The first amendment guarantees the government will uphold this value. You are perfectly correct that private companies can throw the value of free speech in the dumpster if the CEO wakes up in a bad mood.
No, free speech (and the related freedoms of press, religion, and association) is a cultural value that says every member of society should be free to choose which ideas they will promote and which people they will associate with, applying their own values.
That absolutely includes choosing which ideas from other people they will participate in spreading, which, yes, is censorship (but not public censorship), but remains absolutely central to the ideal of free speech.
Freedom of speech is not entitlement to have others cooperate in spreading your speech.
Once a private communications provider becomes recognized as communications infrastructure, they lose the right to police content that goes through their infrastructure. For example, my ISP, even though it participates in "spreading" my ideas, has no say in the matter. If you can argue that some random wedding cake bakers are part of "critical wedding baking infrastructure and must therefore be compelled to make a gay cake," you can argue, much more easily, that Cloudflare has no business deciding what content it offers its services to.
The issue of limited discrimination protections on specified axes for public accommodations is a thorny one especially when it comes to expressive acts; there's plenty of room for debate on what axes should be protected, but a general non-discrimination rule for political ideology has never been seriously suggested, and would arguably run afoul of the first amendment.
> If you can argue that some random wedding cake bakers are part of "critical wedding baking infrastructure and must therefore be compelled to make a gay cake,"
That's not the legal basis; a specific protection from sexual orientation discrimination in public accommodations (in state law in the state in question) is.
Then I guess you're in favor of passing legislation to this extent, right?
I might equally make the point that "not overtly calling for the forcible deportation of non-whites from the US" is a cultural value.
For example, society can start firing people who make arguments against free speech. We could start banning their accounts on the internet, and refusing to serve them at restaurants.
Your freedom to support censorship doesn't mean that you are free from consequences! ;)
Yep, and at that point the only recourse you would have would be the government, right?
> Your freedom to support censorship doesn't mean that you are free from consequences! ;)
Your smugness suggests that you think this is surprising to me, rather than being my entire point. Businesses will do whatever they want, in their own self-interest. If we want them to do something else because we as a society value something like free speech, your options are to ignore it or to pass a law. If you're concerned about CloudFlare's ability to censor the internet, take it up with the government, because CloudFlare's commitment to free speech is good only as long as it makes business sense for them.
But at this point I think that it be better to just have a free market retaliatory war of "social consequences". IE, the pro censorship people get named and shamed and fired from their jobs (starting with the most extreme first)
Then the pro censorship people would try to fix the problem with laws, ect.
Edit: I had it backwards, obviously. I meant to say that most employers would find it much easier to fire a Nazi than someone who thinks Nazi's should be censored...
IE, the revolutionary leftists who have publicly stated things like "The liberals get the bullet too".
Go look up that liberal phrase. It is actually quite common, among leftists.
Radical leftist rhetoric is very violent these days, and is an interesting read. It is all about overthrowing the capitalist, imperialist "system", getting rid of civil rights, the "dictatorship of the proletariat", and killing those that are the "enemies" of leftists (which can range anywhere from literal Nazis, to "Trump Supporters",to Capitalists, to "liberals" who just support civil rights).
Finding leftists who publicly call for mass murder is really easy. I mean, just look at all the people who publicly supported that guy who shot up a bunch of republican congressmen.
> who have beliefs that are equivalent to nazi beliefs
That's an interesting equivalence you've drawn there. Which races do they believe in exterminating again? I forgot.
> publicly stated
Where?
> "The liberals get the bullet too". > Go look up that liberal phrase. It is actually quite common, among leftists.
Liberals say that liberals get the bullet too?
I had never actually heard that phrase before so I googled it. I can't seem to find anything about it from before 2017, so it seems like it got famous due to a piece of graffiti from earlier this year. While I don't doubt that there are people on the far left that say this kind of thing, I think they're pretty fringe and are more bark than bite. In reality these people actually vote for people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.
> Radical leftist rhetoric is very violent these days, and is an interesting read. It is all about overthrowing the capitalist, imperialist "system", getting rid of civil rights, the "dictatorship of the proletariat", and killing those that are the "enemies" of leftists (which can range anywhere from literal Nazis, to "Trump Supporters",to Capitalists, to "liberals" who just support civil rights).
No offense, but your exposure to "leftism" seems pretty new and based on social media. Please do share what you're reading though...
> Finding leftists who publicly call for mass murder is really easy. I mean, just look at all the people who publicly supported that guy who shot up a bunch of republican congressmen.
Do people with their real names do that on twitter (I assume you're talking about twitter)? Or just eggs, like on the far right?
What's really concerning to me is that the white nationalists and neo nazis are out without hoods or masks. They are not afraid of having their pictures taken. They think they can be weekend nazis.
I'd put it in the 10s of millions of people is the amount of people that they want exterminated.
It would include all bourgeois, petite bourgeois (ie small business owners), as well as anyone else that would oppose them in an attempted overthrowing of the capitalist system as their attempted "dictatorship of the proletariat", as well as anyone who supported the current "imperialist regime" of our capitalist system. IE, probably most police officers, soldiers, and politicians.
So yes, in terms of total number of people that they want to kill, I'd say it is about equivalent in badness to literal Nazis.
"Liberals say that liberals get the bullet too?"
Ah, see, here is the confusion. You don't spend much time listening to leftists. (Otherwise you'd get the "liberal" reference)
In communist and anarchist circles, a "liberal" is not in reference to an american leftist. They are talking about classical "liberals" as in someone who support civil rights and civil liberties, and the capitalist system. The "liberals" are the enemy.
Bernie Sanders and Corbyn are not socialists to these people. Neither is Norway, or Sweden or European social democracies. You are only a socialist if you believe in the violent confiscation of the means of production, and the overthrowing of the imperial capitalist system.
Modern day Venezuela is the kind country that they support, but they don't even think that Venezuela went far enough, and don't even think it is correct to call Venezuela socialist.
Go read reddit /r/socialism and /r/Anarchism and read the comments to understand what leftists believe.
I read them every day. It is enlightening.
No I understand I was making fun of your typo. You meant to say that "leftists say that liberals get the bullet to"
Honestly I think you go meet with some actual American socialists you'll find that they're a lot more moderate than the teenagers and shut ins who post on political subreddits. It's like turning to Twitter for an an "average American opinion." Small communities on places like Reddit and Twitter are not proxies for entire groups of people. Just like /r/The_Donald hardly actually represents all Trump supporters, just a vocal subset that gets the most attention.
More like "The first amendment purports to guarantee that the government will uphold this value."
Remember, a "first amendment" in and of itself has absolutely zero power to guarantee anything. Our government violates many of the provisions of the Constitution on a daily basis. "Free speech zones" anybody? Warrantless wiretapping? Civil asset forfeiture? Etc, etc., etc.
At the end of the day, the old line "the Constitution is just a piece of paper" really is true. It's actually down to us, "We The People" to hold our government accountable and make sure it upholds the principles we value. We can't just abdicate our responsibility and say "Oh, it's in the 1st amendment, so I'm sure they'll do the right thing."