Free Speech Is in Trouble
natesilver.net
natesilver.net
Free speech isn't about flinging the door open to everyone. It's about not incarcerating them, and not preventing them from speaking at all.
In my opinion, the people who blast "cancel culture" are often the people who tacitly assume that they are welcome everywhere by default. That's not anyone's right. And you don't infringe on someone's right to say what they want just because you won't sell them a megaphone.
What we're seeing is a young generation of left-leaning people who are motivated to shift the Overton window back from the cliff, because they no longer assume (as older generations have) that adults can wield a megaphone responsibly.
And if you hurt someone with a megaphone, you should expect to lose it.
In other words, a megaphone is just like every other thing on the planet.
The thing that remains the most common thing to do is to petition an established platform with an established reputation to lend you one of theirs, eg. by applying for a job at a media network of some kind, or creating an account under the terms of service of a platform.
Another way is to build your own megaphone that only requires abiding by the much looser terms of service of an ISP or the email providers of subscribers or even just the mail system, but these require building your own audience from scratch.
And yes, the uber-wealthy can just buy a megaphone outright, which is definitely lame.
Most people will fail to acquire a megaphone in any of these ways, which is not surprising. It would be (is...) way too noisy with everyone having a megaphone screaming at one another, trying to be heard above the cacophony.
The better question is: why do you feel it's okay for me to force you to listen to my megaphone?
But if we're in public, especially at a place which ostensibly exists for the purpose of exchanging ideas, then I will begin by assuming that you are trying to make some kind of point, and that you judged that this point is important enough to overcome the embarrassment of shouting through a megaphone to an audience that on average preferred you didn't.
Karl Popper coind the term »paradox of intolerance«. A free society has (in order to remain free) to be intolerant towards intolerant people, otherwise those intolerant people will use the tolerance you give them to abolish the free society and therefore all tolerance.
So e.g. I would not give my megaphone to any faction that issues death threats to all their political enemies, especially not if their political enemies are chosen by culture, gender, race, political stance alone.
This in my eyes is not only a reasonable stance to take, but one that anybody who knows about the history of democracy around the world will find reasonable as well.
No I can assure you that the enemies of the free society also wouldn't give their megaphone to anybody. They just won't be honest about why. They will make up reasons why it is always the person of color, the women, the kid, the gay person, etc. whose books they need to burn.
So maybe as a liberal European I don't understand the whole US freedom of speech thing, but if one side decidesnot to give the megaphone to a screaming hateful holocaust denier and the other side literally sweeps school libraries to BURN BOOKS I don't have a hard time deciding which side is worse.
You have the right to publish almost whatever you want.
But nobody is required to give you a platform. Whether that platform is a social media site or a stage and a microphone.
Now maybe you can draw the conclusion yourself why supporting and showcasing opinions that threaten said democratic free order don't have to be supported by the public. If the public does support that, it is merely a courtesy or a misunderstood idea of tolerance.
But collectively as a society we live under a set of rules and are given a set of freedoms, all of which you can like or scoff at. But what you cannot do is demand the freedoms to then spout opinions about abolishing the very freedoms that enabled you to speak. No free society for example has to support the spread of the ideas of the likes of ISIS. In fact there have been multiple nations that even went into armed conflicts precisely on those grounds (if we ignore other geopolitical interests for a moment). That being said, what if in the West there was something akin to ISIS? Should we invest our public money into having their speech amplified? Just because their speech needs to be heard?
Did US colleges bring in a lot of Pro-vietnam speakers?
If you want a marketplace of ideas, you have to be willing to accept that the market sometimes rejects ideas, good or not, for the right reasons or not.
Any market can warp, for any length of time. That's like a fundamental flaw of markets. In financial markets we try to regulate away the negative and flawed parts of market theory, occasionally succeeding. Should we regulate the free marketplace of ideas?
Free speech doesn't mean everyone listens to you. Free speech means the government doesn't put you in jail for saying something.
There's this weird claim that you can somehow define "free speech" to be more applicable than just limiting government, but if you limit my right to react to speech in any way, how is that freedom? If I react by never associating with you ever again, and telling all my friends that you are an asshole, and should be avoided at all costs, and they listen and tell their friends because they trust my opinion, and on and on until nobody likes you and nobody wants to listen to your speech, who's rights were violated?
"Freedom of speech" should not mean "I owe you attention"
The article is mainly about speakers on campuses. No one is forcing you to attend a speech. The issue is that people show up anyway to try and shut it down. That is a problem.
I am struggling to understand who is forcing anyone to listen to anything?
Can you give an example?
But today, many of the most intolerant people out there are loudly proclaiming their tolerance. And because their intolerance comes clothed in rhetoric about their tolerance, they are blind to the fact of their own intolerance. And so we get people like the guy in Los Angeles a few days ago where a guy kicked his way into a Jewish family's home while yelling, "Kill the Jews," and, "Brown people matter!"
I therefore am left wondering whether I agree with you. Do we agree on which speech is intolerant speech? It's no longer something that I can just take for granted these days.
Some people will choose “tolerance” as a convenient cover for objectively bad behavior, but a good number of popular “cancelation” calls are reasonably motivated when you look at them on a case-by-case basis. You’ll likely not agree with all of them, but there’s at least sensible reasoning behind them. Especially in examples like college campus speakers, where an invite for a speaker can be seen as the institution’s endorsement of the speaker’s belief.
I think we should question why people would associate a university with every guest speaker and everything they say as being authoritative statements of the university and their staff.
So when a speaker is invited who is, for example, blatantly hostile to the advertised mission of the university, it raises eyebrows. And it paints a contradictory pictures that devalues the university itself. Or worse, if the message is blatantly hostile to a subset of students, it could discourage some people from even wanting to attend!
People work hard to get accepted to universities which they respect, and they have a vested interest in maintaining their university’s respect in the public eye.
I can see from your point several value loaded points where students will disagree with each other. The advertised mission of the university being one of them, as people often argue what the point of university training is and how much of education is learning things, research, and social networking. Then there is things like the student theater, which are often not just blatantly hostile to a subset of students and very much discourage some people from wanting to attend to social events. Then we have fraternities and sororities which activity often paints a unfavorable pictures of university life, even going so far as being occasionally borderline criminal in their activities.
What should be a appropriate response to students who disagree on how the university experience should be?
But from what I see, the cancel culture crowd mostly is the problem. Usually only one side is advocating against free speech, and it isn't generally the controversial speaker.
As for the controversial speakers, invites for speakers historically were not seen that way. They were seen as the university fulfilling its mission to give students the opportunity to encounter a wide variety of views. Furthermore that case demonstrates the problem. The financial problem for universities is that controversial speakers require security. And they require security because of the real threat of a radical mob of students causing physical harm. I'm going to go with the people who are actually trying to keep people from speaking here is the mob who is willing to support using violence to do so.
I don't agree with the statement, but if someone agrees with that because they believe that life begins at conception and a fetus should have the same rights as a post-birth human: could you explain the intolerance there?
Some would argue it is.
Could you explain who is responsible for deciding which views are considered intolerant, so that we know which speech we should not tolerate?
