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"The problem I have with some free speech purists is that they give me a feeling that they are persons who are more often than not unaffected by speech"

There's a mirror image problem though: people in favor of regulations on speech have little reason to fear that their speech will be limited, at least in the short term. Regulators are politically-correct, so if you are politically-correct, what's the problem? (Obviously: bad things can become politically-correct, too.)

The example I always use here as someone who grew up in the 90s is that having an openly gay character on network tv used to be extremely controversial at best and politically untenable at worst.

Except the side who are "free speech absolutists" are worried about those gay characters kissing in "She-Ra" remake or various Disney+ cartoons where men kiss, and want that stuff censored off the airs.

And then want to ban the book "Maus", etc. etc.

Maybe phony Republicans who don't actually believe what they say are. Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey are many things, but they are not that

> Elon Musk

So.... when will that guy start talking about the benefits of Free Speech in China? Particularly, the Shanghai factory that Elon Musk has been so proud of?

https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/elon-musk-tesla-boss-...

> Jack Dorsey

Same same. Twitter bends its "free speech" in China so that it can operate in that country. Its all about the money to them, they'd rather get that Chinese-money than to piss off their new overlords and actually make a racket about free-speech issues over there.

It’s always about the money when we let billionaires decide how society should operate.

Not everything fits neatly into tribal politics, especially not tribal US politics specifically. Twitter, the internet, etc are all platforms that are open to places other than the States, I don't think it makes sense to link everything about its moderation to D vs. R politics.

I consider myself somewhat of a libertarian / "classical liberal". I'm therefore something of a "free speech absolutist", have no issue with gay characters, and hate the idea of banning books. Not everyone who thinks differently than you do about free speech fits into a neat little caricature.

I'm certainly not accusing you of being a hypocrite. Largely because I don't know you.

I'm accusing my family, friends, coworkers, of being a hypocrite. Because I know them and have seen how their values have changed on this issue. They're for "free speech" and "against cancel culture" one day, and then for "banning LGBTQ+ cartoons from Netflix" the next day.

Usually, speech to children is considered separately.

I'd consider myself a libertarian free speech absolutist. I don't think anything should be banned from Netflix. I do think what teachers say in the classroom should be carefully controlled and parents should have a lot of control over what speech their children are exposed to more generally (e.g. filters on Netflix), because children almost by definition find it extremely difficult to separate truths from untruths and are much more impressionable than adults. Part of being a parent is deciding how to raise your kids and what beliefs to teach them. That's one reason totalitarian states always try so hard to indoctrinate children - it's easy, and they're a weak spot through which adults can be attacked in turn (see the sordid history of children being convinced to spy on their parents).

A big part of the fights in the USA at the moment and in culture more generally are about this sort of underhanded tactic - where one ideology that's losing the battle of ideas tries to short circuit it by indoctrinating children. Arguably that's where CRT came from. It's not a coincidence it emerged from academia, a place filled with impressionable teenagers.

>And then want to ban the book "Maus", etc. etc.

No. Maus was removed from an 8th grade curriculum list because of graphic depictions of sexuality/violence/language, but the school board sought alternative, age-appropriate works to teach about the Holocaust with (<https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2022/01/27/why-did-ten...>). To say that Maus is "banned", and not any and every other book the board decides to not include on its curriculum, is inaccurate.

> Except the side who are "free speech absolutists" are worried about those gay characters kissing in "She-Ra" remake or various Disney+ cartoons where men kiss,

Does holding freedom of speech as an ideal mean you must never dislike anything or tell anyone else that you dislike it? Is Elon giving orders to Disney+ about what they can and can't show? Is he going to ban Disney from using Twitter now because two guys kissed in a cartoon?

> and want that stuff censored off the airs.

There is indeed censorship of broadcast media but it long predates Elon or Twitter and it's done by the FCC.

> And then want to ban the book "Maus", etc. etc.

Removing a book from the curriculum and replacing it with another book that teaches pretty much the same thing is hardly "banning" it. Did students face disciplinary action or criminal charges for possessing a copy of Maus on school grounds? Did parents who bought a copy for their kids get a visit from the sheriff? Was Amazon ordered to stop selling it?

It's ridiculous. If you think about it almost all books are similarly "banned" as there are countless possible books you could have kids read and very limited time and space on the curriculum. We had the Pearson algebra textbook in high school so I guess that means the McGraw-Hill one was "banned".

