Protection from government censorship means an American can criticize President Obama as "a stupid incompetent Chief Executive" without fear of black helicopters surrounding the protester's home. The military operatives won't come to arrest him and keep him silent. This type of "free speech" does not exist in North Korea.
I concede that the label "free speech" has been diluted to mean, "I get to say whatever I want without any economic ramifications or social disapproval." Unfortunately, the non-government censoring is what the vast majority of free speech articles are about. Well, the real world will never let you have that type of "free speech". If it bothers people that Facebook / tv networks / college campuses / etc won't allow certain types of speech, they can start another website/college that allows it. However, they shouldn't be surprised if sponsors that help fund the "oppressive" businesses and institutions don't also spend money on the alternative "free speech" platform.
In other words, the non-government "free speech" has a cost and sometimes, society doesn't want to pay for it. That's the underlying issue that's never highlighted.
[1]The first sentence from wikipedia also explains "free speech" in terms of government censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Second, the fact single private corporations can make decisions with a large impact on what can be said "in public" (ie, these days, on the internet) is problematic in itself. There is no "public space" online, and our civil laws aren't adapted to that. But that's also the same old problem the socialists identified with "freedom of the press": it applies to those with a printing press, and nobody else.
Then it isn't about "freedom of speech" which is a right that means free from government censorship, and that's all it means. Fear of drawing Muhammed because of violence from Muslims while an issue, has nothing at all to do with freedom of speech the constitutional right. You don't have a freedom to offend or a freedom from consequences of pissing off radicals.
> And if these groups are powerful enough to over-ride the law and impose their will on everyone else, doesn't that make them somewhat government-like in themselves?
No, it doesn't, because they're not overriding laws and their violence is punishable by the law.
What if the laws are being ignored and violence permitted by the state? If a group can threaten another into silence regardless of laws of the land with the state not involving itself, one could argue that the oppressive group has become the arm of an oppressive state.
The above comment points out that the government has a responsibility to fight people who break other laws, e.g. Murder, vandalism, harassment, etc.
It sounds like your suggesting that these are not enough, that the government should actively pursue those who have not yet committed a crime against someone's body or property, but instead at the point where they are actively threatening (by some definition of that) through speech.
Which by this definition, they would be utilizing their freedom of speech to do... which I think your implying the government should actively suppress. This sounds like it could easily be abused to fight any criticism of any group.
Think a bit lower on the hierarchy, such as police and federal agents. But you are damn right the government should actively defend free speech, especially when it's the First freaking Amendment of the Constitution; of which the United States government is based upon. If the state refuses to defend one part of the Constitution from oppressive forces then the whole thing is potentially irrelevant. History shows this is how governments fall to tyranny.
I fail to see where I'm stating that the state should oppress one group's speech for the benefit of another. I said no such thing.
So, here it is again:
What if the state actively ignores one group's illegal activities (that have nothing to do with speech, such as harassment or violence), that are done solely for the purposes of oppressing another group's ability to exercise their First Amendment rights? At that point the state is complicit in the oppression and is becoming an oppressive state.
I guess for me it's the "active" defense of the First Amendment that concerns me, because depending on what that means it could easily be actively abused in exactly the ways that we're discussing through inactivity.
For this, I think other laws, assuming they're fairly applied, are sufficient and less open to interpretation.
I don't know why this is so hard to understand; if non state actors are involved, then you aren't using your first amendment rights anyway. The first amendment applies to state actors only. Congress shall pass no law abridging your freedom of speech. Threats from Muslims stopping you from opening your mouth do not violate "Congress shall pass no law abridging your freedom of speech". Threats from Muslims about your speech are not first amendment issues, they are not abridging your first amendment rights in any way.
> What if the laws are being ignored and violence permitted by the state?
They aren't. No where is the state not enforcing laws against assault and violence.
I am shocked at how many people seem to think that if the government is not involved, then suppression of free expression is somehow tolerable.
>> They aren't. No where is the state not enforcing laws against assault and violence.
Recent events in Chicago and San Jose come to mind. There are several examples from some subsets of the Black Lives Matter movement that get out of hand and it is actively ignored. I can likely find you several examples of problems on college campuses where violence and property damage are not addressed. There are numerous examples of unions of the past taking rough measures to get their way. I'm sure I can come up with several examples from history if I need to take the time to research it. I would have to apologize in advance since I'm sure Communists, Fascists, and Nazis would come up. If we go outside the scope of speech then there would be countless examples of the government ignoring assault and violence that supports their needs.
Which right is that? It's certainly not the first amendment as that only gives you the right not to be oppressed by the government.
> I am shocked at how many people seem to think that if the government is not involved, then suppression of free expression is somehow tolerable.
I'm shocked at how many people can't seem to understand what the first amendment actually guarantees. You don't have a right of free expression, you merely have the right not to have the government oppress your expression. Why, because giving you the right to express anything you want anywhere you want would violate other people's property rights. Facebook for example, is owned by Facebook; you have no right to force them to allow your content.
> There are several examples from some subsets of the Black Lives Matter movement that get out of hand and it is actively ignored.
I don't believe that. Assault is a local police problem, if the assaulted doesn't report the assault, then the government isn't ignoring it, it's unaware of it.
But you seem to be ignoring that aspect of what I'm saying.
It is the same argument used in the civil rights era when certain states turned a blind eye to racial injustice. The state wasn't always directly oppressing the minority community with their powers, but the Federal government had no issue labeling and punishing those states for oppressing those people. Partly because of the inaction of preventing illegal activities against the minority communities. I don't recall many stories of state officials lynching young black men under the power of the law, but I've heard many of white men doing it with impunity with the law refusing to respond. All for the purposes of oppressing that community. I grew up in the South, I saw such racial injustices throughout my life all the way to college. It's a major reason why I have this attitude about oppression of people.