For starters, how about "people who aren't enrolled or employed at a private organization have no standing to demand access to the private organizations resources for amplifying their speech"? We can take a head count of people who are against this idea by having them publicly sign a petition demanding for support for a pro-choice speaking tour kicking off at Liberty University with stops in Notre Dame and BYU.
In addition to that, the implementations tend to be misogynistic, racist, and/or classist.
Is that not the case for many laws and cultural norms? Why is public nudity, or even public sex, illegal (in most/many places) if not religious beliefs?
Do you think people should be allowed to have sex in public? If not, are you not being intolerant and forcing your religious and cultural beliefs upon others?
But even setting that aside, most anti-abortion advocates "give the game away" by also advocating against contraception. Their primary concern is not "murder", it's sex.
For the public sex example you raise, we have plenty of evidence and experience that shows the further you get away from adults doing consensual sexual things either alone or around other consenting adults, the more likely it is that someone may be psychologically harmed. Getting the consent of everyone in a public setting is pretty hard.
Aside from religious folk, most people don't have a problem with strip clubs, sex clubs, sex parties, nude beaches, etc where a bunch of consenting adults are naked and/or behaving sexually around other consenting adults.
So no, I don't think people should be allowed to have sex in public, and it is not based in religious or cultural belief. It's based on evidence that non-consensual sexual situations (including observing someone else's sexual behavior) causes harm, and that it violates others' right to not consent to the sexual situation.
How is that belief "intolerant," except that you strongly disagree with it? Maybe you highly value the ability to kill unborn children, and they highly value the ability to stop that.
It's just a difference in values, no one is right or wrong. The whole point of speech is to discuss these competing values!
Some are against it in all cases, others argue that violating other people's right to life means you forfeit your own. (Personally I'm unsure)
> Sex education and access to contracepion
Pretty low-salience issue for most of them. Many believe premarital sex is wrong, no strong opinions beyond that. I've never known any of them to argue against condoms, for example.
> robust social safety net
They tend to be skeptical of massive government welfare programs, but they are not Ayn Randists to any extent. All recognize that a culture of life needs to support mothers and their children at every step; many volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers to help with that.
Can you give examples of what you are talking about?
>“She was denied an abortion in Texas - then she almost died”
”Doctors told her she had cervical insufficiency, which is a weakening of the cervical tissue that causes premature dilation, and that her unborn daughter would not survive. She and her husband were devastated. "She was a baby that we desperately, desperately wanted," she said.
A standard course of medical treatment for an unviable pregnancy at that stage of development is to terminate, and extract the foetus. Waiting to miscarry naturally can put the mother at risk for infection, which can prove fatal. But doctors told her they couldn't terminate her pregnancy, as under the state's laws, it was a crime to perform an abortion when there was a foetal heartbeat, unless the mother's life was threatened. Essentially, the message was that she was not sick enough yet to legally justify an abortion. Three days later, Amanda developed a life-threatening infection and went into septic shock.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65935189.amp
>“Texas abortion law means woman has to continue pregnancy despite fatal anomaly”
“At her 20-week ultrasound appointment, Beaton said her physician discovered the fetus had a rare, severe anomaly -- called alobar holoprosencephaly -- in which the fetus's brain does not develop into two hemispheres as it normally would, and the major structures of the brain remain fused in the middle.
The brain splitting into two hemispheres is a "critical stage in the development" and can impact the development of the nose, mouth and throat, Dr. Katie McHugh, an Indiana OB-GYN and abortion provider, told ABC News. The condition can result in a very painful life and death for the fetus, McHugh said.
Beaton said her physicians told her the baby could survive out of the womb for a couple of weeks, at most, in the event that the pregnancy ends in a live birth. Rouse agreed with this assessment, pointing to what she said is a lack of development of normal brain tissue and empty fluid filling the head.
"This anomaly is typically lethal for most infants within days to weeks," Rouse said.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-abortion-law-means-woman-con...
>“8 women join suit against Texas over abortion bans, claim their lives were put in danger”
“The suit alleged that Texas' abortion bans have denied the plaintiffs and countless other pregnant people necessary and potentially life-saving medical care because physicians in the state fear liability, according to a draft of the complaint shared with ABC News.
Texas has several abortion laws in place, prohibiting all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, except in medical emergencies, which the laws do not define. One of the bans -- called SB 8 -- prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is detected, which kept several plaintiffs from accessing care despite their pregnancies being nonviable, according to a draft of the suit.
Under Texas' bans, it is a second-degree felony to perform or attempt an abortion, punishable by up to life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The law also allows private citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" an abortion.
The lawsuit is asking a judge to temporarily and permanently suspend the Texas law due to the uncertainty surrounding the meaning of the exception in the state's abortion bans.”
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/8-women-join-suit-texas-aborti...
>”Most Abortion Bans Include Exceptions. In Practice, Few Are Granted.”
“Last summer, a Mississippi woman sought an abortion after, she said, a friend had raped her. Her state prohibits most abortions but allows them for rape victims. Yet she could not find a doctor to provide one.
In September, an Indiana woman learned that a fetal defect meant her baby would die shortly after birth, if not sooner. Her state’s abortion ban included an exception for such cases, but she was referred to Illinois or Michigan. An Ohio woman carrying triplets faced a high risk of dangerous complications, including delivering too early. When she tried to get an abortion in September through Ohio’s exception for patients with a medical need, she was turned away.
The abortion bans enacted in about half the states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June do not prohibit abortion entirely. Most make exceptions in certain circumstances, commonly to protect the health or life of the patient, or in the case of rape or incest. And as conservative state lawmakers prepare to take up new restrictions on abortion in upcoming legislative sessions, exceptions will be at the heart of the debate.
But in the months since the court’s decision, very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted, a New York Times review of available state data and interviews with dozens of physicians, advocates and lawmakers revealed.
Instead, those with means are traveling to states where abortion is still broadly legal or are obtaining abortion pills at home because the requirements to qualify for exceptions are too steep. Doctors and hospitals are turning away patients, saying that ambiguous laws and the threat of criminal penalties make them unwilling to test the rules.
“Having the legal right on the books to get an abortion and getting one in practice are two distinctly different things,” said Laurie Bertram Roberts, the executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, a group that supports abortion rights.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/21/us/abortion-b...
- partly pro-life legislators failing at writing legislation,
- partly doctors and hospitals being (understandably, there is precedent) terrified of the slighest risk of a malpractice suit, and
- partly pro-life legislators being (understandably, there is precedent) terrified that any slack put into the laws will be willfully miscontrued by activist judges to effectively nullify all restrictions.
In any case, it's an issue that we as a movement must have an answer for, and right now we don't. That's on us. Doctors need some amount of benefit-of-the-doubt to be able to do their jobs (though it can't be infinite either).
But— my biggest issues with these bans (aside from the ban itself- I am pro choice), is that they were hastily put into place with little to no thought into the actual implementation of the ban. It’s not like they didn’t have time to come up with reasonable legislation as this has been a major discussion leading up to the reversal of Roe vs Wade. But instead of taking time to legislate this properly (or talking to healthcare providers or doctors about what an emergency in cases like these might look like), they instead just pushed through these laws with zero clarity— in turn, affecting the quality of healthcare that women can now receive.
