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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

America is one of the last bastions of free speech left. Stuff like this, the tik tok ban, and the "anti-semitism" laws, are very disturbing developments.

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It's weird that the government of America has fully gotten into the business of tone and morality policing, and banning the press for calling the Gulf of Mexico what it is.

That doesn't seem compatible with being a bastion of free anything.

The US has had pretty iron-fisted anti-free speech laws for most of its history under the guise of anti-obscenity rules. They'll probably come back, too, given the current regime.

There's an informative video-dive into that, centered on the effect of the movie Blazing Saddles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMFoNZeZm0

freedom TO vs freedom FROM.

For example the left wants freedom from unfair business practices, while the right wants the freedom to do whatever they want in their businesses.

That whole “freedom TO” vs “freedom FROM” is a meaningless word play. Every “freedom TO” can be reworded to a “freedom FROM” and vice verse.

The only meaningful difference is to use “TO” and “FROM” to illustrate 2 abstract types of “freedoms”. The absence of external constraints and the ability to make choices. Two concepts that are very intertwined. Some times discrete, but most of the time intertwined. You can’t assign left or right to either one.

As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding.

regardless of how nice a sentence sounds, nonsense is still nonsense

Except the key "there is a freedom-to and a freedom-from" is far from being nonsense: it is a basic intellectual key in reasoning over the principles of liceity, "e.g. your freedom to play the drums and my right to (be free to) sleep".

Which is nonsense to associate with either the political right or left. The comment I was replying to was saying “the left wants their right to sleep while the right wants their right to play the drums” which is nonsense.

“The principles of liceity” is external control vs ability to make a choice that I mentioned. It’s not a political right vs political left distinction in how we understand “Freedom”. Both the political right and left view “Freedom” as a mix of both licitness.

The recent, bizarre, popularization of the freedom-to vs freedom-from in pop-culture happened after the 2016 election and was portrayed as the difference between how the right and the left views “freedom” which is woefully nonsensical.

It might be my liberal (or blue) bubble, but after 2016 is when I started hearing a lot of my friends trying to explain that “oh no, we want a freedom-from not a freedom-to. Here is an article explaining” it became clear how confused everyone was about a simple abstract distinction vs real life application of it.

So, (1) do not contribute to noise, and (2) do not strengthen nor help spread cancerous deliria. Your words:

> That whole “freedom TO” vs “freedom FROM” [would be] a meaningless word play. Every “freedom TO” can be reworded to a “freedom FROM” and vice verse

and you must have meant "that whole attribution of "freedom to vs from" to different political sides is nonsense and employed as meaningless word play".

(Incidentally, they half-jokingly say that "liberals are conservatives who have been mugged and conservatives are liberals who have been arrested": both sides appear to be heartfeltly tied to a freedom-from perspective.)

(Corrige: I swapped the labels in the rush (it is of course "conservatives are liberals who have been mugged, and liberals are conservatives who have been arrested") but you get the point.)

I was gonna say. The joke is usually that a liberal is a “conservative that’s been assaulted by institutional power” and a conservative is a “liberal that’s been assaulted by a perceived peer”

The funny thing is I know someone who is literally that. She grew up in a very conservative rural family, but when I knew her (in her early 20s) she was “super liberal”. Like the classic “basic liberal” type person in every way. 6 years later (in 2021) a homeless dude chased her downtown. She WAS traumatized. Like seriously traumatized. A month later I learned that she started carrying a gun and wouldn’t stop talking about Washington gun laws and how “she’s totally a liberal” but liberals are wrong about the homeless, gun laws, the police, and law and order.

As an adult that self censors in America, that ship has long sailed.

> As an adult that self censors

I think that’s just being an adult

No, it's not.

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