Please point me to where I have stated that free expression and free speech should allow the violation of property rights. I don't even understand how you can make that statement. I have not included the idea of third-parties being involved in anyone's speech. I have never claimed that one should have the right to post whatever you want on Facebook and that they can be forced to host it. I do not agree with that and feel that Facebook can do whatever they want with their property. I'm confused as to how Facebook even comes into this discussion. I'm not a big fan of pointing out fallacies, but I'm sure you made a couple with that one. I believe straw man is a popular one.
As your thoughts on the right of free expression; depending on your feelings about the United Nations, they disagree with you:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights : Article 19 : Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Now, granted, the UN tends to ignore that themselves when it comes to several of their member states. But it's there, and it's a natural right due to any free human being.
As for assaults and violence being ignored by police, any news media of your choice will likely lead you to stories on the subject. I fail to see how the government could be unaware of it. I see you skipped over the Chicago and San Jose examples. Also, the assaulted is not required to report to the police for action to be taken if the assault happened in the open.
Facebook often comes up because they curate, suppress, or block some users' comments/photos. Their discretion is framed as a "free speech" issue. Facebook is big so they've become a sort of common "placeholder" for a non-government private entity that limits users' expression. Also, Facebook was mentioned several times in the article that this thread is about.
>As your thoughts on the right of free expression; depending on your feelings about the United Nations, they disagree with you: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights : Article 19 : Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
The UDHR Article 19 is also about preventing government oppression in similar spirit to the USA First Amendment about "freedom of speech". (See my other comment about UDHR's origins and intended audience.)
People are quoting it out of context and applying it as if it was some universal "free speech without any consequences from non-government actors" proclamation.
I suppose I interpret the title "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" as meaning beyond government oppression. I believe in the idea of natural human rights and government exists because we allow it.
Regardless, I interpret government inaction on non-state actors that actively suppress by illegal activities a person's rights to free expression (or speech, whichever makes people happy) as a form of government oppression.
EDIT: thanks for the discussion, you've given me much to consider.
The above sentence is essentially lacking entirely of meaning. As your right of speech/expression can only be invoked when suppressed by a state entity, I assert that a non-state actor cannot possibly violate said right.
Please give me one example of a non-state entity violating your right to not have your speech oppressed by the state?
How does my right to free expression require a state entity? That implies that right is provided for by the state entity. That's not how it works.
Here's an example of how a non-state entity can violate your right to free expression with the state's approval; you start to say something I don't like, I punch you in the face to shut you up. You try again and I punch you again. Now imagine a police officer standing right next to me watching me do it.
The UN Article 19 does not disagree with me, it's also about non government intervention.
Local police corruption is not the same thing as government support. Those incidents are examples of local corruption, not government sanctioned oppression, and they are being addressed and that will take years to play out to see how the state responds.
I've already agreed to your premise around private property, why don't you consider my premise which is different?
I shall read up again on the UN's declarations. I admit it's been quite a few years for me.
Since the local police are an arm of local government, police corruption is the same as government support. When the next level of police hierarchy at the state government level also decides not to respond, then that's government support at the state level. As I said elsewhere, look into the complaints of the civil right's era and how state government's ignored crimes on the black communities.
An officer of the law refusing to enforce the law is incompetence, abuse of authority, or corruption. Executive branch incompetence, even criminal incompetence, is something distinctly different than legislative proscriptions that institutionalize through the power of law unwarranted interference in freedom of expression.
There is no need to label all these problems as instances of infringement on freedom of speech in order to argue that they are inappropriate. They are inappropriate all on their own. Mislabeling them just confuses the discussion.
This is like saying that nuclear weapons for individuals shouldn't be illegal because killing people is already illegal -- the punishment is too late!
Stifling people's free speech under threats that a person knows someone will follow through with, is the same as censorship.
Allowing that "threat" to hang in the air, is tacit acceptance of censorship by the government.
If free speech is a "right" is there a qualitative difference between society restricting it via one mechanism but not another? Does it matter that its your neighbors beating you to shut you up instead of the cops? If so, why?
No, "the right to free speech" means the right to be free of government censorship. "Freedom of speech" simply means freedom of speech, exactly what it says.
For example, recently a student got so offended with the politics of a poem in his campus newsletter he went to the office of a professor involved with producing it, demanding to know who "approved" it and refusing to leave (as though it was the duty of the university to protect him from such views). If a left-wing student had done this, we'd have seen all the familiar complaints about "outrage culture" and the death of "free speech" on campus, demands that the university punish him, etc. However, he was a right-wing activist objecting to left-wing content, so in the eyes of the same groups like FIRE etc this makes him a hero of student journalism who must be protected. There's no actual principles there; "free speech" is just a weapon of the right against the left, something that means freedom of right-wing views and freedom from left-wing ones.
ETA: Here is article 19 of the UDHR, which correctly does not mention governments:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
You're reading it incorrectly.
It doesn't mention "government" at that particular line because the document[1] itself was created as an initiative of government (or quasi-government committee if you think of the United Nations that way) ... as a reaction to Nazi government's failings... and it is aimed at an audience of other governments as a baseline for policy. It is not a document for corporations like Facebook or a religious organization of Muslims.
Even in the document's preamble, it states, "Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, "
Notice that it says "member nations" and not "member corporations" or "member schools", or "member social clubs". The "nations" are "governments".
For example, if you don't interpret the UDHR as a "government" document, the text from Article 15 doesn't make sense: "Article 15. (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality."
That line also doesn't have the word "government." That doesn't mean companies like Facebook were giving out "national citizenship id cards" and shouldn't ever withhold them so people are stateless. It's governments that have that power.
> If people are afraid to speak their mind due to murderous vigilantes, that has exactly the same consequences as the same due to an oppressive "government".
As others have pointed out, the laws against murder/assault already handle that case.
[1]http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/inde...
> As others have pointed out, the laws against murder/assault already handle that case.
Since I never suggested making any new laws, this is entirely irrelevant. I'm talking about what constitutes free speech and infringement of free speech, not... whatever it is you think would make special laws relevant.
And you are adding extra levels of meaning that are not in the UDHR to suit your argument. If as you say, there are extra levels of (implied) actors (e.g. religious groups, corporations, etc) besides government in Article 19, it would also means there are extra levels of actors for Article 9: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."
Was Article 9 put in there because non-government actors such as Mercedes-Benz, or IBM, or religious groups such as Catholics were arresting people and locking them in church prisons? No, the document was a reaction to government abuse (e.g. especially the Nazi government abuse... such as rounding up Jews and killing them.)
You're twisting the UDHR in an attempt to make it fit your argument.
>I'm talking about what constitutes free speech and infringement of free speech,
OK, got it.
Let me put it another way: The government can only realistically protect you from the government itself arresting you. The government can restrain itself from putting you in prison for dissenting opinions.
The government cannot protect you from advertisers dropping you, or business associates distancing themselves from you, or a girlfriend not marrying you... or other negative consequences of "free speech". You called your girlfriend's mother a "fat whale" and now the wedding is called off?!? Yes, your future mother-in-law was truly an obese monstrosity and you were only speaking the truth! And yet, the fiancé cancels the marriage because you expressed your contempt. Therefore, it means that you truly didn't have "free speech"!!! Well, that's how non-government free speech works. There are consequences. If only the government protected you from broken marriage engagements when you used your "free speech" to express The Truth. Yeah, UDHR Article 19 means you can insult your mother-in-law without consequences. Sure.
The government also can't protect you from a crazy suicide disciple of Zeus from inflicting harm because you decide to draw that god getting penetrated by a horse. The government can certainly punish the terrorist after the fact for assault. However, fear of retaliation from a non-government entity is not something the government can stop. What exactly do you expect the government to do? We don't have precognition-guilty-before-the-crime-is-executed technology.
If you define "free speech" as "freedom from non-government consequences", there is no government body on the planet that can provide that privilege to you. None.
Look, it's really not that complicated. When an actor is unspecified, the obvious answer is "anyone". "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile (by anyone)." That makes perfect sense. There's no reason to restrict it to governments.
> Let me put it another way: The government can only realistically protect you from the government itself arresting you. The government can restrain itself from putting you in prison for dissent.
So what? I already said I don't care what the government "can protect me from". I'm talking about the definition and societal value of free speech. The fact that people willfully conflate this moral concept with government action that may be aimed at defending (some instantiations of) this concept is the problem.
> Yeah, UDHR means you can insult your mother-in-law without consequences. Sure.
That's what we in the business call a "straw man".
ETA: I now see from reading your other comments that you clearly have a violent case of the Just World Fallacy. My condolences. That makes it perfectly clear why you would think that the premise that the government can't perfectly defend free speech against non-state actors means we should just give up and pretend no such right exists, and (by contrapositive) that me claiming the existence of such a moral right somehow means I think the government can reliably enforce it. Of course, both of these implications are false.
Which then means that Article 15 that doesn't specify an actor when talking about "right to nationality" calls on anyone to provide that nationality. If a stateless person washes up on shore of America, and if the USA refuses to provide citizenship, nsheppard or me (or anyone) gives him that citizenship.
Your (non-government) interpretation of UDHR does not have logical coherence that works for the whole document.
> I already said I don't care what the government "can protect me from"
If so, there is no need to refer to the UDHR in an attempt to back up your argument. That document's preamble is "Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, " which calls on governments to enforce the rights. Since enforcment is irrelevant to you, we can ignore the UDHR and not let out-of-context quotes of Article 19 muddy up subsequent conversation.
> moral right
I'm not proposing we give up. My position is more nuanced than that. I suggest that people don't frame non-government "free speech" as a "moral right". Instead, see it as an "economic puzzle". This leads to clearer thinking. The "free speech" (unrelated to government arrests) that people want has a "cost". Understand what that cost is and analyze how to pay for it. If you're unwilling to pay the cost, you're unwilling to have "free speech".
This is inane. You're inventing a rule for mutilating the statements of the UDHR that I never claimed exists. "Everyone has the right to a nationality" in standard english says that everyone has the right to a nationality. There's no actor to fill in, it doesn't call on anyone to do anything.
The document as a whole is an agreement among member states to (try to) enforce the rights asserted to exist within.
> If so, there is no need to refer to the UDHR in an attempt to back up your argument.
The article asserts (factually / morally) the existence of certain "human" rights, which is exactly what I am talking about.
Incorrect. It does call on someone (the government!) to do something. The "right to nationality" is not to be parsed the same way as "right to exhale carbon dioxide". Nobody has to do anything to enable people to exhale CO2. CO2 is a natural process and just happens on its own. On the other hand, the concept of "nationality" must be actively provided by a sovereign government. Look at the next sentence Article 15.2: "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality..." How can anyone "deprive" someone of something if nobody has to do anything to provide it?
If you're not familiar with the concept "nationality", refer to the wiki[1]. So yes, somebody must do something. Again, Article 15 was another response to the Nazi government stripping the German citizenship from Jews and leaving them stateless. If as you say, "nobody" has to do anything to provide nationality, it also means "nobody" including the Nazis could take away citizenship from the Jews. Obviously, that makes no sense.
