Is America having second thoughts about free speech?
theweek.com
theweek.com
As for why this is happening... well I think the media attention on extremists and online trolling seem to have led a lot of people to think 'free speech' is somehow a bad thing that helps their opponents, in the same way the war on terror caused privacy and encryption to come under fire because of 'national security concerns'. I worry that freedom of speech has become villified as something 'the bad guys' use.
But that's just my take on it.
Also, consider it not just in terms of the amplification effect of wealth, but the suppression effect of threats of violence.
The "free marketplace of ideas" assumes the participants act in good faith to offer their ideas to the public, and respect what they decide. But if you wish to call for systemic violence against groups, it has the effect of silencing them out of fear (E.g., Yiannopoulos calling for Leslie Jones to be doxxed, or the KKK marching through my old hometown to let blacks know they should be afraid).
In this case, the norm of debate is an illusion. And if you're not concerned with debating in good faith, there are no obstacles to using deceit and lies. Speech just becomes a tactic of oppression.
In this light, rather than treat individual speech as absolute, overall free speech can be maximized by not tolerating those whose speech silences others. Fundamentally, I think it's heterological. Quoting from Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies":
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
> In this light, rather than treat individual speech as absolute, overall free speech can be maximized by not tolerating those whose speech silences others.
Taken to the extreme that allows the powerful to silence anyone they choose. You can always argue "I'm offended" by your remarks, therefore you must be silent. But as we've seen (for example, claims that "it's impossible to be racist against white people" and simultaneously defining every conservative position as racist or otherwise prejudiced) the left defines this so that they can do and say anything they like, while the right is always silenced.
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
Are you prepared to defend a tolerant society against leftists whose intolerance for disagreement extends even unto violence?
And don't talk to me about violence like it's equivalent on both sides. I had the KKK try to march through my town after Trump was elected. I went to UVA and probably walked past where Heather Heyer was murdered a hundred times in school. The only killings from the left are from isolated nuts. The killings from fascists/supremacists are organized.
> Are you prepared to defend a tolerant society against leftists whose intolerance for disagreement extends even unto violence?
I'm not worried, because the left is punching Nazis and white supremacists. Ask your grandfather if you need to understand why punching Nazis rather than giving them platforms is important.
You do realize that isn't true right?
>The KKK marching through my old hometown to let blacks know they should be afraid.
That is terrible but the problem is that this is what many people thought about civil rights activists marching down their streets. Granted the people who were against the civil right marches are some of those who are marching today under a different banner but their right to march today is preferable to their right of not being offended in the 60's
>Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
The funny thing is that the tolerance paradox is what essentially killed the left, they absorbed so many authoritarian groups which essentially turned it into an authoritarian machine.
The claim that speech is always harmless is also self-evidently false. Volume of speech certainly matters. Doxxing certainly has a negative effect on the targets, despite the doxer not participating in any harassment or illegal action.
Given the history of racial violence in the United States, a black person certainly can’t assume that threats of lynching are idle ones that have no impact on their lives so long as the lynching never takes place. To claim otherwise is naive at best and betrays the extreme privilege of someone who has never been the target of violent, harassing, or reputation-destroying speech. That’s not a sin mind you - simply a lack of experience and perspective. I doubt you’d be so sanguine about it if your neighbors posted signs around your house with big bright arrows that said “child rapist lives here!”. That’s not an explicit call to violence but the courts would probably take your side (and rightly so).
For as long as the concept of “Free Speech” has existed there have been limits placed on it. Following someone around, pointing at them, and screaming “Rapist! Murder! Thief!” is illegal, will continue to be illegal, and should be illegal. The canonical example is shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater. Doing so has nothing to do with “organizing a criminal act” but is still illegal and you can and will be convicted of manslaughter if someone gets trampled to death. Are you arguing that people shouldn’t have legal culpability in such circumstances?
I didn't make that claim, although I regret trying to trim down my comment because now I can't easily quote what I really said. Indeed, it's quite disingenuous to put those words in quotes!
I claimed that it's not calling for violence that silences people, but the resulting violence itself. As a result if we just cool down the violence then no new restrictions on speech are necessary. Indeed, if the physical world is kept safe, then no speech will be scary.
You might not think we can be trusted to keep the real world safe, but then how can you expect the same imperfect society to keep speech tamped down?
We are very, VERY far from that world, so you may want to reconsider for now. If some drunkard says to your face "I'm going to beat the shit out of you!", don't you at least consider he might do it?
How does that work?