I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist or anything but leaving “emergency” in the legislation without a single definition of what that is suppose to mean, seems almost intentional. If that’s not the case, then these legislators are so incredibly inept at their job that they should not be legislating at all.
To your second point, I think it is unfair to leave any of the blame at doctor’s or hospital’s feet given that these laws don’t actually define in any specific way what would constitute what an emergency is. You cannot blame a doctor for not wanting to perform an abortion if it will land them in jail. Without certainty in the law, the risk is way too great. Your point might be more applicable if the laws clearly defined what would constitute a legal abortion. But right now, the law is so nebulous that it is basically up to individual judges and no doctor or business is going to risk their lives on such an uncertainty.
If pro-life legislators were actually concerned with their law being misconstrued, I’d expect that they would actually want to put more clarifications into the law, not less. With the recent laws an activist could right now rule that they think an emergency applies to an abortion case (just as much as a judge could rule that their was no emergency, even if there was one). As it stands, the current law creates so much uncertainty that doctor’s and providers will just not take any action that might put them on the other side of the law. I suspect that the purpose of this lack of clarity is to insert as much uncertainty into the law so that people will be just too afraid to act. To me, it appears that these legislators are not acting in good faith.
Imagine forced abortions - wouldn't that be insane? Some see forcing a woman to have a baby to be equally insane.
I can't speak for everyone. If you feel that abortion is a fundamental right, then go stand up for it. (Of course, you are doing that.) But who can say that their list of rights is right?
I wasn't always strongly pro-life. I used to vaguely hold the standard European position (allowed up to 12-15 weeks with exceptions). What "radicalized" me, was the most cliché thing imaginable: photographs of abortion victims, from a clinic in my metropolitan area.
My memory of past events in my personal life is generally quite hazy. But the instant things "clicked" for me on this issue, is clearly fixed.
The images in question can be found here (WARNING VERY GRAPHIC):
https://www.liveaction.org/news/infant-bodies-infanticide-at...
I mostly borrow Don Marquis' notion that killing an adult human is often murder because the adult had a "valuable future" (not necessarily valued by the person themselves). A fetus also has such a future, as opposed to, say, a sperm cell. Roughly, I say this is because a fetus denotes an entity of a well-defined process of continued life (development, birth, further growth). In fact, I think all morals and whatnot are ultimately based on prohibiting the bad, no good, negative stuff that people do to each other. In other words, to ensure everyone has a reasonably "good life". Although a fetus therefore has moral consideration, though not necessarily a "person" in the moral sense, a full evaluation of abortion must also include an account of the woman's moral consideration. I'm still trying to determine where to draw the line.
> Imagine forced abortions
Unfortunately, you don't have to imagine. Many US states allow surrogacy contracts with forced-abortion clauses.
This question is the crux of the debate, and has always been. But in my experience, many pro-choice advocates are reluctant to address it directly; they prefer to talk about "rights" and "personal beliefs." Probably because, when you consider it seriously, the answer is inescapable.
No serious, mature pro-life people pretend that abortion is a simple thing. People very much so understand the gravity of it.
"I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
As much as you or I may disagree with them, it's totally absurd to claim that The Right (in the U.S.) is attempting to suppress The Left's arguments by "fists or pistols" when The Left is in the majority and most influential in almost all forms of media.
So the idea that The Left should be suppressing The Right under the principle of the "paradox of tolerance" is something Karl Popper called "most unwise" and that's putting it very mildly.
???
It's the right that's encouraging people to show up with guns at LGBTQ events[1] and passing laws (enforced by an entity that has a monopoly on legal violence) effectively banning discussion of trans issues. The idea that "the left" has cultural dominance so it should be "anything goes" for right wing opinions is absurd.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-eugene-oregon-educa...
The Right has Fox News and a few other things while The Left dominates almost all other media.
It's just completely laughable to argue that The Left is not getting a chance to "counter them by rational argument"
If The Right is winning some debates, and getting bad laws passed, that's just a reason for The Left to do a better job convincing people.
We're not living in 1920s Germany.
There's absolutely no excuse to resort to suppression, as that would be "most unwise" according to the very guy who put forth the "paradox of tolerance" idea that people love to simplify and distort.
They are not usually "on the left".
Wiktionary[1] defines "intolerant":
1. Unable or indisposed to tolerate, endure or bear.
2. Not tolerant; close-minded about new or different ideas; indisposed to tolerate contrary opinions or beliefs; impatient of dissent or opposition; denying or refusing the right of private opinion or choice in others; inclined to persecute or suppress dissent.
Bigotry (or discrimination, or prejudice), in general, is a subcategory of the broad definition #1. You are indisposed to tolerate a group of people, or a religion, or whatever.
Seeking to suppress speech or marginalize opinions (of any kind) falls under definition #2.
English might as well have two separate words for these two definitions, in case there is no "paradox". It's only a paradox if you seek to suppress speech from people who seek to suppress speech with their speech.
Heresy's track record does not lend itself to the idea that silencing views we disagree with is a practice worth continuing. After the Church, only dictators have ever insist on the necessity of censorship. The anti-speech demographic's interests neatly align with the most intolerant, most-abusive oppressors throughout history.
Catholics and Hitler-- that's the company you keep when you suggest speech needs limits. News flash: I don't have to like what you have to say. I'm expected to fucking deal with it. You can do it too.
The "words are violence" crowd sure throw a lot of words around, themselves, while arguing that others should not have the same right. Everything everyone else has to say is "hate speech!" How far the goalposts have moved from burning crosses, nooses and death threats.
Galileo was a heretic. Martin Luther was a heretic. That's the company the rest of us keep. Haters, the lot of us.
This is a model Godwinning. You don't see it much these days. I feel like I'm in a museum.
"COVID was leaked from a lab in Wuhan"
At various points in time in the last 4 years, this statement has been considered 1) hate speech 2) tin foil hat conspiracy 3) a possible scenario 4) a plausible scenario 5) a disputed fact that may or may not be true.
If we were to "not tolerate intolerant views" then there would have been no further discussion to get from stage 1 to stage 5 and the world would still believe that it was transmission by a rodent.
Same is true about the possible lab leak. In your example, it was originally hate speach because it was pulled by the media and some part of the population in a very racist way given only vague conjectures. I do think at that point it made sense to stop talking about it in the media because a it was not very well backed and of a low plausibility. It's just damn hard to strike the right balance when we are mostly geared toward emotional response. Same thing happened with vaccine and treatments.
I do think we need to be careful about proper communucation on some subject because of the high potential for misinterpretation. This is especially true when we are talking about highly technical subjects that might not be obvious to everyone.
> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.
Do they really want to deplatform those ideas, or simply not share the same platform?
> because they no longer assume (as older generations have) that adults can wield a megaphone responsibly.
No, because they assume they are entitled to decide who gets to speak and who doesn't, because they are good people and anybody who disagrees with them is evil and must be stomped into the ground (if necessary, physically).
This has strong "oh you know the ones" energy.
https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no...no not those views
Me: So....deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
I agree.
