Great, so then you must agree, only a complete idiot would call themselves a liberal and also believe free speech should have negative consequences.
One of the liberals I respect most, Noam Chomsky, agrees: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zwojLDxOWGA
One of the liberals I respect most, Noam Chomsky, agrees: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zwojLDxOWGA
Article 12 > No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
This is a liberal value. False accusations go against this, so would most of the US politcal tactics employed to smear and discriminate other parties. It's rampant in today's society, in fact you did just that, by trying to compare people who disagree with you as "idiots". You took attack on their reputation.
Article 23 > Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection
Wage slavery is a catchy attention seeking way of saying that this right is being breached by a lot of employers.
Article 19 > Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
This is where it gets tricky. It is your right to be allowed to tell others on social media about any information or ideas you hold. So it seem to make sense that one could tell people that their ex was abusive and a scumbag. And in turn it is fine for others to tell the ex they believe what they think of it.
But what if your ideas are an attack on someone's else honor or reputation? Are you still free to express them? Would it not then breach the other right to not have honor and reputation attacked?
Well yes, this is a dilemma. One where different people lean more on one right or the other. In the US, people lean more on the right to speech, so it tends to be free game to say whatever you want and thus internet mobs are okay.
Now what I think is that there is no real contradiction. You have the right to express yourself freely, but not to hurt someone else's reputation. So expressing lies and falsehoods to attack someone goes against that person's rights, and your right to express yourself freely is for things you believe to be truthful, or things which don't attack someone's reputation only.
That said, and I won't quote them here, other liberal values say everyone is innocent before proven guilty and have the right to a fair trial. So it would be to the person whose reputation they feel attacked to prove that the other person did in fact express lies and falsehoods to attack their reputation, and that person would need a fair trial and be treated innocent until guilty. Similarly no penal offence can be taken against someone just because there is somebody claiming they are abusive and were harassed by them, a fair trial must be held.
That leaves us with how things are exactly right now. Everyone is free to say what they want to anyone else, and everyone is free to any idea they hold of others. And for the government to interfere in any way, there'd need to be a fair trial that proves that one person's speech was a real attack on someone's reputation, and not just sharing their truths.
There are of course more complexities where speech should result in consequences, but in general, if someone says something than another otherwise unrelated person simply disagrees with, the speaker should not have their relationship with their friends, family, employer, customers, businesses they use, etc harmed. This should be enforced sometimes by law, and sometimes by culture, depending on the rights in play in the particular situation, as you outlined above.
So you do agree that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences after all.
This is exactly what people who say that also believe. They're not supporting harassment, slander or the suppression of non-harmful political speech, nor are they claiming all consequences for speech are equally valid. Rather, simply stating that there are "complexities where speech should result in consequences."
Where the two sides actually differ (when one strips away the strawmen, trolling and bad faith arguments every iteration of this conversation generates) is what speech should be considered "purely disagreeable" (which is a purely subjective term) and what consequences are valid, which can only be determined on a case by case basis, in context.
I personally believe hateful speech should have consequences, even when it isn't explicitly and immediately threatening harm on a specific individual. An employer has the right not to associate with an employee who publicly makes bigoted statements on social media which the public has associated with the company. The public has the right to oppose such speech where it exists, and to try to convince employers to take action.
An actor or public figure whose politics I disagree with can and should be publicly criticized, and their suffering some financial harm due to the public boycotting their work is a legitimate consequence of their views.
A politician, even a sitting President of the United States, who spreads lies and misinformation can be criticized, fact-checked or even banned from social media. And yes, social media platforms should have the right to determine what can and cannot appear on their platforms, and to moderate that content beyond strict legality.
All of that is clearly within the long-established and generally agreed upon boundaries of free speech and freedom of association. None of it is a carte blanche endorsement of harassment.
We may disagree about the details, or be in violent agreement, but everyone is drawing a line in the sand somewhere.
So you think it's perfectly acceptable to attack an individuals livelihood because you disagree with them? The political climate in the US is split pretty evenly at the moment, so in your view we would have no actors or public figures expressing a political opinion. No matter what the opinion is there would be individuals, like yourself, who disagree with it and therefore the speaker should be cancelled. If everyone felt that way then nobody would be allowed to say anything because all expression would lead to cancellation. This goes completely against freedom of the individual as well as freedom of speech. It is a direct slide into authoritarianism and is diametrically opposed to liberalism. OP is correct you are not a liberal you are an authoritarian.
1. Someone loses popularity and thus their business suffers from it.
This is totally fine. I'm free not to purchase your books, music, products, services, etc. even if simply because I disagree with you on some things.
2. Someone is fired because people disagree with their ideas or thoughts.
Now this can be wrong and it can also be alright:
2.1 Someone expressed an opinion which respected other people's rights, but where a lot of people disagreed with. E.g.: I think we should invest heavily in the military to defend our borders.
In this case, this is not acceptable grounds to fire them. People have the right to hold and express their ideas freely without repercussions.
2.2 Someone expressed an opinion aimed at the destruction of other people's rights. E.g.: Black people should not be given equal treatment under the law. Women are not fit to work. White people deserve to rule over others.
In this case it is acceptable to fire them, because they attacked other people's rights, and that deserves consequences. BUT not without a fair trial. You still owe a fair trial to prove that they indeed engaged in activities aimed at the destruction of other people's rights. So in this case the person being fired should choose to sue if this happens.
> I personally believe hateful speech should have consequences, even when it isn't explicitly and immediately threatening harm on a specific individual
My problem with that is it makes large swaths of modern left politics uncriticizable, since any criticism of those politics will be construed as hate. Right wing politics were also once uncriticizable, in the "war on christmas" days, but that has since faded.
Except it doesn't, because people criticize the modern left all the time, to the point that "the left" (or now the "woke left") has become a pejorative on its own. On Hacker News dunking on the left is practically a sport. And as far as hate goes, everything "the left" says, does and believes gets construed as hate as well.
But that's not a free speech issue, that's just a speech issue. Criticizing politics is criticizing people and their identity and worldview. People will inevitably take such criticism personally.
If you agree with the ideas of liberalism, by definition that would make you a liberal, but from the way you talked about "liberals", it sounded like you excluded yourself from that group, which would mean you disagree at least partly with the ideas of liberalism.
Sorry if I was wrong, you consider yourself a liberal then?
> they should believe purely disagreeable speech should not have consequences
You have the right to be disagreeable, but others have the right to hold ideas and opinions of you and tell others about them too, unless as a direct attempt to discredit you. I think the confusion here is because the word "consequence" is too vague.
If you're a disagreeable person, and no one wants to hangout with you or be your friend anymore as a result of finding you obnoxious. Well ya that's in everyone's rights, nobody is obligated to like you.
But you have rights too, the right to dignity, a livable wage, to your reputation, etc. And so this is where there can't be consequences that would breach your own rights, which are universal to all, even obnoxious disagreeable people have them, so do gays, trans, women, blacks, asian, muslims, etc.
So what you have to do is show that your rights have been violated, and now you have a case.
If you get fired for something you are accused of which is false, I'm pretty sure you do have a case and can go to court, prove it was false and thus slender, and you'll get your job back, and penal offence can be taken to the lier.
> This should be enforced sometimes by law, and sometimes by culture, depending on the rights in play in the particular situation, as you outlined above.
Now I think you're bringing another dimension. If people don't like Joe, and they get fired on ground that he's obnoxious, despicable, repulsive, make others feel unsafe, etc. Does that go against Joe's rights?
This is a tricky one. The first issue is what do we mean by disagreeable? Because that could mean that Joe is breaching other people's rights.
Article 30 > Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein
See, Joe doesn't have the right to engage in activities aimed at the destruction of any of the other rights. And this supersedes his rights as well. So he has the right to speech, but to not speak against other people's rights.
So now if by "disagreeable", we mean that Joe is actively taking part in propagating the idea that women are not fit to work and should instead be housewives. Well based on Article 30, Joe doesn't have the right to say that and he's infringing on women's rights, and so consequences can very well apply, even losing his job.
Now if by disagreeable we mean that Joe is simply someone who is always the devil advocate, or who is ackward socially, etc. Well ya then it be a pretty big violation to fire Joe purely on those grounds.
Now also, Joe doesn't have the right to "keep his job no matter what", but he has the right "to protection against unemployment", and to "economic indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality".
So in theory, it's fine to fire Joe just because he's an asshole, but he should still be given protection against unemployment and provided with ways to have economic prosperity required to keep his dignity and develop his full personality.
So you see, you cannot discriminate against other people's rights, because others have rights that protects against discrimination, but you are allowed to discriminate against someone who is actively engaging in discrimination. This is perfectly consistent. But dont get me wrong, there should still be a fair trial, you're innocent until proven guilty, and until it's been shown that you were discriminating yourself, you shouldn't be discriminated against.
But most courts have failed to look into such issues and to hold trials and all that related to these issues. So it has entered the social sphere instead, unfortunately, and now everyone is trying to pretend like they are being discriminated against left and right in order to justify their own discrimination of others. It's a shame really.
Part of liberalism is accepting your own flaws and failures. Go and get another job.