPs gramps, they mean they should be able to say whatever they want and people stand there and take it, but he's going to throw a tantrum if anyone says things he disagrees with.
Wilhoit’s Law:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
And their firm belief that they, being super special sparkly people, of course belong in the first group.
But the thing is, even the ‘in group’ has tiers, because they believe that if there isn’t Order and Structure with Everyone Knowing Their Place and Great and Glorious (white male) Leaders at the Top then the world will descend into chaos and civilization will be destroyed. Seriously. They actually think that.
And the way you show who’s in a higher tier? They can violate more of the rules. So your Grandpa believes he’s higher-ranking than you (because he’s older and therefore wiser) so he gets to lay down the rules and then flaunt them, while you have to obey them. This keeps Order.
Also, somewhere along the way this got mixed up with Prosperity Gospel, so they also believe that people deserve to be on a higher tier the more money they have, because they’re rich. If you deserve to be on a higher tier, then you’d be rich too, or figure out how to become rich.
(That’s also why they like Trump. He’s from a ‘rich’ family and breaks all the rules and gets away with it. Therefore he is high ranking. And the lower ranks should always unquestionably follow the higher ranks, because civilization will collapse if they don’t.)
Is this circular reasoning? Yes! But who cares because it means they get to lord it over other people while having someone tell them what to do so they don’t have to think for themselves.
Because you shouldnt listen to them or try to appeal to their non-good-faith bullshit "standards". Your "right wing friends" are ideologically suicidal bots that you should delete from your life. Nothing good will come from or of them, they were programmed by faulty systems and are designed to long-term self-destruct and inflict maximum damage upon the "decadent" West
Can I tell you a secret?
Nobody is ever 100% for free speech. No one.
Invariably everyone who says they're for "free speech" has a point at which they feel speech should no longer be free - whether it's the classic "yelling fire in a theater" or expressing a viewpoint they feel is actually harmful. And that last bit is kind of the rub: Social media and people being siloized into echo chambers where they're repeatedly told that everything the "right" people say is 100% absolute truth and everything "they" say is dirty horrible lies.
'Free speech' is very difficult to discuss with someone from a different, let alone opposing echo chamber because it's so easy for people to fall into the belief that only their speech should be 'free', but those other peoples' speech is all dangerous and bad, which makes it hard to discuss when speech is actually harmful. It's been very, very eye opening to watch organizations all over the place twist themselves into pretzels to accommodate this.
because he's stupid, in the Bonhoffer sense
https://www.fisheaters.com/srpdf/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer-On_Stupidity.pdf
People will say that conservatives are just stupid, but I believe it's not that simple.
We use words not only to transfer the meaning or knowledge, but also in-group belonging, hopes and fears, a myriad of various stuff.
When your grandpa says that he loves free speech, it may mean that he associates himself with the group which also associates itself with this slogan. It may also mean that they are afraid of losing their 'right' to call queer folks degenerates, as if this 'right' were part of his identity or the in-group identity.
The most cruel thing you can do, is to devour the meaning from the slogan -- support it and claim your trans friends are very much keen on fighting for the freedom of speech. Don't do it if you love your grandpa. Keep arguing with him, keep pushing the fact that he's not that for the freedom of speech if you really care about him.
Also liberals let alone lefties are not free from such in-group symbolism: today it's about eating the rich, a few years ago it was about defunding the police.
Ideology always holds that validity is exclusive to within-the-ideology.
Once validity is exclusive to within-the-ideology, then rights also belong only within-the-ideology.
It's a simple mechanism, & it underlies .. pretty-much ALL ideologies/prejudices/assumption-rivers/"religions".
Race, gender, & class all are affected.
So are language, age, political-identity, etc.
_ /\ _
It's simple. Your grandpa fucks children and overcompensates for being worthless. The sooner he dies the better.