There's a problem, though, when the venue is a university.
Universities are where the search for truth should be the foremost objective. Dogmatic politics should not govern what is true or not true—that is born out by evidence, discussion, and persuasion.
Consequently, we need opposing viewpoints at universities. If someone says something that you think is wrong then you should refute it, not silence it. If your position truly is more correct, then it will win in a contest of argument, testing, and persuasion.
The problem we're having is a growing imbalance in viewpoints present on campus. People are afraid of speaking their mind because of disproportionate wrath and consequences for exploring ideas deemed "taboo" by popular movements that are so certain they're right.
I just finished reading The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch, and I recommend it to everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Rauch
So why aren't the people who are angry at Harvard students for "cancelling" views equally outraged at the lack of pro-choice and LGBT views at Christian universities? If we're trying to avoid getting stuck due to dogma and search for the truth, I'd like to be given the opportunity to make the argument that claiming that any sort of social policy should be based on the belief that the omnipotent being who created the universe thousands of years ago told some people to write some stuff down lacks evidence, is unpersuasive, and impossible to have any reasonable discussion about.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/us/stanford-law-free-spee...
Would you consider this fair protest? It's a legally tricky issue [1], but I'm of the view that normalizing this leads to a dangerous social environment (e.g., shouting down LGBT speakers at their events).
- the university itself is hosting the speaker, versus a student group?
- the university receives taxpayer funding?
No more than the fact that most households in the US received stimulus checks doesn't give me the right to demand time to pontificate to their family about whatever I want.
Because then, in some sense, what's hosted on YT is not YT speaking. But in another confusing sense, society sometimes sees it that way, so if YT becomes known for hosting unpleasant things it will damage their reputation overall.
> should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who previously expressed the following idea
Also, when you say "This is a purposeful misinterpretation", you're making an assumption that's disrespectful. What if I had misinterpreted the FIRE survey, as you suggest? Why do you believe I would do so purposefully? If you think I'm attacking something you're defending, I believe you've misjudged me.
So instead the title should be Conservatives are more willing to host people they disagree with?
I'm not really sure your argument helps your case very much.
But there used to be an adage about mixing religion and politics with business. That adage exists because there has always been the risk of ostracization when sharing political and religious opinions publicly. Contrary to popular belief, that is not some new phenomenon. It's just that social media made it more likely that someone will see your political opinions (thus increasing the chances of ostracization..you are broadcasting your opinions to the world after all) and made the consequences more visible (so you hear about that guy that was fired for saying the wrong thing today whereas 30 years ago you would not have).
- A private organization deciding not to invest its private resources into hosting a particular speaker
- A university that receives a fortune in government funding forbidding a student group from independently inviting a speaker to campus
I would say that a very large part of both modern society and praised historical rebellion against oppression has been about making everyone welcome everywhere by default. Religion, culture, and political views have all been central battlegrounds where people tried multiple times to keep people separated and then when that failed institutionalize rules where people must be welcome everywhere by default.
US law is a bit fixated on making free speech about federal law, but individual states have even there illustrated that anti-discrimination do also apply to people outside of government. The US-specific legal trick is here to define specific speech to be directly associated with "protected classes". That is a nice trick, but is in practice indistinguishable from just extending free speech to areas outside of government. Other places like the EU don't go that route and simply define free speech as a human right with the specifics of enforcement given to each country to mostly define for themselves.
Since the popularization of the internet, we have experienced unprecedented levels of free speech that’s never been enjoyed throughout all history and the ability to broadcast the most offensive and unpopular ideas is still magnitudes more free than it was pre-internet.
Make no mistake, as much as people loved to talk about how they championed free speech in the 80s and early 90s, the reality was that ideas that would hardly be considered offensive today got you cancelled back then.
Sinead O’Conner tore up a picture of the pope and was shunned.
Absolute free speech has never been accepted in mainstream venues and I would argue the only thing that has changed over time is what type of speech is considered fashionable.
Honestly, I think the younger generation is not as protective of free speech simply because they have lived in a world where free speech has thrived to the point to where they’re sick of it.
Not only has it thrived, it’s boosted by ad-driven social media companies to antagonize engagement.
Back in my day the saying was, “if bleeds it leads”. We should update it to: “If it enrages, it engages.”
Am I off the mark? Am I missing a more important angle? Does anyone really think we have less free speech today?
Do I need to endure people like Milo Yiannopoulos or Ben Shipiro so I can be seen as supporting free speech?
The love and vociferous defense of "quote dunking" on Twitter, and now Bluesky, is I think the strongest evidence that free speech is alive and well on the center and left. If they wanted to silence someone, they certainly wouldn't drag them in front of all their followers.
Fighting words have almost always been unacceptable, though the historical response may have been a public duel. These days, people just get angry and let it fester, which is a better world but brings new challenges and opportunities.
You're hitting a good mark, that's for sure. Since you mention the Pope, let's look at the Reformation. Even today, the Pope is head of both church and state, but 500 years ago, the Holy Roman Empire covered a significant portion of Europe. At that time, the Bible was not able to be read by European natives, and the Catholic Mass was held in Latin. Essentially, Catholic churchgoers hardly knew what they were practicing.
During the Reformation, Martin Luther created the first German translation of the Bible, and more translations in different languages soon followed. The impact would have been marginal if not for the fact that the printing press had only recently been developed. The cost of bookmaking plummeted (don't need a scribe for every single copy), which allowed commoners to not only have access to the Bible in their native languages but also possess their own copies. As a result, common people read the Bible, and many eventually agreed with Luther and the other Protestants that the Papacy held no divine legitimacy to its claim as the head of the church.
This perspective created an issue: to challenge the power of the Papacy on church matters also challenged its power on state matters. This disagreement eventually led to the Thirty Years War, one of the most brutal wars in history. Yet, out of that war came the Peace of Westphalia, whose principles laid the foundation for modern international relations and the notion of inviolable borders, principles which were extended to American citizenry especially with the Fourth Amendment and were extended to the individual mind with the First Amendment.
Why did I elaborate on all that? The invention of the printing press was the biggest single advancement in the communication of ideas until the Internet came along. Many people and especially entrenched power structures were afraid of the new ideological paradigms which were developing independently, and the old power structures seem more afraid than ever before. Pray our resolution of these fears is less violent this time around.
Bear with me for a second:
Imagine I’m holding an apple in front of you. What do you see? “An Apple” - you answer. But how do you know? Seeing is just the act of light reflecting off an object and hitting the receptors at the back of your eyes. From there, your optical nerve transports a blurry and upside down set of individual RGB information. The rest is up to your brain.
And your brain is doing much more than just putting the pixels together into a shape.. It identifies that shape as “apple”. And it knows things about apples. They’re good for you. They are a common fruit. They’re inexpensive.
But here’s the thing: You didn’t invent the word “apple”. You didn’t discover that they’re healthy, common or cheap.
Instead, someone told you.
By teaching you the context to an apple, that person, school, institution or culture wields power. A power to shape your thinking and thereby your world view. And that power is what much of the culture war is about. That’s why so much of it is focused on speech.