Short-term isn't really that short. Witness all the tales of teachers not being able to admit to being gay in the 90s without risking getting fired, or don't ask, don't tell, which was only repealed roughly a decade ago. These speech restrictions were all being pushed by the American GOP, which is now reversing course less than a few years later as they find the cultural tides shifting away from moral majority, satanic panic type stuff that saw them banning 2 Live Crew and Judas Priest albums toward political correctness and now it's their speech being restricted. There is no good reason to think this is some permanent state of affairs and the tides won't shift back the other way again, or that it will take centuries or something. If history is any guide, it'll happen before current college students even hit middle age.

> don't ask, don't tell, which was only repealed roughly a decade ago. These speech restrictions were all being pushed by the American GOP

Wasn't DADT instituted by the Clinton administration?

And Music censoring was Tipper Gore (Al Gore's wife).

Parents’ Music Resource Center had four founders, the other one who was a wife of a federal official was Susan Baker, wife of Bush’s then-Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III.

I remember DADT as an easing of the status quo, which was at the time: we are watching & you better not.

> Wasn't DADT instituted by the Clinton administration?

“Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue” was, as official policy when implemented, a relaxation of the pre-existing hard ban on homosexuality in the military—which was a prohibition with Ask, Tell-or-face-additional-punishment-for-concealment, and Pursue any indication from any aspect of a service members personal life that might tend to suggest homosexual orientation—to a ban on public homosexual conduct.

(In practice, it tended to be much less and much less consistent of a relaxation as suggested by the official policy.)

When people are talking about the repeal of DADT, what they really are referring to is the repeal of the longstanding prohibition of homosexuality in the military, of which DADT was the last and, at least in it's overt terms the mildest, manifestation.

Also, DADT was adopted because Clinton was trying to split the baby of fulfilling his campaign promise of lifting the ban and minimizing friction with the GOP as part of a strategy to minimize risk to higher priority legislative priorities.

What you and responders have missed is the 1st Amendment is totally and entirely inapplicable to Twitter. There is a misunderstanding here of the Amendment. It only applies to federal, state, and local government actors. This is a broad category that includes not only lawmakers and elected officials, but also public schools and universities, courts, and police officers. It does not include private citizens, businesses, and organizations. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional. No other entity or group is bound by the 1st Amendment. And this is by the Founders' design, because extending the 1st Amendment to all entities and groups would in fact limit freedom.

Do you think the Hollywood blacklist was wrong?

Yes, absolutely. But it is not constitutionally resolvable.

Mucking with the Constitution, such as extending the 1st Amendment beyond restriction of government, such as suspending habeas corpus, such as fulfilling 5th Amendment requirements with secret trials, such as adding an interpretation of self-defense to the 2nd Amendment that the Founders debated and intentionally left out, is all really very dangerous because these alterations are effectively diluting our freedoms until they become unrecognizable, and it begins to look like conservative agenda to dismantle government to allow those with money and rich corporations to exploit masses of individuals without limitations.

Considering Justice Scalia's unnecessary and unsupportable and overreaching (without 2/3rds majority of Congress or the state legislatures) reinterpretation of the 2nd to include self-defense fundamentally changes the Founders intent from a selfless right to stand against tyranny to a selfish and redundant right to protect your flatscreen TV. This was nothing less than vandalism, and we are all less safe for it. It is the same with Guantanamo and the suspension of habeas. This did us no favors and reduced the rights of every citizen. It is the same thing with killing Anwar al-Awlaki (let's be clear tho, he was evil), a US citizen, without a public indictment by a Grand Jury nor a public trial, really screws everyone and is a step towards changing our world into Kafka's nightmare, and worse, because we're teetering in the edge of widespread ecosystem collapse due to the activities of big business. Once we change so much of the framework, our government will collapse, and along with it, our individual freedoms, and the slow murder of Earth will be put into overdrive. Then we'll all be dead.

So let's work out problems like the Hollywood Blacklist without mucking with the Bill of Rights.

Belief in free speech is an ideology. The US Constitution's first amendment is a restriction against the US government in passing laws restricting speech. The two are not the same thing.

Belief in free speech is a fundamental prerequisite to free thought. We express all critical thinking in words - if that speech cannot be shared, then neither can the ideas.

There is nothing more tyrannical than restricting speech, which is something the Founders recognized quite well, given their own situation with the English king as well as that of their recent ancestors fleeing their European homelands for a new, tough land half a world away - it was worth the travail/travel (same root word) for that freedom.

