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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I think you're making White's point for him. You're implying that free speech should be at least as important as other people's feelings. He agrees. Which is why appeals for a new norm of shutting up critics is so problematic. This is what he's talking about with his "First Speaker Problem" thing: the "free speech" you're alluding to is virtually always a response to someone else's speech. How do you coherently isolate the speech that must be protected --- the supposed "first speaker" --- from the speech that shouldn't (critics of that first speaker)?

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It's funny to see all the shifts on this. 18 USC 1001 was "chickensh-t" that they wouldn't pull back in his day to Ken... at least until it wasn't. We talked about chilling effects and heckler's vetoes, but now they're well-deserved social sanctions?

I've been reading him for probably a decade now, so it's hard not to notice how things change whenever the shoe is on the other foot.

I think White has been pretty consistent about 18 USC 1001 being chickenshit, even when it applied to Trump employees. It's important to distinguish between normative and positive arguments; whenever White talks about 18 USC 1001, he's making positive claims. If you're, for instance, talking about the All The Presidents lawyers podcast, he was there to handicap what was actually going to happen in cases against the Trump administration. He wasn't running the prosecution.

And, when he does, he virtually always points out how that statute is more often used to harass people we find sympathetic, even when it's being aimed at e.g. Trump's former lawyer.

(18 USC 1001 for non-Pope-Heads is the statute that criminalizes lying to the FBI).

I watched that podcast and didn't see it. Given that it was a prosecution over a difference of opinion over what constitutes discussion of "sanctions" in a call they had a recording of, with only an FD-302 for evidence of what was said, where the only copy was from months after the fact.

I don't know that I listened to every podcast, so you an point out a quote if there was one, but I sure don't remember anything like the word "chickensh-t" coming up. Instead, there were a lot of longwinded debates over who had the better substantive argument for how long a prosecution that was dismissed could be maintained by the court.

Which seems patently absurd given that they are violating separation of powers there. But it's political, so concerns about a judge playing prosecutor were simply tossed out the window? What was the end result of that supposed to be, anyway? A criminal referral... to the people dropping the case?

Those seem like awfully big concerns to sweep away in a mealy-mouthed discussion of substantive factors where he honestly didn't sound like he was taking a side.

And I'm pretty sure we've both been listening to him for a long time, since I sorta think it was one of your comments a really long time ago that made me start reading his stuff. Do you really not see any changes?

I'd say his tone started changing about the time he had that feud and split with his former friend Clark.

Which podcast in particular? It ran for 3 years, and 18 USC 1001 was a recurring character.

I don't think discussing Clark is going to do any favors for your arguments.

Not going to defend Clark here, just using that as a point of time reference and possible explanation for the notes of bitterness, since that was an ugly feud for former friends.

I was thinking of All the President's Lawyers in particular during the end of the trial (e.g. between dismissal & pardon).

What feud? He was removed from a moribund group blog, and then spent the next several years launching attacks on White's mental health and the propriety of his having adopted children from Asia. Are we sure any of us are better off digging into this? I think we're not.

That... sounds a lot like feuding to me, but whatever. I'm not going to defend Clark.

It's extremely hard for me to imagine how anyone who's read or listened to a lot of Ken's commentary could walk away thinking that he was suddenly in favor of 18 USC 1001 just because of the existence of the Trump administration. He regularly criticizes the statute.

I don't know, I really just don't see it.

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Also, quick sidenote on the heckler's veto:

> We talked about chilling effects and heckler's vetoes, but now they're well-deserved social sanctions?

https://nitter.42l.fr/Popehat/status/1504505701401448467#m

The heckler's veto isn't really the right term to use when talking about cancel culture or shouting down speakers. The heckler's veto is more about the government shutting down speech under the assumption that it might cause a riot or disruption in the future.

But for whatever it's worth, Ken also regularly criticizes shouting down speakers in public forums. I really just don't see this change in his opinion that you're talking about.

Oh, he hates the statute normally. He just failed to even express mild criticism of it when it was abused and he was discussing the trial, which stood out when he was literally discussing the merits of a trial centered on one. Maybe he made up for it on some episode I didn't listen to, there are a lot of them and there's no way I heard them all, but I was kinda surprised to see him fail to mention a hobby horse of his in a discussion of a trial centered on said hobby horse.