Speech is violence. (And so is silence). Speech is dangerous (boy, is it ever). Speech has to be controlled.
You may disagree with the content the left wishes to fill the speech with. (I certainly do in many instances). But I believe they are fundamentally right about the underlying premise - and the leverage gained by winning the struggle about contextualisation.
No it isn't. Speech can be refuted by other speech. If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. If you do real physical violence to me, I don't have a choice.
Yes, there are dangerous ideas, but I don't want to trust anyone to tell me (or worse, the public at large) what I can and cannot say or think. I want good ideas to win out by persuading me and others, not by being handed down from on high as dogma.
No you can't. Millions of emotional abusers have caused harm strictly through speech. You can't "control" how a hunk of fat doing a bunch of chemistry reacts to sound waves because that hunk of fat explicitly evolved to react to sound waves in physiological ways!
Trauma is a real thing. People can be harmed in medically discernible ways through nothing more than words.
Those words represent a thought in the head of whoever spoke them, and your brain knows that. Your brain knows words are more than "just words" and reacts accordingly.
Not if you are capable of critical thinking.
Science is not like these things, and I believe that Marxists and Taoists would also consider science as separate from the ideologies they espouse. I honestly don't know how someone could be simultaneously scientifically illiterate and capable of critical thinking.
I urge you to consider how "speech and silence is violence" may be a "cultural context" manipulation, and how frightening it might sound to many people working with the "legacy (default?)" cultural context.
> Instead, someone told you.
What I "know" is generally the same as what I've experienced. Someone can tell me their opinions about something but it doesn't make it true to my experience. How "cheap" is an individual apple to a 12-year-old compared to the 20-something professional with a regular income?
> Speech is violence. (And so is silence). Speech is dangerous (boy, is it ever). Speech has to be controlled.
I do not understand this point of view. This post seems to assume that Alice's speech needs to be controlled because Bob can only believe the things that Alice tells him. But Bob can think for himself, yeah?
You can literally go to an orchard and pick your own apples, see how they are stored to last past the season.
Healthy is harder to measure, but often you'll feel better eating healthier foods in moderation - if you try to make a meal out of apples you'll just make yourself sick.
Why do you believe that "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words" is "injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation"?
Speech is violence. Speech is calm. Speech is war. Speech is peace. Speech is restrictive. Speech is freeing. Speech is hate. Speech is love.
I could go on, but the point is that speech is a tool like any other. We don't allow tools to be used to injure another, and we also don't allow people to provoke an attack and then claim they're the injured party. We also don't hold a tool to someone's body and prevent them from using their own tools, because that's called "oppressive power".
That the participants were censoring people who presumably agree with them seems to hint very strongly at that.
[EDIT] Actually, is there a widespread liberal version of that? It seems like a lot of the conservative sorts who go around having speaking events mainly function as trolls, and make their living on it—maybe an outgrowth of AM radio culture, whose brand of, uh, presentation hasn't been popular on the left. Like I'm sure there are a few liberal examples, but are there in fact lots of them that I'm not aware of, staging events to get confrontational sound-bytes for their Youtube channel or radio program, or in service of shitty documentaries? I mean, Michale Moore did the latter a bit, but how prominent is he these days?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_King#Fundraising_activit...
Michael Moore can be insufferable, but I can't think of an instance where he was actually wrong. I think we need to make a distinction between showmanship and grifting. Many prominent assholes on the right are outright grifters. Prominent assholes on the left missed their chance to be a theater kid and make up for it every day.
Though, yes, that's not the same thing as people who make their money from ad impressions on cherry-picked videos where they, grown-ass adults who've prepared their material much the way a stand-up comedian does, "own" unprepared liberal college freshmen, or make "documentaries" full of simply made-up shit and drum up word-of-mouth by getting shouted down at speaking gigs (they's silencing me!), or whatever. And my perception (which may be skewed!) is that there are a lot more of those sorts on the right than left.
I seriously wonder if the partisan gap in responses to the poll has more to do with the left perceiving the right-wing media-personality/"intellectual" sphere as being infested with trolls, than with the issues themselves. Maybe not! But I think it's a real possibility.
Conservatism in the U.S. is largely tribalism. The conservative demographic is very uniform. It's reasonably easy to create programming that appeals to that demographic, and it's also subsidized by the same entities that it serves.
Left of center in the U.S. you have a very loose, fractious coalition of different demographics who are trying to change something about the status quo (generally speaking). Trying to program content that appeals to "the left" in the U.S. as a large enough groups to sustain advertising, etc. and has fewer patrons with deep pockets.
I'm oversimplifying by a lot but there's a lot of reasons that there isn't a widespread liberal version of the campus speakers making the rounds to push things.
For whatever reason, the right really loves being against things and trying to deny other people's ability to just live in peace. If left alone (ahem) most of the left would just be content to go do other shit.
> ther isn't a widespread liberal version of the campus speakers making the rounds to push things.
Easy explanation for this one: left-wing ideology is deeply embedded within the campus administration and faculty already. The left doesn't bring in outside provocateurs to campus because they are already solidly entrenched.
For a different measure of how much free expression is allowed- maybe look at often people are killed for expressing controversial views. I'd invite anyone to contrast Nate's article with the story of the Kent State students in the 1970s who were summarily executed by the US army for peaceful protests[1], is FIRE and Nate Silver really going to argue modern campuses "free speech" is in trouble now more than back then? Public protest seems like it should be much more protected (and relevant to the term 'free speech') than who-gets-what speaking fees.
>> "C2. Abortion should be completely illegal."
>> "C3. Black Lives Matter is a hate group."
I really don't understand people whose idea of free speech is "tolerating" yet another repeat of the same damned argument we've heard a million times over. We heard you. We weren't convinced. Free speech is intact, we just want to move on. Try literally any other argument.
Come up on stage and say something novel or you're wasting the students' time and the platform. You're not a bold defender of free speech saying this stuff. You're a hack. You're no different from the street preacher screaming lines from Leviticus at me as I pass by.
>> "I wonder if adding context that reduced the perceived likelihood of that, while leaving those statements intact, would change the results significantly."
I've taken a lot of research surveys that play with wording and context to test bias. It's interesting to look back at my own answers to see how framing around the questions affects the response.
The poll results actually seem to reflect their familiarity with the positions and the typical weakness of arguments for certain ones. I don't think it says anything about their position on free speech.
Sure it can, at least for C1. If gender dysphoria isn't a mental disorder, then its treatment doesn't need to be covered by health insurance.
Have you, in fact, listened to an argumentative speech on one of those questions, or others you feel this way about? Not even counting whether some new guy could have something new to say, can you honestly be said to have heard the full-length intelligent argument for the position and found the evidence lacking? Or is there nothing being 'moved on' from at all?
No. Try again.
>> "Have you, in fact, listened to an argumentative speech on one of those questions, or others you feel this way about?"
Yes.
I should hope so, it's nearly 3 hours long.
