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Comment by tomlockwood | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that certain people fixate on free speech because they have the luxury to be able to. It's like once they've progressed past a certain level of Maslow's hierarchy they forget about the previous levels.

First step of the free speech agenda: Breathe.

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No, people fixate on free speech because no other right even makes sense if you don't have free expression. It's the foundation for our democratic society.

Eh, countries like Germany seem to have managed OK with banning nazi symbols - it hasn't proven to be a slippery slope leading to a ban on criticising the government, or anything like that.

It didn't work the first time[1]:

> Researching my book, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic. I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate.

and some are saying it's not working now[2]:

> For the Michalskis, all this was evidence that German society never truly reckoned with anti-Semitism after the war. Germany had restored synagogues and built memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, Wenzel said: “So for a lot of mainstream, middle-class people, that means: ‘We’ve done it. We dealt with anti-Semitism.’ But nobody really dealt with it within the families. The big, the hard, the painful questions were never asked.” In Wenzel’s view, the Muslim students who tormented his child were acting in an environment that was already suffused with native anti-Semitism. “A lot of conservative politicians now say, ‘Oh, the Muslims are importing their anti-Semitism to our wonderful, anti-anti-Semitic culture,’ ” he said. “That’s bull. They’re trying to politicize this.”

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/magazine/anti-semitism-ge...

Germany has strong protections for individual freedoms and privacy in their constitution, precisely to avoid an illiberal government from arising ever again. The Nazi ban is effectively the lone exception to the rule.

This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable. The US constitution enshrines the rights of individuals over government, in a way that no European country can match (as far as I know).

> This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable.

Not to be inflammatory, but North American police generally gets away with a degree of murder that Europeans find inconceivable.

Stop the straw man please. No one is going around killing citizens. Something like nine unarmed people per year are killed by US police out of 10 million interactions.

From 2015 to 2020Q1, 753 unarmed people were killed by US police for an average of about 145/year or approximately one every 60 hours / 2.5 days.

Key quote: "The victims were unarmed in 1 in 6 (753;16%) fatal shootings."

https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/fatal-police-shootings-...

For balance, this 2018 gives lower numbers - hovering around 60ish per year. Although that is still significantly higher than 9.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-s...

Nice statistic, but killings by police are 28 per million in the states versus 1.3 in Germany/France:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...

That's total deaths caused by police. It would obviously be higher in the US because the criminals are more likely to have and use guns, policemen in the US just can't afford the peaceful approaches most policemen in Europe can. That doesn't mean they get away with more.

The jailing and fining of holocaust deniers is pretty slippery, I'd say.

No, without existence, there can be no democracy or democratic representation. Being allowed to exist is the most fundamental right.

If you don't exist you don't have rights to defend. Did you mean the right to life, as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

That's precisely my point. Food, water, shelter, air, and good health, are all required before one can begin to pursue the right to free speech.

No, those life essentials are not required _before_ getting the right to freedom-of-speech. Indeed, freedom of speech may be essential to discussing how to arrange a society to enable the procurement of those things. Holding off freedom of speech until "basic needs" are met is, to me, a way to guarantee that a tyrant in a poor country stays in power.

Ultimately, those life necessities must be provided by oneself or by someone else, or some combination. Freedom of speech can allow for the best ways of providing these things to be selected. The alternative is that only the prevailing view is considered or approved, often leading to much worse provision of these necessities, including starvation (feudal systems, communism, warlords, etc.).

You can speak without air?

Free speech was guaranteed by the US Constitution in a time where the US was a poor backwater still relying on subsistence farming.

Or perhaps they come from a place where speech can get you jailed, and unlike you know what it is like to have no constitutional right to free speech? Perhaps they know the value of what you seem so eager to give up, because unlike you they've lived without it?

There are literally places in the world right now where wearing the wrong t-shirt color outside (Thailand, Belarus) Can get you jailed, tortured, or possibly killed.

All the people that come from a place where speech can get you jailed, can only come because they are alive. There's a certain element of survivorship bias there.

So by your logic, as long as at least one murderer in the world exists, we are not allowed to discuss any other topic, liberty, or important subject?

The ACLU still has free speech lawyers, and I supported the ACLU to the tune of 1k last year. But logically it follows that supporting the right of African Americans to survive encounters with police, or for Transgender people to have healthcare, increases the amount of free speech in the world by ensuring their voices can speak in it. A decrease in the survival of people is necessarily a decrease in free speech.

The right of people not engaged in violence to survive police encounters is a natural/inalienable right and a right to healthcare are not similar classes of rights. The former is a "negative right", or liberty, from harm by others (the police), whereas the latter is a "positive right", or entitlement/privilege, to goods & services provided by others.