That's absolutely correct, but let's take it to its logical conclusion: entire American sub-societies with financial wealth can effectively pay to amplify viewpoints they favor, as they can better afford the shortfall that comes when their cultural values and reality don't mesh- throwing out competent people for inconvenient political viewpoints or weird kinks is not something a society that actually had to compete could afford to do (remember, the Civil Rights Acts and Sexual Revolution happened at a time when the whole country had more jobs than people to fill them).
And every society with a surplus does the same thing- for example, China can afford to (and routinely does) kill any political dissident because of its manpower surplus.
This is why everyone in America (if not the entire world) knows the opinions and values of one or two particular anti-freedom American subcultures, but not as much what Americans (as a whole, outside of one's subsociety) value. I hope the other subcultures will be smart enough to present a common pro-freedom message, but I fear they will not.
It is pretty easy to connect to the freedom of religion. The original settlements in America were of various Christian sects persecuted in England and Europe. Since they were various, they had to produce a code of peaceful coexistence. It was set in stone in the US Constitution and the 1st amendment to it: no state-enforced religion and free speech.
As of late, this setup is deteriorating, both in Europe (where it never was a sacred part), and in the US. That same (quasi-)religion that gave us "political correctness" is apparently taking over the variety of other beliefs, obviating the need of a peace pact that a free speech provision is.
Fortunately, it's not (yet) strong enough to actually repeal it, but enough to stymie it here and there, for the sake of "social peace" or "security". The latter case is something that one of the founding fathers expressly warned about: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." But people seem to deeply discount any future problems, compared to an immediate gain (in power) at hand.
Your "free market" can collapse into batshit loopy eugenics as it can a wonderful academic discourse.
Cultures require grooming like any garden.
Let me guess: you know exactly how it should be "groomed", right?
No, thank you.
When it comes to the government telling you what you can and cannot say, we need to be extremely protective of free speech.
But when it comes to what speech we allow in our social fabric, is "free speech" even a desirable ideal? Should we be able to e.g. continually insult our coworkers without expecting to be fired? Should we be able to lie about our friends and expect them to still hang out with us? No one is actually advocating we have no standard for appropriate speech; rather, they just don't like what falls outside it.
What I'm particularly concerned about in the social arena is speech being disproportionately punished. If I say something that is against the consensus, by all means push back. You can even choose to not associate with me - or attend an event I'm speaking at on campus. But to prevent that speech from occurring at all via punishments like banishment or expulsion goes too far.
Let us remember that in the 1960s, speech promoting civil rights was incredibly non-consensus and "dangerous". So too was speech in favor of gay marriage during the 1980s. "Dangerous Ideas" can sometimes lead to much needed societal change. To discover the good outcomes you also near to hear the ones that really are terrible.
[1] http://www.politifact.com/california/article/2017/sep/26/cla...
What's to conflate? Free speech as a legislative goal is primarily useful in so far as it furthers a social goal. I'm just going to quote Scott for this from now on:
>If you’re a very stupid libertarian strawman, you might ask whether that town had any anti-gay laws on the book – and, upon hearing they didn’t, say that town was “pro-gay”. If you’re not a very stupid libertarian strawman, you hopefully realize that being pro-gay isn’t about boasting how progressive your law code looks, it’s about having a society where it’s possible to be gay. Not having laws against locking up gay people is a necessary precondition, but it’s useless on its own. You only get good results if good laws are matched by good social norms.
>Likewise, the goal of being pro-free-speech isn’t to make a really liberal-sounding law code. It’s to create a society where it’s actually possible to hold dissenting opinions, where ideas really do get judged by merit rather than by who’s powerful enough to shut down whom. Having free speech laws on the books is a necessary precondition, but it’s useless in the absence of social norms that support it. If you win a million First Amendment victories in the Supreme Court, but actively work to undermine the social norms that let people say what they think in real life, you’re anti-free-speech.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal-boosting...
The article starts with an anecdote about a man making a sexist joke and a group of women signal-boosting it to try to make him unemployable. What if he'd instead made it to a group of women at his place of employment? Would the author say it's morally wrong for him to be fired or otherwise punished for it? It's certainly possible to take that position. I don't agree with it at all, but it's at least consistent.
"But that's a localized consequence," you might say, "shaming mobs want to ruin his whole life." Sure, but now we're moving the goalposts from "let people say what they think" to "let people say what they think in specific circumstances". Actually, it's even murkier than that, because in this example the punishment varies not based on the words, but the context in which they're used!
