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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

Who says that a totalitarian attitude is desirable?? Freedom of speech implies that expressing your opinions should not cost you your job.

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Has the illiberal left not been smugly telling us "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" when others lost their jobs? They hardly have any right to complain when they are hoist by their own petard.

OK cool.

That doesn't explain why the right - which has been just as smugly insisting that freedom of speech must mean freedom from consequences - doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

I couldn't care less what the conservatives think. Their blatantly fake support of freedom of speech was always conditional and self-serving.

Almost everyone's support of freedom of speech and any freedom is conditional and self serving, that's just human nature. Why are you going out of your way to only complain about the "illiberal left?"

Because 1) conservatives rarely bother to speak up on HN; they know they are quite unwelcome here and 2) the illiberal left claims to be allied with liberals and that's clearly false.

Conservatives speak up all the time on HN, and weirdly enough they sound exactly like you do, down to the inability to refer to the left without a pejorative.

Conservatives ignorantly tend to refer to everything to the left of them as "liberals" even to behavior that is quite illiberal, so the distinction is important. But you're welcome to believe whatever you wish; it's a free country.

> as "liberals" even to behavior that is quite illiberal

That's actually the label the left has taken on themselves, blaming conservatives for it is really weird. Yes, the behavior of the modern left has little to do with the classical liberalism, but it's not the conservatives' fault that the left took on themselves this mantle and then failed to live up to it.

but all the center-right comments (what you guys call conservative or more commonly the f-word) are made from throwaway accounts

Because they have been deliberately excluded from participating in the discussion early on, so the only solace they have is watching the left eat their own. If the right doesn't get freedom, they'd at least enjoy their enemies getting the same treatment. It's a sad bargain but the only one available as it seems.

A discussion on what is right is not a game between two football teams and you don't even know what my "side" is. Fwiw, feel free to look up my seven-year-old HN comments about James Damore.

My comment wasn't a criticism of yours? It was more of a comment on the past views of others on HN.

Is occupying your CEO's office until removed by law enforcement speech?

Were all of the fired employees occupying the CEO's office?

No it does not and it never has.

Freedom of speech is a protection from the government, not other citizens.

And I suspect the only reason people take this view is because the speech is something they agree with. Would you, for example, feel like Google was being totalitarian if Hitler Hank hosted a sit in protest against the company for hiring people of color and he was subsequently fired?

Some people have read this (or know some of the history at least):

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

Some people mistakenly believe that the first amendment is identical to the above; it is not:

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

> Freedom of speech is a protection from the government

No, that is the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is a much larger concept.

Yes, it does. The right to free speech is not a right if exercising it costs you your livelihood. The idea that freedom of speech only restricts the government's actions is typical American myopia. George Washington didn't copyright freedom of expression and the US constitution is not the end all to human rights.

> The right to free speech is not a right if exercising it costs you your livelihood.

This sort of free speech has never existed and frankly it would be preposterous for it to exist.

A company couldn't fire a salesperson that went around telling potential customers "Hey, our product is garbage you should use our competitors"? A state employee couldn't be fired for lying to the races they don't like "You don't qualify for this, sorry". An employee couldn't be fired for sexually harassing coworkers because "Welp, free speech, can't stop Bill from telling Jill how much he wants to have sex with her".

If we take this right to its natural conclusion, it would preclude other rights like the freedom of association.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/straw-man-fallacy/

What is the substantial difference between the speech I listed and the speech you want protected?

Then we can argue they were not performing their job duties instead. How long should one be allowed to protest on the clock?

I was told that speech had consequences and anything but the Govt literally silencing you was ok for decades.

Damn. I guess that NOW HN cares about free speech, after highly paid fellows get fired from their jobs for doing dumb shit

You have it backwards. There's a huge backlash when somebody's fired for being racist, or homophobic, or transphobic. Now anti-authoritarian protestors are being doxxed, fired and arrested; yet I haven't heard a peep from those people who "believe in free speech."

I don't know, bjourne has been pretty vocal and he keeps getting downvoted.

I also believe they should be allowed to express their views at work and that is consistent with my views in the past.

The issue with free speech historically or currently worldwide is that governments can silence, jail or kill you. It’s a civic issue, not business one.

Maybe a government can find a "legal" way to accomplish those illicit goals, which gives them an edge. But powerful entities like huge companies don't necessarily need to contort the law to accomplish their illicit goals. There are ways to launder responsibility for them through 3rd parties. Protecting people from the government itself is good, but not sufficient in the era of trillion dollar multinational companies.

You are vaguely arguing that we’re living in fascists states.

I am overtly arguing that oppression doesn't originate solely from governments.

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