The Free Speech of the 1st Amendment, not only only applies to government entities, it is not absolute. Obscenity, fighting words, defamation (including libel and slander), child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, threats and solicitations to commit crimes are not protected speech. They are examples of restricted speech, and according to you, there "is nothing more tyrannical than restricting speech." Death to tyrants restricting you from producing child pornography, right? The Founders' intention of the Bill of Rights is only and only can be a restriction on what the government can and can't do in regards to an individual's freedoms. If the Founders were here today, they would insist that the 1st Amendment does not extend to limit the freedom od business or private citizens. I can censor you and you can censor me, and it is is our right and our freedom to do so. The government, and only the government, can not. This is intentional. Don't like Twitter censuring you? Start your own company that promotes your own political ideals. You are free to do so.

You will find countless quotes such as the following among the founding fathers: "The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." - Thomas Jefferson

To imagine they would see the current scenario where the government and a handful of corporations are working in cahoots to suppress expression + drive self censorship on a scale unlike anything in our history, and go "Yip, working as intended." is just disingenuous.

> is just disingenuous

I strongly disagree. And Jefferson was not talking about ochlocracy, which is itself tyrannical. You think the Founders were unaware of commerce and business during their era? Why did they then intentionally limit government with the Bill of Rights, and not also have it restrict business and private citizens? Because doing so would create less freedom and less security.

Look at the text of the Amendment:

     Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech

So you see, we don't need to extend the First Amendment to restrict corporations or private citizens, because they do not and can not make laws. Only Congress can make laws. What we have is a non-sequitor. The First Amendment, logically and rationally, can not possibly apply to companies like Twitter.

So if you do want to limit corporations with Free Speech, you can so so, that is what the Tenth Amendment is for.

Please stop assaulting the Bill of Rights with not very well thought out and fundamentally self-entitled and capricious whims. Only 2/3rd majority of Congress or of the state legislatures can change the Constitution. It is set as a high standard intentionally. Try to understand why. Because it's not about you and what you want, it is about the interests of everyone altogether and not everyone shares your shallow opinions. The Founders certainly didn't.

>> Death to tyrants restricting you from producing child pornography, right?

Did you seriously compared free speech to child pornography? Why not add murder and stealing in the mix as well, that will make your point stand out even more.

Free speech is much larger than just the first amendment (if you can believe it, some people actually live outside the USA).

It is perfectly consistent to believe in free speech, support the first amendment, and also want platforms like Twitter to allow for the free speech of it's users.

Those people know how to manage their response to speech they do not like. Should we free people of that burden, the range of permissible speech will be a small subset of speech overall.

The outcome of that is few people being able to have real conversations. Contrived, Disneyland type discourse would then be the norm.

Frankly, that would inhibit understanding one another and further limit speech.

At some point, people must weigh incoming speech and manage what they do with it or there simply will not be all that much left to be said.

Trump was a fairly average right-wing politician. Another Bush, or McCain, or Romney would have nominated the same Supreme Court Justices and had more or less identical policy.

The few times Trump went against the grain he was overruled in the House and Senate, and ultimately he peacefully transferred power to the next president despite the rioting after he lost the election. So the implicit argument that he was some kind of danger to democracy or radical force that tore up the fabric of society seems like nothing more than partisanship. At the least his actions didn't seem like a huge departure from any other politician. I remember in 2016 the exact opposite people were claiming the election was rigged and the results needed to be overturned.

> I remember in 2016 the exact opposite people were claiming the election was rigged and the results needed to be overturned.

One difference is Hillary Clinton officially conceded the morning after the election in 2016, meanwhile Trump to this day, a year and a half later, still insists he still won the 2020 election and that it was rigged.

Those people you're referring to in 2016 also didn't storm the Capitol trying to overturn the election results by physical force.

Despite this, I don't think it was the best decision to give Trump a permanent ban on Twitter, and it's probably time to let him back on. Politics is full of people saying really stupid things and denying reality, why single him out.

It only bled other people off the platform and made them seek other platforms, further dividing and segregating people into their echo chambers even more.

Hillary Clinton did not take the loss well despite the appearance, and she still uses the word stolen. Stacey Abrams seems to have a similar story. Trump sounds like a broken record and a sore loser, but the main reason I don't take him seriously at this point is that there's not much work being done to secure the next election. I don't agree with ballot harvesting, last-minute voting rule changes, or the execution with poorly-designed election machines. No one was ever proactive about this when it would have mattered though.

Trump did get shafted on his Twitter ban, and even people that didn't seem to be supporters looked at the justification and were left perplexed. It was not a statement of facts, but there was reading between the lines and assuming the worse without gathering information. Despite any accounting of what went down that day, it does seem like the response is extremely biased and lopsided. People held on vague charges of obstruction because their cell phone data showed them outside the building are still being indefinitely detained. Whether it's Trump or his so-called co-conspirators, if there was a crime, you would think the gears of justice would turn a little faster because there's plenty of motivation.