(Let's not forget that the signal-boosting feminists are also "saying what they think".)
You might also say that the term "free speech" has always included exemptions, in which case sure, I support free speech." So in that sense, we all agree: you, the author and I all think that we as a society should generally be cool with speech, unless it's Very Bad. Maybe our definitions of Very Bad vary a bit, but we agree in principle.
But what I take umbrage with is people taking the term "free speech" — knowing it's emotionally loaded — and making the bad-faith argument that whatever behavior they like is Freedom of Speech, and behavior they don't (or, commonly, shaming the behavior they like) is Oppressive. No. They're trying to shift the norms of acceptable speech to benefit them. Which is fine, but cop to it.
And these students, right or wrong, do have a leg to stand on. They attend these schools, the controversial speakers generally do not. They pay tuition to be there, while these speakers do not. These students have some sense of ownership over the institution they attend and it seems natural they would want to defend it from what they perceive as propaganda or hate speech. Where they go wrong, in my humble opinion, is when they seek to ban speakers outright instead of opposing them in other ways. I can't criticize their motivations, only their tactics.
In an ideal world I would agree. However, we are in a far from ideal world and our experiences since the Internet began show that this rarely happens in the real world.
CGP Grey did an excellent video on how the dynamics of speech tend to play out on the Internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc tl;dw: we self-segregate and our "tribes" rarely end up interacting in a meaningful manner. The consequence of that is allowing hate speech to exist in a space invites more hate speech in a self-reinforcing cycle (probably the best example of this is 4chan).
We've also seen what happens when hateful speech is banned. When reddit banned /r/fatepeoplehate the amount of anti-fat bullying on the site dropped precipitously. Does this not point the way forward on how to deal with hateful speech?
Yep, private entities should have every right to do (or not do) business with whoever they choose. One could even argue this was the intended meaning of "freedom of association" (if they wanted to get modded down in an practical display of this theory in practice if they were so inclined I suppose).
The main argument I usually see from the "pro-free speech" folks is once you give the government the power to ban "bad" speech then there's nothing stopping them from using this power against your "good" speech.
"Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils."
Galileo and Stalin are famous dead people, but most of us would rather be remembered as Galileo than Stalin.
I'm (or anybody else) am able to say what I want. You are also free to not associate or listen to me. If your feelings are hurt, stop listening.
You say stop listening if your feelings are being hurt. That's one option. I can also call you out for being insensitive to my feelings. If you can't handle that criticism, then stop airing your views in a public forum, for your own good. Freedom = responsibility. You own your words.
But at the same time, it feels there's a tendency for these things to go between criticism and into harassment, with the latter being outright encouraged by certain groups on all sides of the political spectrum.
For instance, quite a few people have seen themselves doxxed for things said on social media sites, with people going as far as to contact their employers to get them fired or attempting to get their families to disown them by tracking them down and yelling at them about their associates words. That can be for anything from attacking others online to merely saying something uncomfortable (like a joke someone disliked at a conference) to hobbies or interests that simply aren't safe for work.
Is that a fair response? Should freedom of speech have 'expose someone and attempt to destroy their career' as an allowed reaction to a comment online?
How about (in some extreme cases) trying to have them blacklisted from an industry? I've seen that before, and it's just as chilling to see it happen with someone for being politically incorrect as it was for someone being a 'communist sympathiser' back in the Cold War.
Criticism is fine, but there has to be some line between criticism and calling out and basically exiling someone from society and destroying their future chances of making a living.
>That's one option. I can also call you out for being insensitive to my feelings.
One of the things about emotionally mature people is realizing that few people really give a crap about your feelings, just your friends, coworkers, and family.
That is the point of shaming. That is the consequence, not a financial fine or jail time. You want to bring the government into the situation when you make an off-color joke at work?
Also way to generate a throwaway account to comment on a controversial topic.
And during WWI:
People have been sent to prison for abuse on twitter, but that doesn't count as voicing an opinion.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...
As this article lies behind a paywall I'll give you the choice of two regurgitated versions. You might not like the sources but if you ignore that and just look at the content you'll survive the ordeal.
RT: https://www.rt.com/uk/406467-hate-crime-twitter-troll/
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-f...
Second, no one is rationally a "free speech absolutist," which is an absurd position. For example, no one thinks their doctor has a right to lie to them, and that deliberate lies by a doctor to a patient must not be punished by the state.
Third, Christopher Hitchens summarized my own opinion when he gave this speech, and he did it far more eloquently than I ever could, so I'll just link to the speech here: