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Comment by hallgrim | Hacker News Reader

Well, the government funds science projects in general, and now they are limiting it based on a very loose list of terms related to ideas counter to their own ideology.

The idea of freedom of speech is to not limit expression of ideas counter to any one ideology.

Also, if corporations donating to political campaigns is speech, so should science funding be - which is now being restricted.

Their usual retort is: “we need more speech in the market place of ideas, not censorship”.

So why don’t they just fund right-wing-aligned projects instead?

Hypocrisy all around.

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if those scientists were to raise money from private donors would they find themselves in jail, or their property confiscated to where they couldnt continue research? that is the definition of "freedom of speech".

if you accept money from the government, you must also accept the fact that that money is political. complaining that losing a barely earned privilege is a loss of freedom of speech is a fucking slap in the face of people who have actually fought hard for freedom of speech.

btw i have a phd in the hard sciences so i know what im talking about when i say grants are "barely earned privileges". they do not, in general, go to the most qualified or talented scientists, hence the word "grantsmanship" to refer to the skills required to obtain a grant that are not the pure scientific skill

Government funding didn’t use to be political. Humanities existed and got funding even during republican presidents.

It has been made political relatively recently. That’s one of my issues.

Government funding is political full stop. it might be bipartisan but it's still political, by definition. if you cannot accept this your policy opinions will always be hopelessly distorted.

Also, I know this isn’t the definition of free speech per se. Hence the nod at citizens united which made a farce of the whole concept.

No, that is not the definition of "freedom of speech".

Please also read the first amendment.

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