>One difference is Hillary Clinton officially conceded the morning after the election in 2016

Nope. Hillary withdrew her acceptance of the 2016 election results (<https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi...>).

So you’re saying this wanna be dictator failed with his coup attempt, so ultimately he had to "peacefully" transfer power. So there was no danger and we should move along, nothing to see here, just partisanship.

Do I need to explain what’s wrong with your reasoning?

Dorsey is magically a "Free Speech" advocate now that it doesn't affect his checkbook. Erm, yeah. (See: Twitter in China for prior reference)

I'll file his newfound respect for rights over here next to all the Trump cronies who seem to magically find respect for rights between the time they resign and their next book deal.

Women haven't lost any rights that I can think of. The US has extremely liberal abortion laws [1]. Even many liberal legal analysts believe Roe is past due to be overturned-- the US constitution says nothing about rights to terminate a pregnancy.

If anything, unborn babies may have gained the right to life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law

> if you aren't scared of what another Trump can do to your country or its societal fabric or your personal freedoms [..]

I think instead of being scared of what allowing unethical speech can bring and trying to censor it, we should work towards ensuring that there is equal and opposing points of view, hopefully with better reasoned arguments. As far as I can tell the problem is that the people which are able to put those points of view "on paper" rarely bother to do so, because arguing against someone like Trump never encounters a good faith debate, and most of the times, it's so obvious that it's so wrong. But of course that it's not obviously wrong for a vast number of people, and explicitly stating it, might help them.

Expanding on this discussion see the exchange between Peter Boghossian and Laurie Penny in one of the classics of letter.wiki: https://letter.wiki/conversation/863

"The women of his country already saw what one term of Trump did to the rights they thought they had."

I see very little connection between anything that might be deemed "unacceptable" speech by Trump and the imminent overturn of Roe. Other than the fact that he got elected.

His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS. That's not even hyperbole, their campaign tried very hard to replicate this success in 2020.

> His entire platform was "say shit to piss people off." It's what got him elected, and what allowed him to pack SCOTUS.

So now we're down to to "we should restrict the speech of people I don't agree with, which might get them elected."

Say...how did I end up on this hill, and why is it so slippery?

Look if you think being a serial liar with unimaginable power to a common person and never having to be accountable for free speech (“I can’t show you my taxes” - that’s a good one) then society is broken. The megaphone of lies convinces stupid people who have the right to vote. It’s clear they don’t have the intellect to vote responsibly, and that can be attributed to Facebook and Twitter letting any miscreant or moron ingest intellectual poison.

Merrick Garland should be on the court and if you disagree then you are arguing in bad faith.

Your assumption that everyone is so stupid that they automatically believe everything is actually quite racist and authoritarian.

You assume people can't think for themselves in any capacity so you need to protect them. That's an authoritarian mindset that needs to be removed from this country entirely.

> Look if you think being a serial liar with unimaginable power to a common person and never having to be accountable for free speech (“I can’t show you my taxes” - that’s a good one) then society is broken.

...'twas ever thus.

But seriously: nothing in my comment was specific to any particular politician. I am a free speech absolutist because I don't trust you to judge what I'm allowed to hear. For all values of "you".

The correct reaction to "omg, this person whom I hate just won the election!" is not to censor the person in some desperate, misguided attempt to prevent people from liking him. It's to offer a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas. Asserting that you can't do this because "society is broken", or similar excuses, is just a cop-out.

Yeah, it's THOSE people that are stupid - not US! Right?!

looks around nervously

> The megaphone of lies convinces stupid people who have the right to vote. It’s clear they don’t have the intellect to vote responsibly, and that can be attributed to Facebook and Twitter letting any miscreant or moron ingest intellectual poison.

So instead of letting stupid people vote, you would prefer that their vote is manipulated and therefore cast for them? You would prefer a fascist state?

OK, that's more indirect than I understood the point to be: you're saying that he used unacceptable speech to get elected, and that resulted in the imminent overturn of Roe.

I have to say that I'm very uncomfortable limiting any kind of speech on the grounds that it may get the wrong person elected.

If someone says something hateful and gets elected, that's just one of the flaws of democracy. But I haven't heard of any better system.

The U.S. has checks and balances to slow down the worst of it. I mean, given how much Trump wanted to do vs how much he actually did, it's pretty clear the system worked.

I'm pro-choice, but I also know that many people aren't, and the Constitution is certainly not clear on the point. So even though I don't want Roe overturned, it's basically the system working as designed.

Even perfect systems don't produce perfect outcomes all the time. If you have an idea for improvements to the system, I'm all ears, but limiting speech of political candidates is very likely a regression. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that could be turned against you.