> The heckler's veto isn't really the right term to use when talking about cancel culture or shouting down speakers. The heckler's veto is more about the government shutting down speech under the assumption that it might cause a riot or disruption in the future.

You say that as if nothing got shut down or forced to pay huge security fees due to other people being moved to violence against the speakers, but there were and have been lawsuits over the same. One of which I think even involved Clark, though I didn't follow that particularly closely.

> He just failed to even express mild criticism of it when it was abused and he was discussing the trial

I don't know if I need to dig through however many X podcasts exist here to find examples, but for whatever it's worth I know that Ken criticized criminalization of lying to the FBI during the Trump investigation. You can believe me or not about that, short of digging through a bunch of transcripts I'm not sure what else to say about it other than I didn't notice the silence you're talking about.

> You say that as if nothing got shut down or forced to pay huge security fees due to other people being moved to violence against the speakers, but there were and have been lawsuits over the same.

Ah, first of all there's a difference between private companies doing this and public forums doing this. Not to say that it's never a bad thing if private forums do this, but it's not a heckler's veto in the legal sense. Second of all, it's still improper to characterize things like shouting down a speaker as a heckler's veto, because regardless of whether or not public forums violate that standard and are guilty of allowing a heckler's veto, it's still the case that actual heckling is not a heckler's veto.

But regardless, this is something that Ken criticizes regularly, so I just don't get what the point is. I have seen Ken criticize shouting down speakers and threatening them even when he doesn't like the speakers.

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Edit: Okay, I did do a real quick 3-minute search online and not only do I see multiple instances of Popehat criticizing 18 USC 1001, I also see multiple instances of Left-leaning readers accusing him of being too critical of the statute when it's applied to Conservatives (https://nitter.42l.fr/Popehat/status/966388695505952768#m). Again, take from that whatever you'd like. I even (since you brought up the word) found a pretty recent example of him literally calling it chickenshit (https://nitter.42l.fr/Popehat/status/1486410486258102273#m)

A) Criticizing an idea so that others understand how it is flawed.

B) "Criticizing" an idea to get it expunged from various media to manipulate what ideas people are exposed to.

If you even pretend that there is no difference between A and B, you're not worth intellectually engaging with.

Sure, but the point here is that the NYT is engaging in B.

Then you shouldn't have any problem with what Ken White is saying here, because he makes that distinction at great length.

I don't need someone gaslighting me about an article that I've just read. Here is what it says:

"The Times also errs by utterly failing to grapple with the problem that “cancelling” represents free speech and free association."

It's a strawman conundrum that White constructs all on his own. It might seem very clever to people who think freedom of speech is some kind of mechanistic rule to puzzle over. Not clever at all when one considers the reason why it became a value for modern societies.

Not only White conflates the two behaviors I mentioned in my post above, he reinforces the confusion by equivocating a riot at Berkley with ridiculing someone.

It's a norm not a law.

Be open to a broad array of viewpoints and opinions, as a general rule. It makes you a better human being.

It's an aspirational norm, but it's nobody's practiced norm; virtually everybody has lines they draw. So what does it tell us that we can aspire to having that norm? I'd argue: not much.

The extent to which a society aspires to this norm has a great effect on the extent to which that society flourishes and prospers.

Then we've clearly flourished throughout the 20th century in spit of it and not because of it.

You are saying we shouldn't be open? That will surely lead to never ending conflict.

I can't even figure out how to connect your response to what I wrote, so I can't possibly do any good by trying to reply to it.

The thread is about the norm "be open". Seems like you're saying society flourished in spite of having that norm.

I'm saying that society hasn't consistently had that norm, and flourished anyways, so the supposed norm is probably not as causative as it's being made out to be.

The countries that better practiced this norm in the 20th century flourished more than those who practiced it less.

Really? China? Thailand? Singapore? I feel bad being argumentative, but I think what you're saying actually isn't true.

My opinion is that Joe Dingleberry* should shut up, because I've already heard his opinion and find it uninteresting. Are you open to my opinion, or just Joe's?

* name changed to protect the uninteresting

It’s always criticism about speech that parrots Republican talking points that rises to the level of cancel culture, not that people are fired for discussing worker power.

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