I hope this trend passes where people don't make any effort to edit their interviews, or even prioritize their questions. Arguably more effort is required to do an excellent 45-minute interview than a 3-hour podcast, but that extra effort is rewarded by increased reach. I hope that lesson doesn't get lost to history.
at least he provides a full transcript with subject titles and timestamps, feel free to search for relevant parts
> feel free to search for relevant parts
Part of the value of an interview done well is that it helps enlighten me about what I might find relevant. How would I possibly know what parts are relevant before listening, unless I were going in with an agenda or trying to research a specific item? He interviews really powerful people; searching through their thoughts seems like the worst possible way to consume this information.
A transcript like this might be useful for researchers, but will still have limited reach because few people have the luxury of being able to read a transcript of a 3-hour interview.
College campuses should be a place where people can be challenged by contrary, uncomfortable ideas. Safe from physical violence and danger, but not free of contentious debate.
> You're not entitled to a platform
The college itself isn't obligated to invest resources to support your presence. But a student group is free to invite who they want, no? Colleges pretty much universally receive plenty of government funds, so have an obligation of some level of neutrality
I appreciate the focus of the essay, but extremely strange to merely equate the current events at Harvard et al with "cancel culture". When a train runs over my leg, it falls under any definition of an "oopsie", but that doesn't mean an "oopsie" quite exhausts the force and meaning of it.
Sure students are intolerant of certain speakers, but we at least got to square that with the apparent fact that when students (and teachers) find themselves on the "wrong" side of an event, they arent merely canceled, or barred from speaking, but harassed, threatened, arrested, and doxxed with apparently no recourse at all.
I think these students will certainly learn a lesson, but perhaps not the one Nate has in mind.
In Europe, there are setbacks. Burn enough embassies and the pragmatic Scandinavians will eventually ask you to stop burning a certain book.
For the US, it’s well protected by the first amendment to the constitution. The youth is just particularly sensitive to accusations of racism and such. College students have taboo topics because they’re not very sophisticated (yet). It’s easy - even for Ivy-educated folks - to conflate an ethnic group with a religious one. Or a “race” with a culture. Their views will hopefully change with time.
The real threat to freedoms is the appetite for security. And the best way to protect it is to stop being so easily terrorised.
For example, there could be "other" reasons why a student wouldn't want a controversial figure on campus like, "it's disruptive to my studies." I'd also like to know where the survey question options came from.
Not to dismiss the results by nitpicking, but with survey research findings the devil is in the details of how the data was collected. I've seen too many organizations use biased surveys to produce inflammatory headlines that they know will get them clicks/funding.
(Source: 20+ years experience in the research industry).
What has happened, and people are gonna think I'm a crazy Fox News boomer for saying, and gonna get downvoted by very left learning HN for...is the left is now the mainstream and the right is now the counterculture. We're basically in the inverse of 2003 America. I am not making political judgements I am stating facts.
Look at how every large organization boasts about their commitment to diversity and supporting LGTBQ+. Every big corp, including ones like Lockheed Martin, K-12 education, higher education, the military even. I know people are going to try and counter bringing up recent anti-abortion legislation and other laws but having a majority in some local legislation is not enough to be the mainstream. You have to control more than that and the left controls just about everything else.
Most discussions around free speech talk about deplatfomring and "canceling". Those two strategies are only effective for the side that controls the platforms which is the mainstream. The counterculture cannot deplatform somebody because they do not have control over the platform. It's always the counterculture that complain about lack of free speech and the mainstream who say things like "you are not entitled to a megaphone" and "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences"
Universities and college students used to be hotbeds of counterculture because the right was the mainstream and college students are overwhelmingly left leaning. Today college students are all about deplatforming because they are on the side that gets to deplatform people instead of the side that struggles for megaphone access.
We spent the last 30 or more years turning universities into vocational schools and act surprised that students don't want to spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of their money to engage in exhausting controversy?
I'd assume most students want to get a degree and start getting paid. No matter if you are left or right leaning, a culture war in your back garden is a distraction from that.
Would a church congregation happily bring in speakers to talk about why allowing abortion is necessary medical care? They probably would be unhappy if a church did that more than a few times, since most american christian faiths claim to have a "definitive" answer on things.
Or should Universities also be expected to platform people who would openly advocate for reintroducing slavery to the US? Would people really be happy with that? Or advocating to remove the voting rights of women? Some republican politicians openly tweet that women's suffrage is a bad thing.
Would you, as a university student, be happy if your university brought in someone who gives a two hour speech about how 2+2=5? What if that same person was adamant that anyone who doesn't believe 2+2=5 is the "enemy" and wants to hurt america?
What about that time a bunch of kids in South Africa (I think) held a "Safe space" group activity and decided to talk about how math and science is colonialist? Should we encourage such useless discussion at our colleges?
Remember, these are the same colleges saying there's no money to give to better or more professors, so if they are the ones putting up the speaking fee, that feels pretty fucked up as a student.
"I am good." + "Free speech is good." = "I am pro-free-speech."
"Democrats are liberal." + "Free speech is liberal." = "Democrats are pro-free-speech.", + "I am a Democrat." = "I am pro-free-speech."
And then never actually check, internally, "do I support the idea of people I disagree with speaking their honest opinions out loud?" or whether they identify with that famous quote "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
There's various strategies of retreat, from misidentifying particular ideas as "intolerance" so one can misapply Popper's quote about the paradox of tolerance (see also "hate speech"), to being legalistic about it and denying that it's nothing without social norms too, to talking about deplatforming speakers as a form of free speech too (still forcibly silencing rather than counterarguing!), and you can see a dozen examples right on this page. All of them, I believe, have the same root: genuinely believing oneself to be pro-free-speech, caused by saturation of an American society that values being pro-free-speech, but without ever actually being convinced of the merits of free speech.
And I think it has spread precisely because it's invisible unless poked; you don't need to convince someone of the merits of free speech if they already believe it, and so a lot less convincing has gone on than needs to.
it all hinges on the impossibility of freely copying this (or that) content.
If you want it, you must pay the content creator through the platform (which takes a cut) using payment-processor (which takes a cut) which causes taxes (the government's cut)
this in my weird stranged mind is deeply tied to this situation: that we won't own the place we live in, or that we will only be able to rent it (housing as a subscription service) is part of this.
because what we will be permitted to own are these "digital asssets" we create using social-media-cretaion tools (e.g. instagram, tiktok). free as in beer? free as in liberty?? these are secondary concerns to the logic of the networked marketplaces and the aggregator platforms.
some more "examples": your meme that you made went viral in "touristic destination" so now you can afford a visit to there!
or a more dysptoic "reach 100 views to afford chicken dinner. reach 1000 views! and you'll get a kobe beef deluxe dinner!!"
I sure hope this remains an ellusive dystopic idea that never actually comes to pass
In my wholly personal opinion, the distinct issue with "White liberal American" students and free speech stems from self-segregation. A human being is the product of their environment. In dichotomous contrast to their antiracist stances, "White liberal" parents tend to live among and socialize almost exclusively with other White liberals, which causes kids to prefer an in-group, tribal mentality and never develop the personality skills to exist outside your ideological tribe. If kids are raised in such an environment, conflict among other groups will create significant discomfort for them. There are many ways to raise your kids to have a liberal mentality without turning them into a shadow-scared ideologue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I would argue this survey shows evidence of the opposite, that there is more support for free speech on the left.