The Bill of Rights was primarily all about liberties / negative rights, whereas since the 20th century people have started talking about entitlements as rights, when they're not, because that entitlements ultimately must be provided by others (primarily through taxes, but also in constraints/mandates on the behavior of others, e.g., limitations on striking by police or other services, the requirement to register in the draft / Selective Service for men, & eminent domain). Government entitlements typically involve the involuntary actions and compelled behavior of people.

Or maybe they don't have the luxury of ignoring free speech, that others take for granted.

Claiming a stance is a result of "luxury" is not the shortcut to win a debate that you imagine it to be.

What is a more basic right:

1) Life

2) Free speech

Which one do you feel precedes the other?

Without free speech, I can be killed, and you'll never know it happened. Even if I in theory had a right to life.

In that sense all other rights depend of free speech.

I can perceive a death without being told about it.

The deaths we see directly are overwhelmingly outnumbered by those we learn about second-hand.

> Without free speech, I can be killed, and you'll never know it happened. Even if I in theory had a right to life.

> In that sense all other rights depend of free speech.

That's not true.

Ok, I'll play your game. Political enemies (in China, the USSR, other historic Eastern European states, Turkey.. maybe you'd prefer MLK as an example) are denied the right to life on the basis of their speech.

So if they fight for the right to not be sent to gulags (from which many did not return) on the basis of speech, you consider this an expression of "luxury"?

And do you think free speech might help fighting for their right to life? For example would BLM find fighting to end police killings of Black people easier, or harder, if they could be jailed for their advocacy?

Are you playing my "game"? My question is pretty simple: what's a more fundamental right, life, or speech? Which one would you select if you could only select one? Which one is it possible to have without the other?

You simply cannot exercise free speech without life, you cannot fight for free speech if you are not alive. Free speech is totally dependent on existence.

Both are inalienable and therefore not granted to me by anyone. I have them by default. However, I would easily choose to risk my life to defend my right to speak.

Ok, but your existence precedes both your ability to speak and your ability to fight for your right to speak. Inalienable or no, both rights can be taken from you, but only one is a requirement for you to have the other. Existence is therefore a fundamental requirement for freedom of speech to exist. People who don't exist can neither speak nor fight for the right to speak.

You asked which would one select. I choose the right to exist with my rights intact. Personally, I feel that the alternative isn't life or an existence worth living.

By choosing to "exist with your rights intact" you're choosing both, so you haven't answered the question. Which would you prefer if you could only have one: Life, or Freedom of Speech?

Could you explain to me how you'd exercise freedom of speech, while dead?

Both or none. Death.

Are you being pedantic to win an internet debate or really trying to understand other perspectives?

Edit: The thing you keep missing though is that one cannot choose. I have the right by default. I can choose not to exercise my rights, but by living I have the right to speech.

If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.

> If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.

Exactly. I would not fight _for_ my right, but to protect the rights I already have. In the US, thats why articles in the bill of rights are phrased as they are. The first amendment doesn't say, "congress grants the right speak freely." Instead it is -- congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech. This is because I have the right already and the amendment is there to protect it.

Edit: typos, grammar, and clarification

Ok, would you be able to protect your right to free speech if you were dead? Is being alive a requirement for protecting your right to free speech?

This is an intentionally antagonistic line of questioning. The answer has been given clearly. Freedom of speech is equally important as freedom of life. To put it bluntly, you'll have to kill me to silence me.

I'm exercising my ability to speak freely, and it would be impossible for me to be here, speaking, if I was dead. However, it would be possible for me to live without freedom of speech. To put it bluntly, without life, my freedom of speech is useless. Being alive gives me the ability to exercise my right to live, and my right to speak freely. Its two rights for the price of one! Clearly a better deal!

The question is simple but inane, and implies losing the right to speech cannot be life-threatening. Then once conditions progress and the right to life is directly under attack, there is "no one allowed to speak for you".

It doesn't imply that at all.

History shows us it does. The people who used to run the ACLU were very well aware of that.

> What's a more fundamental right, life, or speech?

Could you help me understand how "history shows us" that this question implies that the loss of free speech can't be a threat to life?

Sure. Nobody dared speak up against the Holocaust. (Those that did were sent to a labor camp or had their heads sliced off.) Lack of free speech meant the Nazis could (and did) kill anyone for any reason with complete impunity. There was no right to life under Hitler.

The first thing dictators do is remove free speech. This is what enables removing all the other rights at the dictator's whim, because then nobody can speak out against it. Nobody can even inform others about it. This is why totalitarian regimes so aggressively suppress free speech.

The Soviet Union collapsed soon after Gorbachev stopped repressing free speech (glasnost and peristroika). This is not a coincidence.

Still not sure how the question implied that the loss of the right to free speech can't threaten life.

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