It doesn't seem like you understand the origins of UDHR or its actual scope. Referring to it to assert that non-government "free speech" is a "moral right" undermines your argument. Instead, frame "free speech" as a puzzle of money and freedom of association.
Yes, I understand that nationalities are granted by governments. This is completely and utterly irrelevant to the basic grammar which is involved in parsing "Everyone has the right to a nationality" as a declarative statement.
The way you are constantly substituting in things that seem "vaguely relevant" for unrelated grammatical terms ("this is a 'government document' so whenever something is unspecified I guess I just put 'government' in there and hope it parses??") defies basic reading comprehension and standard english.
At this point I don't think there's any point in me continuing.
then law enforcement has failed, not freedom of speech. its illegal to be a murderous thug, so if there are murderous thugs running around threatening people they should be dealt with within the existing law.
I'm not even sure what your argument is - we should enact laws protecting free speech from these murderous thugs? as if those laws would somehow deter them more than the laws against murder?
even though you may disagree with the man?
However, the ideal of free speech is much greater and the enemies to free speech are, in today's world, much less often the Government and much more often economic or social. While it would not make sense to try to attack them through constitutional arguments, the ideals of the first amendment are a considerable reflection of greater ideals of free speech to which we should still strive.
Why should we not exercise our own free speech to speak out against economic and social forces which try to restrict it? It is not a dilution of the term to apply it in this way. It has since its inception referred to freedom from all sorts of restriction.
Bertrand Russell in 1922 wrote:
"Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thought. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search."
(Free Though and Official Propaganda)[https://books.google.com/books?id=QY8DAAAAMAAJ]
If we define "free speech" to mean freedom from oppression only by government, then we need a new word to mean freedom to express ideas without people actively organizing to try to hurt you.
Edit: And the recent bad behavior is effective. I'm a little rebellious and I explore a lot of different ideas. I'm afraid to express certain ideas, opinions or even information that are not popular. I'm afraid that it might wipe out my career or pose physical danger to me if someone misinterprets what I say and turns the mob against me.
We used to call that bullying. And that "freedom" never existed. That's why we make laws to throw bullies in jail, to discourage bullying.
Harassment, bullying, etc. etc. People are assholes. That will always exist, and at best the behavior can only be discouraged. Basic schoolyard principles yo.
Even if true free speech never existed, the idea of it shows exactly how they're being assholes.
That's not an "if", that's what it means and what's it's always meant, it's been defined that way since the founding of the country.
> then we need a new word to mean freedom to express ideas without people actively organizing to try to hurt you.
Assault is already illegal, we don't need a new word to describe out right not to be physically assaulted.
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
I wish more people would read On Liberty
This does not follow. Your narrow definition does nothing to stop a private organization, with its own motive for supporting the president, from deploying some black helicopters.
This is not a nit - any government is isomorphic to a perfect "Libertopia" where a single corporation owns everything. In other words, if you don't like a country's rules, then just leave their premises!
So in order to mean anything at all, the concept of Freedom of Speech (and really, any societal ideals) must mean something more general. We cannot simply create a basic foundation of rules, and then let emergent structure usurp any qualitative guarantees we had desired!
But that scenario is based around "independent" reprisals. The real threat we are facing today is directly connected consequences...
> [government] can legally do far more things than private organizations
This completely misses my original point - both government and private organizations can do things that effectively punish. For example, a mall can kick you out and banish you for wearing an offensive T-shirt. This is not a problem when malls are but a small part of society, but form a restriction equivalent to government if one's entire society is made up of malls.
Title IX is a good example of a law which can be expanded to limit the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly by coercion. This has come about because federal funding is an indispensable portion of the modern research university's budget. As such, no 1 person, no 1 group can be allowed to threaten the University's compliance with the law. Therefore, the law enables the government to coerce the institution into severing its private contract with the offensive party - student or faculty. In effect, a government agency is able to punish political speech by proxy.
As 25% of the GDP, and probably upwards of 90% of the spending in many industries (e.g. defense contracting), the governments spending power has given it unforseen power to demand a trade of speech for access to economic opportunities. We need a law similar to "too big to fail" in sectors where the government has monopoly-like powers.
Do you not think the common belief that governments are of, for, and by the people, compared to the common belief that businesses are self-interested, results in differences in what those organizations can actually end up doing?
I'm not saying the two are equivalent - distinguishing between the two could obviously be useful in a different discussion. I'm following this reduction to illustrate a contradiction.
System behavior cannot be met by creating the correct "axiomatic primitives" and then blindly building on them. We are computer scientists, and so we know that complexity eventually creates emergent behavior that likely contradicts our original goals. System behavior must be analyzed for its qualitative effects in the "big picture", to see if our goals are being met.
That is the most succinct explanation I've heard yet for why virtually all of economics is wrong.
They are both institutions, and as such share all the issues common to large bodies of humans trying to operate in unison, but the reductionism in the analogy is too big for it to be meaningful.
> So in order to mean anything at all, the concept of Freedom of Speech (and really, any societal ideals) must mean something more general.
No, it has to mean nothing more and it's quite meaning as is.
It is you who are choosing to adopt this law as the entirety of what the concept means to you.
I do not agree, Facebook is displaying the speech they choose to display and this is their exercise of their freedom of speech on their website. Same for twitter. Users have no right/reason to expect they can say anything on these private properties.
> In this case, my statement is meant to encourage people to seek out Freer software.
We agree on that.
Furthermore, the actual text of the first amendment does not define freedom of speech, but explicitly references it as an external concept.
This is a very libertarian position. But those of us who are part of the left wing are somewhat cognizant of the dangers of marginal voices being economically and socially excluded, even if it's not done via state sponsored violence.
(Incidentally, is there also no problem with freedom of association applying only to the government? I.e., if I choose not to associate with women/non-Asian minorities in my business, that's ok too, given that I'm not the government?)
Do you have a problem with a world where those who oppose homosexual activity, corporations and racists are socially shunned and economically excluded?
> I should have the total freedom to refuse to hire anyone who advocates for more women/non-Asian minorities in technology?
Do you have total freedom to refuse to hire anyone who advocates for merit-based hiring?
> The Hollywood Blacklist - published by the Hollywood Reporter and implemented by studios - was totally fine?
Was the NBA's lifetime ban on Donald Sterling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling#Racial_remarks...) totally fine?
> This is a very libertarian position. But those of us who are part of the left wing are somewhat cognizant of the dangers of marginal voices being economically and socially excluded, even if it's not done via state sponsored violence.
I'd argue that the groups you mentioned are far less marginalised than those I mentioned. That was, of course, not the case until recently.
That's why I take the libertarian position: freedom of association is sacrosanct; you are free to associate with whomever you like and I am free to associate with whomever I like (I suppose I should note that I've no desire to associate with racists and sexists, just to forestall that line of criticism). Anything else is fundamentally unjust: it uses the threat of force to compel someone to associate with those he wishes to remove himself from. It's wrong.
Yes.
I haven't reached epistemic closure. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html?_r=1 if you are unfamiliar.) I believe we may be incorrect about a variety of things we currently believe - we have not yet reached the pinnacle of human knowledge.
In order to discover places where we currently are wrong, we need to be tolerant of people expressing dissenting points of view. For this purpose, preventing a (possibly correct) dissenting view from being expressed via social ostracism is just as harmful as preventing it via force of arms.
I agree, but I distinguish between tolerance & acceptance. Tolerance means you do your thing & I do my thing; acceptance means we do the same thing. The problem is, if we each have opposing ideas of the good then we can't accept one another's ideas. Acceptance of opposing ideas can only really work by pretending that the ideas themselves don't matter, but tolerance can respect the importance of the ideas themselves while agreeing to disagree.
I'm suggesting that you should prove yourself correct rather than simply making me afraid to speak. If your ideas are correct, why is that so difficult?
I don't see any problem here. This is a conflict between two corporations (the NBA and whatever holding corporation Sterling used to own the Clippers) where one (NBA) decided to terminate the relationship.
As a libertarian, how can you not agree? If freedom of associate is sacrosanct, as you state, then isn't this the NBA choosing not to associate with Sterling? He can seek redress from the courts (which he did, case still pending) if he wasn't happy.
The Hollywood Blacklist, too, was between private corporations and private individuals.
I think that in both cases folks had a right to act as they did, but I think one can also argue that they were wrong to do so. What's harder IMHO to argue is that one was right but the other wrong.
It sure doesn't look like that is the case, since it is overwhelmingly leftists that are trying to silence things they don't like, trying to get people fired for having "wrong" opinions, and justifying their attacks on people with "but I'm on the right side of history".
Of course when a single company has a near monopoly due to network effect they become a defacto government.
The problem is that the internet looks like a public commons, but it is not. It is private. The illusion of the public commons on the internet it at odds with the notion of free speech. It it this seeming disconnect that causes people to realize there's a problem.
In fact as privatization increases, you will realize the space where you may exercise your supposed right to free speech will eventually become non existent. You have no rights when everything is private and governed by contracts that supersede "rights" as a condition of functioning in society. Further, you may eventually learn you can't exercise any rights if everything were private.
Or put differently, is there even a "public space" where you could speak freely on the internet? It's almost always some company's server that you're using. Distributed and decentralized solutions only manage to compete in niche applications while face to face speech manages to not rely on any private carrier.
> What is the liberty of the press? Who can give it any definition which would leave not the utmost latitude for evasion? I hold it to be impracticable... [0]
> Protection against the tyranny of government isn't enough; there needs to be protection also against the tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling [1]
> Liberty of circulating is as essential to liberty as liberty of publishing; indeed, without the circulation, the publication would be of little value. [2]
Then of course even if what you have in mind is the First Amendment, its whole historical trajectory is to expand to apply to more things. As written it applied to only Congress as distinct from any other form of government, and I note the conspicuous absence of that limitation in how you describe the freedom. And this may be news to some, but we started applying it to private actors long before I was born (Wickersham v. City of Columbia, Brentwood Acad. v. TN Sec. School Ath. Assn, etc.) So it has a long history of ever-expanding scope, and of course when you look at what e.g. Madison thought it was broad from its very birth.
Now we get to
> Well, the real world will never let you have that type of "free speech". If it bothers people... they can start another website/college that allows it. ... In other words, the non-government "free speech" has a cost and sometimes, society doesn't want to pay for it
I'm trying not to poison the well, but this same argument made here has implications for e.g. civil rights. "If you want a hotel that lets black people stay there you can start another one. Racial integration has a cost and society doesn't want to pay for it." But we decided as a society (over many folks' objections) that racial equality was important, and so we wrote legislation. Some people really disliked that at the time; some people still dislike it. However as we no longer have segregated bathrooms I think it is hard to argue that "the real world will never let you" establish human rights, it is actually the story of our country.
You are certainly free to believe that there we have no fundamental human right to expressing a political position on the Internet without living in fear of being fired from our job; that we have come quite far enough, thanks. You can also believe that one's "right" to do that is trumped by other people's rights to contract freely.
But I think in that case one should just admit that they don't see free speech as a fundamental human right. There is no shame in that position. And there is no need to hide behind an economic argument from a dark time in our history, there is no need to accuse folks who do see free speech as fundamental as "diluting" the term or that we live somewhere other than "the real world". Just saying "I don't believe it's a right" is a much faster, tighter, and more difficult argument to attack.
[0] Federalist 84
[1] JS Mill, On Liberty
[2] SCOTUS, Lovell v. City of Griffin
I do believe "free speech" as in freedom to criticize or dissent from the government as a fundamental right.
On the other hand, "free speech" as in freedom to speak any topic without any negative consequences of income or social disapproval is not possible. It is not just my belief. I'm saying it's impossible to provide non-government type of free speech because it contradicts the other Freedom Of Association (e.g. freedom to choose who/what to spend money on.)
Freedom of speech (non-government version) cannot not co-exist with Freedom of Association. It is built on top of Freedom of Association.
Example: A blogger has the "freedom of speech" to hate on Mark Zuckerberg (a non-government topic). MZ also has freedom not to associate with people who hate him (and in turn he might reciprocate the dislike.)
Freedom of speech (non-government version) is not as fundamental as MZ's freedom to associate (or not associate) with you. He can avoid hiring you because you hate him. Was the hate blogger's "freedom of speech" trampled because he wasn't hired?
This is what the "cost" in "cost of free speech" is about. No society will "pay" for it because people don't want to be forced to spend money on entities they don't agree with.
The "cost" for government-free-speech is different. The government simply has to not spend money on an expanding fleet of black helicopters to arrest people. The government also does not spend money on building more Federal prisons to incarcerate dissenters.
Realistic to implement: free speech without government interference (don't arrest people)
Impossible to implement: free speech with zero negative consequences from society (advertising sponsors drop you, job application rejected, school admission rejected, marriage proposal rejected, Facebook de-friending, Twitter un-following, radical religious retaliation, etc, etc.)
If people are afraid of freely discussing political ideas, there's no free speech. It doesn't matter if that's because they're afraid of being jailed (government pressure) or they're afraid of losing jobs, scholarships, career advancement, or other personal issues (as was in former socialists states in EU).
They asked. That was within their right to do.
That seems like the kind of free speech that limits other people's free speech ability to say something along the lines of "nazi punks fuck off" and actively respond to things they disagree with.
To say that no one has "free speech" if there are any consequences to saying stuff seems to me as taking it much too far.
But what I am saying is that there is absolutely no difference if a news reporter is arrested by the government or if that same news reporter is fired and can't find a job again. Free discussion of problems in society was blocked in both cases. In real history the second form of government supression was significantly more common than the first and was supported by the same kind of argument the original poster was making.
IMO the difference is in the magnitude of consequences - if I criticize EU policy and as a consequence I'm not welcome in a smaller discussion group due to it is one thing. If I and everyone else criticizes that same policy and we all lose our jobs and houses because of that, it's a whole different type of problem.
It's a worthwhile thing to be concerned about.
The problem that exists with Facebook is actually just a symptom of another, largely unspoken problem; Facebook has a monopoly, and this monopoly gives them unprecedented influence over the population.
Getting to the bottom of things is important, because the bandage that addresses the symptom you're describing is the tyranny you fear.
Don't protest about wall street or a militarized police force damn well will beat you up/pepper spray you/shoot you with a grenade launcher/arrest you
As an American, I have the right to bear arms (ok the constitution actually says not to infringe on "a well-regulated militia" but bear with me), but not the right to spray automatic gunfire wherever I please.
I disagree with your assertion that "our society doesn't view free speech as a consistent principle." Of course we do. Free expression is a staple of Western civilization, and shows us how far we have come from mandated religion and the sanctity of the nobility.
However, free expression can be damaging in certain circumstances. It is a testament to the strength of our civilization and our values that we find ways to mitigate the harm from certain kinds of expression, rather than scrapping the 1st Amendment altogether. It lasted over 200 years, why not 200 more?
Holmes Jr's opinion was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot).
The problem with your position, is since we aren't dealing with 'what did happen' but with 'what could have happened' it becomes an ambiguous and potentially abusive provision - highly subjective to personal biases.
These are all laws meant to protect us from each other. I suppose you could argue with any of these on principle, but it's a pretty standard part of our social contract now.
I would personally argue that the society we live in has reached a level where we are incapable of being fully informed about all the risks, requirements and possibilities. We have to own cars to buy groceries, go to work and raise our kids because neighborhood grocery stores and schools are no more. We can't all be expected to be experts on HVAC and electrical because we've spent the totality of our existence in highly specialized training for whatever it is we do. We live in an incredibly close quarters society, and history has shown us that vaccinations are almost a must.
Making laws based on what could happen just seems like common sense given these realities.
Yes - but we also don't have an amendment which says:
"Congress shall make no law abridging my right to drive fast"
Preservation of free-speech is specially important in a way that the speed-limit on the highway is not. So I would say these aren't analogous applications of bias.
> I would personally argue that the society we live in has reached a level where we are incapable of being fully informed about all the risks, requirements and possibilities. We have to own cars to buy groceries, go to work and raise our kids because neighborhood grocery stores and schools are no more. We can't all be expected to be experts on HVAC and electrical because we've spent the totality of our existence in highly specialized training for whatever it is we do. We live in an incredibly close quarters society, and history has shown us that vaccinations are almost a must. Making laws based on what could happen just seems like common sense given these realities.
You could also go further e.g. "I would personally argue that the society we live in has reached a level where we are incapable of being fully informed about all the risks, requirements and possibilities. Anti-vaccination speech should be outlawed, the practicants of such speech are a menace to public health, their children and others children."
Putting speech into the category of acceptable bias without effect, is a dangerous path..