It's fairly clear that the right is not genuine about free speech because in reality it's the right that is actually banning books and access to information in the US right now, not the left.
Basic principle of the Paradox of Tolerance is simple. If you let bigots talk, you will get more bigotry and in the end a less free society.
The iron of the right talking against 'cancel culture' is that the decisions to actually not let people speak, or get people to lose their jobs are done by right-leaning people. Those that run the large institutions that are doing cancelling, like corporations, are run largely by right leaning, business minded, people.
They wanted extreme private property rights, well that's how you get 'cancel culture'. Truly ironic that when businesses respond to markets (again run by right-minded folks), it's the right that is complaining today.
By definition, a bigot is "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices" [1].
There are bigots on both the left and the right. No one is saying there aren't bigots on the right. What the survey is saying that the majority of the people obstinately devoted to their own opinions are on the left. For some reason, many people on the left become obstinate when anyone (even a self-identifying liberal) makes that observation.
>They wanted extreme private property rights, well that's how you get 'cancel culture'.
Nope, "extreme private property rights" have existed in the US for hundreds of years. Also, cancel culture is about cancelling people who espouse a particular idea. I refer you to copyright and patent law enforcement to see how attempts to enforce property rights on an idea has played out across history. There are many reasonable and unreasonable ways to do so.
Another example of right wing canceling
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/major-critic-of-...
In OP's article, doesn't the survey show that conservative respondents are about as likely to allow campus speakers who espoused liberal opinions as ones who espoused conservative opinions?
The right is simply more open to having people come in that would scare people from speaking. Again, Paradox of Tolerance.
So you have to aggressively deny intolerant people space because it creates an unfree, fearful space.
Those numbers aren't in OP's article. However, even if that statistic is true, all it says is that people on the right handle conflict better than people on the left. Your assumption is logically invalid since you're making an assumption that people on the right invite people come in that scare people from speaking. Those speakers truly don't, and the left students actively prevent those invited speakers from even speaking.
Also, thanks to your HN profile information, I see you graduated from North Central College in Naperville, IL in 2006. You've been out of school for quite a while, so I can understand that you're probably looking through the lens of college in the mid-2000s. You really don't understand how current students think. Having been in the classroom these past few years, it's abundantly clear that the conservative students are afraid to disagree with their professors, particularly if the professor makes it known that they themselves are liberal.
The students today are recognizing a growing tyranny and are fighting back. The fact that this fight is obfuscated as a fight against 'free speech' is just wrong. Nate Silver doesn't us any service by further obfuscating that fact.
When I was in school, people didn't speak up enough about the Iraq war and the further restricting of liberty via Patriot Act. It was a place of fear. If you think today's schools are oppressive imagine being surrounded by heavy handed nationalism. Why do people forget the early 2000s after 9/11?
Yes, and the recognition of this tyranny is exactly why the right is banning books. Your view of tyranny is just different than theirs. Unless you can try and rectify that, you'll be seeing them on the battlefield.
>Why do people forget the early 2000s after 9/11?
Well, current college students weren't born yet. I'm sorry that you felt that discussion of the invasion of 9/11 was oppressive, but I can sincerely tell you that schools are far more oppressive than they were back then.
Did you mean to delete your other comment? Let me respond to it here:
>Letting intolerant people speak is not evidence of your support for tolerance. That's what the Paradox of Tolerance shows. You have to be aggressively intolerant of intolerance. That's why that survey shows exactly the opposite of what you demonstrated. Intolerance of intolerance is evidence of support for tolerance. Since the right is tolerant of intolerance (which is what the survey shows) they are not for free speech. Also evidenced by them literally banning books that promote tolerance.
Ah, you seem to think that the left viewpoints in the survey are tolerant, whereas the right viewpoints are intolerant.
>L1. The Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated.
This view is tolerant of intolerance.
>L2. Religious liberty is used as an excuse to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
This view is tolerant of intolerance.
>L3. Structural racism maintains inequality by protecting White privilege.
This view is tolerant of intolerance.
With these points accepted, I agree that letting intolerant people speak is not evidence of support for tolerance.
You might also be assuming that the left's intolerance is morally correct, which isn't true. One purpose of free speech is to converge upon how society should practice tolerance and intolerance through lawmaking and cultural norms. In fact, all six viewpoints in the survey are tolerant of intolerance, and that's exactly the point. If you can't see that all six are tolerant of intolerance, please try.
Left students have made explicit calls in recent days to "murder the Jews" [1]. Calling of the mass murder of a group of people is intolerant. Some people in this thread argue that you can let anyone speak, but just don't give them a megaphone. A book is a type of megaphone that echoes across time. If a book calls for the killing of Jews, and the left allows it to exist, the left is tolerant of intolerance, which is what you claim the right does. By your own statement, intolerance of intolerance is evidence of support for tolerance. Therefore, the left should ban the megaphones that call for the killing of Jews, which includes banning books calling for the killing of Jews.
Perhaps you don't realize that the right says that certain megaphones/books of the left cause injury to children. You might disagree, and that's fine, but a majority of people on the right hold that view. In those cases, if the right allows those books to be read by children, the right will be tolerant of intolerance. Therefore, they have a moral obligation to remove those intolerant books, just as a person on the left will have a moral obligation to ban intolerant books calling for the killing of Jews.
>Intolerance of intolerance is evidence of support for tolerance.
That is a false statement. Tolerance is not a binary variable; NOT ( NOT ( "tolerance" ) ) != "tolerance" or even "evidence of support for tolerance", just "maybe". If tolerance is saying you're wearing a red shirt, intolerance of intolerance is saying you're not wearing a not-red shirt. That response is satisfied by a full red shirt to single red thread secretly woven into a blue shirt. Intolerance of intolerance is undefined uncertainty.
Again, given that all six viewpoints are tolerant of intolerance, and the left and the right are capable of being both tolerant and intolerant, the survey shows the left is less tolerant than the right. The left is more intolerant of intolerance, as you say, which actually shows the left operates with undefined uncertainty about the world. The left, to bring in a theory of knowledge, tends to think about unknown unknowns, whereas the right tends to think about known unknowns. The left tends to say "maybe", and the right tends to say "yes" or "no". Is this really that surprising?
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chants-calling-for-the-mur...
Let's consider the table in the article titled: "What percentage of college students would allow a controversial speaker on campus?" Since red and green are representative of majority intolerance and majority tolerance, respectively, I'll just refer to the colors to discuss the trends, which is the focus here.
With regards to the table, we'll exclude the "moderate" row for this discussion. We'll break the table into four quadrants: upper left or Q1 (left vs. right views), upper right or Q2 (left vs. left views), lower left or Q3 (right vs. right views), and lower right or Q4 (right vs. left views)
To determine what the survey is showing, we have four corner cases to consider: (1) the left is majority tolerant and the right is majority tolerant, (2) the left is majority tolerant and the right is majority intolerant, (3) the left is majority intolerant and the right is majority intolerant, and (4) the left is majority intolerant and the right is majority tolerant.