> the Constitution is certainly not clear on the point. So even though I don't want Roe overturned, it's basically the system working as designed.

Anything that's not clear in the Constitution is fair game, then?

Well, judges have limited power, too, and it comes largely from the text in front of them (not entirely, but largely).

SCOTUS is not the only mechanism for preserving rights. We also have state constitutions, elected representatives, etc., and it seems like those are also (mostly) doing their part to protect bodily autonomy.

With a strong enough mandate, there could also be federal laws.

But we are in a country where not everyone agrees and the text is ambiguous, so I don't really know what you expect to happen that would be in line with democratic principles.

He didn't pack the court. He got 3 judges in 4 years because he was lucky.

* One because the elected Republicans fought to deny Obama the nomination

* One because an existing Republican judge died

* And one because a Democratic judge was selfish enough to not quit ahead despite first having cancer in 1999.

> * One because an existing Republican judge died

retired

I believe they were referring to Scalia who died.

You've missed out Kennedy (strategically retired) and counted Scalia twice (died during Obama's term.) Kennedy wasn't anything to do with "luck" and I'd dispute that Scalia was either - he could probably have died a year earlier and McConnell would still have blocked the seat.

> * One because the elected Republicans fought to deny Obama the nomination

Actually, this rule, the so-called "Biden Rule" was created by Joe Biden in 1992 in explaining his refusal to "confirm any election-year Bush nominees leaned explicitly on the different standards applicable to divided government" [1]

> Were there a vacancy, Biden argued, Bush should “not name a nominee until after the November election is completed,” and if he did, “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.” U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) [2]

> “Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself,” he continued. “Where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.” [2]

[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/history-is-on-the-sid...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-in-1992-no...

Didn't his opposition run on the same platform and still continues to run? Making his supporters the worst possible people while openly supporting domestic terrorist ideologies and organisations. And being racist and pro discrimination.

That's kind of how it works, though, innit: wannabe autocrat demagogue gets a bullhorn, uses it to leverage power via populist rhetoric, then shoves activist justices onto the bench — who, surprise, do their activist thing...

That's the "very little connection" you're missing.

"Activist" is not a charitable description of any of the justices. It is widely accepted that _Roe_ was on unstable legal grounding, at best.

Would rogue be more acceptable?

A majority can't really be "rogue" either.

Whatever one thinks of the legal grounding of the Roe decision, those criticisms pale in comparison to throwing stare decisis out the window and trying to make an enumerated-rights argument without even addressing the 9th amendment[1] in the room.

Charitable descriptions are, at this point, unmerrited.

[1]"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people"

SCOTUS hasn't used the ninth amendment much, and it wasn't the basis for Roe (though I think RBG would have preferred that it was).

I think intellectual honesty would lead most people to think that Roe had to go. The only question was: do we fix it with better reasoning (if some Constitutional basis does exist), or throw it out. Casey tried to do the former but didn't quite seem to do it. So now it's gone and left to the states.

I suspect only a few states will go extreme. And they'll have to see the consequences and try to make it work, or answer to the electorate.

Those judges were all Bushites (see their backgrounds and how they didn't help Trump steal 2020). Trump was the most pro-choice Republican in a while, he just didn't care at all about the Supreme Court and outsourced it to the very pro-life Republican establishment. If Jeb or Romney had won in 2016 this would have probably happened earlier

I'm sure he didn't care. It's not as though there is video of him...

Oh, right. There is.

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-i-will-be-appointing-pro...

Even RGB said that Roe vs Wade was on questionable constitutional grounds. Calling them activists is pretty ridiculous.

And the new decision is on even less constitutional grounds. There is nothing in the constitution that allows a state to force a woman to carry a baby. But it happens to be their preferred judicial activism, and therefore somehow not applicable.

State powers are very broad and a federal judge needs a good and specific reason to strike down a state law. See the tenth amendment.

The only way one might reasonably call the imminent opinion "activism" is based on stare decisis. And that's a debatable topic.

So in your view the government cannot make laws against abortion because the constitution doesn't say they can? If that is the case then we can't have laws against rape, assault, reckless driving, etc. The 10th amendment says any power not granted to the federal government and not banned by the constitution is left for the states.

This kind of thinking only applies to the federal government. State governments are constrained by the bill of rights.

By the way, why does no one think to ask why we got Trump?

I suggest doing that is less painful than limiting speech overall will be.

The risk of another Trump, or Trump again is serious! I fear it.

But I also question why he ran with, and a future "Trump type" would potentially run against, candidates lackluster enough to make the risk real.

Too many double negatives, I don't get your message.