Indeed, laws like trademark and truth in advertising are exactly what you are suggesting could happen. They are laws that protect consumers from potential harm created by false claims. It's not a limitation on political speech, but fact. I don't think anti-vaccination speech being illegal is actually too terribly unreasonable. I guess in my day to day existence I would rather live in a culture where I'm generally protected from potential harms so I can go about my day with less worry. Could those limitations reach a point where I find them unreasonable? Surely they have and surely it has happened in the history of the United States, but I think it's a testament to the culture and its institutions that we've rebalanced when we've gone too far one direction.
That would let you ban publication of a rigorous, well-done study that found actual harm from some vaccinations. That is not a good path to be on.
If you want to get unsubstantiated and speculative anti-vaccination speech outlawed, you need to convince a majority of people to do it. In such a case, it seems likely that the medical community would also contain a majority convinced of the worthlessness of anti-vaccination speech, thus relying on them to substantiate it would be pointless.
In general, what you're describing is tyranny of the majority that a constitution is meant to prevent. Even if we had the omniscience to determine that vaccinations are now perfectly safe and give brilliant results, outlawing speech against them makes them a protected category, which is ripe for abuse. The argument will shift from pro/anti vaccination to "this is not a real vaccination", subverting whatever your intention of outlawing the speech was. Meanwhile, the things billed under 'vaccination' will slowly morph as time advances, as people fight to classify more and more medicine under it, to protect their drugs from criticism.
This is exactly the thing that happens already under every exception to the First Amendment in the US, and why courts would repeatedly narrow down each exception, refusing to expand it further. Are you prepared to add this to the list of things to be eternally vigilant about? How confident are you that the courts will continue to defend narrow limitations when given an ever-growing list of them? Most importantly, do you think your new law will have any useful effect, given that people are notoriously good at subverting narrowly-crafted censorship, and broad censorship always has unintentional side-effects?
In fact, I would say the expectation exists that the government will do that. We have come to take for granted that the products we buy are safe and the claims we see are true, precisely because we accept that it's reasonable to expect speech to be limited in this way.
Regardless, I don't want to lose the thread. Anti-vaccination is not a commercial enterprise, no one is making false claims and selling them (well, some people are, but not as a product). The example was fair, and I can acknowledge that I may be wrong on that.
But I stand by that we can, and should, be allowed to limit speech to prevent harm, just like we limit all sorts of other things for the same reason, including things that are constitutionally protected.
And yet, so many Western countries disagree about what it actually means and have different laws. There's differences in places and time. Cinema and movies weren't covered by 1st Amendment for decades in the USA.
For cinema in the USA, a 9-0 Supreme Court case in 1915 found that movies weren't covered by the First Amendment. That was overturned in 1952 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Burstyn,_Inc._v._Wilson )
As soon as you get - e.g. - Snowden or Manning, the speech suddenly stops being free (of consequences) even though it's in the public interest.
We're certainly not fine with free politics. Politics currently is still stuck in a medieval mode where it's entirely about about profit and power, not representation.
The establishment in most countries will fight to the death to keep it that way.
So if speech is harmful it can be banned? That's an interesting new exemption.
Banning holocaust denial is the national equivalent of recoiling one's hand after touching a hot stove. Most Germans really, really do not want to go back there.
These are very basic and very old exemptions.
Personally, I think shouting 'fire' in a theater should be 'free and legal' for a few key reasons.
First, it allows the morality of individuals in a society, not the morality of a few in power, to be the consequences of another's action. Second, if a bigot refuses service, shout's slurs, or yells 'fire' in a theater, it may hurt my feelings, but you bet your ass I want that information. By silencing people whose morals i disagree with, you don't change their morality. You only shield it from me, so now I don't know about it.
If you shout fire in a crowded theater (in which there is no fire), and the crowd pushes and shoves to race to the exit (if it can happen at a Walmart on Black Friday it can happen in a theater where people don't want to burn to death), and people get injured or even killed, forget about morals, you could be liable for manslaughter.
Bad speech can be countered by MORE speech. Ban on speech cannot.
Did you honestly believe I meant to say that people should not be warned about an actual fire?
Regardless, you certainly do have the First Amendment right to shout fire in a crowded theater (the quote everybody refers is bad law), the government will not actively try to prevent it; you just may have to deal with the legal consequences of using your right in such a way.
I don't think holocaust denial should be a crime. Yes it's despicable, but I'd rather put it in the same category and hollow earthers and UFO spotters. We can't legislate people out of their own stupidity. It's not going to stop people holding such views or circulating them among themselves anyway, so it's utterly pointless.
For me Porn is easy too. If it only involves consenting adults, it's fine. If it doesn't then other crimes have been committed and distributing it is de facto complicity by association in those crimes.
That only leaves slander and libel. These are civil, not criminal matters and should be prosecuted as private matters based on the harm done to the individuals so slandered or libeled
I'd add incitement to commit crimes as an issue. But that falls under complicity or conspiracy to commit a crime. If the speech in question doesn't cross that line, then it should be free.
Anything left?
You only have to deal with what "consenting adults" means(currently a hotbed of political discussion and activity), and what "distribution" means(a fundamental question behind the drug war, copyright infringement, and so on).
> I'd add incitement to commit crimes as an issue. But that falls under complicity or conspiracy to commit a crime. If the speech in question doesn't cross that line, then it should be free.
And where this line lies is not a topic of contention.
> That only leaves slander and libel. These are civil, not criminal matters and should be prosecuted as private matters based on the harm done to the individuals so slandered or libeled
That doesn't really explain how to define slander or libel, whether there should be exceptions to them ("fair commentary" based on presented facts, statements about public figures, minor errors..), whether there's a mens rea requirement to defamation, etc.