Case 1: the left is majority tolerant and the right is majority tolerant. If Case 1 is true, all four quadrants will be green. Since Q1 is red, this condition is not satisfied, therefore Case 1 is false.
Case 2: the left is majority tolerant and the right is majority intolerant. If Case 2 is true, Q4 will be red, and Q1 will be green. Since Q4 is green and Q1 is red, this condition is not satisfied, therefore Case 2 is false.
Case 3: the left is majority intolerant and the right is majority intolerant. If Case 3 is true, both Q1 and Q4 will be red. Since Q4 is not red, this condition is not satisfied, therefore Case 3 is false.
Case 4: the left is majority intolerant and the right is majority tolerant. If Case 3 is true, Q1 will be red, and Q4 will be green. Since Q1 is is in fact red and Q4 is in fact green, this condition is satisfied, therefore Case 4 is true.
Therefore, we can easily see that the left is majority intolerant and the right is majority tolerant.
First, citations needed, second, talk about ad-homs.
People simply don't want to see hate-speech, and they are allowed to not want to see bigotry and vitriol. People understand that "free speech" that devolves into hate-speech results in stochastic terrorism as well. If only somebody could do about those [bad] leftists!
The biggest irony of all, is that all proponents of free speech only care about their capacity to exercise judgement and have access to the megaphone. See Elon banning speech that insults/humiliates or otherwise disagrees with. See truth-social banning all speech regarding abortions/RvW, etc.
Free-speech is to protect you from the government. That doesn't mean we, the people should have to see, accept, or entertain vitriol and hate-speech. We the people are passing our judgement, and we the people don't want to see it.
If you break the social contract, you pay the consequences. If you can't behave like an adult and decide to break the social contract, you face the consequences. It's time to grow up.
This article was Nate’s examination of data which (in his analysis) resulted in this idea. The article is literally the “citation”.
We also know that what one expresses, and what one does are two different things.
Expressing you'd be okay with someone expressing things that go against your beliefs doesn't mean you actually support them. E.g analogous to claiming you have a free-speech focused social media website, let's call it pravda.social, and at the same time you ban criticism of topic. (s/pravda/truth, s/topic/abortion).
That's not sufficient to draw a conclusion imho.
If I say "There are three people in the room. I opened the door and saw three people" you don't say I need a citation to state my conclusion that "There are three people in the room", I have already explained how I arrived that that conclusion.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=college+cancels+conservativ...
If that were true, we have a rather simpler story: about 60% to 70% of people would happily invite debate about whatever, as long as it is in good faith. Liberals essentially do not believe C1 through C3 are good-faith arguments, while conservatives do. Even this 60% to 70% number is a bit lower than I'd like to see, but perhaps 30% of people don't think Universities should play the role of public forum at all?
I just don't think you can draw strong conclusions from this without actually analyzing the content of C1 - C3 and L1 - L3, and my intuition about them suggests a very different interpretation. C1 and C3 both have a strong flavor of a certain group of people essentially having no right to exist, or at least deserving of a lesser existence. Asking transgender people to debate whether or not they have a mental disorder, in the name of free speech, is essentially stating that they constantly must argue for their right to exist. Rejecting C1 as a valid argument is essentially stating that transgender people do have an unequivocal right to exist, and do not need to constantly argue for their own existence until the end of time. Nate Silver does not even mention the possibility that the Cs are inherently more flawed positions than the Ls, and that is a mistake.
Sure it's hypocrisy, but it's also simple self preservation to prefer more freedom when out of power and more control when in power. I don't know of evidence that this effect is stronger for one side or the other.
However, there are more state-level laws aimed at curbing speech coming from Republican-controlled legislatures than Democratic ones, and that does seem to be a difference in kind.
Examples?
No, the bubbling is personal and deliberately engaged in due to lack of interest. They have already heard the same old talking points and dismissed it as absolute crap repeatedly and found nobody pays attention to the emperor's nudity despite its obviousness and the number of times they pointed it out.
As I see it, free speech is – and has always been – one of the simple rallying calls of the underdog, and has therefore not really been part of older civilizations, and those civilizations which are still ruled by the same old class/rules/traditions still do not emphasize free speech as something important. But I think most countries at some point had a somewhat clean divide where older traditional regimes gave way to modern more-or-less democratic ones, and since the democratic factions were the underdogs, free speech was incorporated into the new founding principles of those countries. This was especially clear in the USA, but has evolved further there. The conservative US citizens – the “right” – have, since then, had free speech as one of their Important Core Tenets, and since they were in power for much of US history, it was cemented. Especially, since the opposition, the “left” (being the underdog) also liked free speech (since they want to criticize the ruling powers), free speech was a very popular and politically safe position for everybody, no matter what side.
(This can be contrasted to other countries where a democratic revolution has happened, but where free speech was not (for whatever reason) very strongly incorporated into its new founding principles. This allowed conservatives of those countries to mostly be skeptical of free speech, and the oppositions being only mostly in favor of it.)
But something odd then happened in the US. The left, having been pushed too far by something or other (Trump being the usual cited example), began to reason that since the “right” had free speech as a value, the “left” were free to oppose it. This is where I believe the new trend of what has been called “cancel culture” comes from. The “right”, seeing this, and since the ”right” was in power (de jure or de facto), saw no reason to keep free speech as a core value, since free speech is, as I said, mostly a tool for the underdog. Therefore, US “right” also began dropping free speech as a core value. And therefore nobody in the US today really values free speech. This is a complete reversal from the US of some – not very long – time ago.
Another way to view this is that both the “right” and the “left” today have changed from seeing themselves as underdogs, and now see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed rulers” (to paraphrase a famous saying commonly attributed to John Steinbeck), and so both sides feel free to call for censorship, believing that they will never (at least for long) be on the losing side.
(Some ”right”-minded people try to square the incongruity (of still having free speech as a written core value) by painting themselves as underdogs, thus allowing themselves to value free speech. But since the ”right” are also conservatives, which by definition stands for old traditional power, this rarely looks plausible. The “left”-minded people who do the same merely look old-fashioned, but those people are not very influential anymore.)
Left-wing intolerance in the United States became more publicly prominent after the 2016 elections, but its roots are far older. A full accounting can be found in the books "America's Cultural Revolution" (Christopher Rufo, 2023) and "The Origins of Woke" (Richard Hanania, 2023), but the TLDR is:
The most extreme, intolerant, and revolutionary fringes of the 60s civil rights movement (Angela Davis et al.) completely failed in the end to achieve their goals of violent overthrow of the government. So instead, they pivoted to taking control of institutions, like university and government bureaucracies. They were greatly aided in doing so by civil rights law; specifically, by activist judges and bureaucrats who twisted the laws that Congress passed, so that every major corporation, university, and government department lived in constant fear of being sued for "disparate impact" or "hostile workplace environment." It turns out, that instituting speech codes and hiring the radicals into your HR department is a great way to ward off the lawsuits (https://www.richardhanania.com/p/wokeness-as-saddam-statues-...). So free speech lost in the institutions, and only then came under threat in the town square.
(disclaimer, I designed/developed their website like a decade ago)