Most of these things are examples of contentions with not just a moral idea of freedom of speech but with the narrower First Amendment in the US. Legislating speech is complicated precisely because it has so much power and value. If it weren't both wonderful and dangerous, we wouldn't bother...talking...so much about it.
How do you feel about news broadcasts showing murders?
Or trespassers?
How about non-reporters using murder footage for some dumb purpose like background footage to their halloween album?
You can draw reasonable lines, but it's in a very different place from "depicts a crime yes/no".
Still ok to ban it. Clearly I am putting pornography in a different category from other forms of images and 'speech' but I'm comfortable doing so.
> How about non-reporters using murder footage for some dumb purpose like background footage to their halloween album?
Fine.
> You can draw reasonable lines, but it's in a very different place from "depicts a crime yes/no".
I agree. Depicting crimes isn't the problem, there's the issue of preventing incitement and blocking avenues for funding criminal activities. Pornography is so particularly and differently vulnerable to these abuses that I think special treatment under the law is reasonable.
It seems it is okay in USA to make fun of Jesus/Christianity, Moses/Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism but if one makes fun of Islam, Muhammad or quran all of a sudden it becomes hate-speech, Islamophobia and even racial attack. The liberal and leftists have double standards here.
Most of the things you list are not about expressing ideas or making arguments, they're mostly about breaking contracts. Those that are not, e.g., holocaust denial, are precisely the contentious and dangerous ones.
At least in the US, I think free speech is the right that's treated most consistently and broadly. "Free speech" isn't meaningless just because it doesn't fit the meaning you've outlined here.
that a principle should be applied differently in different situations is the very the definition of wisdom reaching back to dawn of philosophy, (which by no coincidence was also the dawn of democracy)
> [article] seem[s] to be unnecessarily abstract
if wrapping up discrete facets of discourse into a concrete, higher order order concept of discourse, and then reasoning about how discourse regarding discourse is affected in different ways is too difficult to bear, there's always a doctrine out there looking for adherents
> just have the debate
we are; we are discussing how (1) anti speech doctrines have motivated violence, and (2) how doctrinally motivated violence has affected free speech; free speech, moreover, as (i) a crucial element of social justice, and (ii) a reflexively open principle, or constitution, which founds modern society
don't reduce thinking about these matters to a referendum
> or whatever
no, finish your thought. maybe: "or whatever people pretend to care about" and you clearly can't be bothered by
> [we don't] really view free speech as a consistent principle anyway
the fact that we have upheld the term "free speech" despite its many forms is our collective recognition of the usefulness of the idea, the pervasiveness of its application, and our consistent concern over its worth, or fate
Snowden is not the same as the journalist. He took that contractor position knowing that he couldn't talk about what he saw. He signed a NDA saying he understood his position would expose him to classified material AND he understands that talking about such information with uncleared[1] people is illegal. If you are interested to read the exact NDA he signed you are freely able to, https://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/new_sf312.pdf, is the approved NDA for all agencies that administer security clearances[2].
Snowden does know all about illegal speech, because he did break his NDA and he knew ahead of time what the consequences were going to be. Journalist were not bound by such a NDA with the US Government, so they can go and write about whatever they want to without fear of being arrested.
[1] Just because you have the appropriate level of security clearance doesn't mean you get to see any classified materials. You must also have a "Need to Know".
[2] You will sign one of these MULTIPLE times throughout your career. You sit in a room while the security manager reads it to you, after every paragraph you are asked if you have any questions and if you understand what that section means.
Edited for format.
> Shut up or I’ll kill you
>The third recent change is that, whereas the threats to free speech used to come almost entirely from governments, now non-state actors are nearly as intimidating
This pretty much completely circumvents your point
Laws regarding fraud and misrepresentation:
> * Distributing pirated media/breaking copyright or trademarks
> * Slander and libel laws
> * Sharing information for insider trading
> * Market manipulation by sharing false or misleading information
> * Slander and libel laws
> * Holocaust denial laws in Canada and Europe
Professional confidentiality obligations:
> * HIPAA and medical information privacy laws
> * Breaching attorney-client privilege
> * Military and government classified information (thanks rmc!)
Obscenity:
> * FCC and obscenity laws in US media
> * Distribution of illegal porn (for various definitions of illegal)
The odd one out is juries, and there is a legitimate argument that we shouldn't do that, but it's also very old and so unlike anything else that it doesn't really generalize to anything.
And after you get through the whole list, there is something that still holds in the end: The press (including the people) can write and publish any not-provably-false story.
But now people are being threatened by angry mobs for criticizing inhumane religious practices or publishing a contrary opinion about pronoun usage.
Canada does not have holocaust denial laws. It has hate speech laws. Conveniently holocaust denial writers struggle to keep their antisemitism out of the writing.
* Distributing pirated media/breaking copyright or trademarks
* Slander and libel laws
* HIPAA and medical information privacy laws
* Sharing information for insider trading
* Market manipulation by sharing false or misleading information
* Breaching attorney-client privilege
* Laws governing how jurors are allowed to communicate
* FCC and obscenity laws in US media
* Distribution of illegal porn (for various definitions of illegal)
* Holocaust denial laws in Canada and Europe
* US anti-boycott provisions that ban "furnishing information" about doing business with certain countries
* Military and government classified information (thanks rmc!)
There are many others. The point is we're always a bit selective about what counts as free speech, and there are lots of exceptions, some very well motivated.
These articles about "free speech is in danger" seem to be unnecessarily abstract: if you want to discuss the problems with Islam or the merits of social justice or whatever, don't argue about the way you're having the debate, just have the debate. Because our society doesn't really view free speech as a consistent principle anyway.