Edit: and 30s later this comment is at -2. It’s bizarre to me that so many Americans simply cannot entertain that the First Amendment might not be a net positive for the country.
What could you possibly mean by this? Can you provide any examples of how other nations have codified freedom of speech, expression, religion and peaceful assembly and in some different and superior way?
Not the OP but here in Germany the guiding principle of all lawmaking and action of the state is human dignity, as laid out in the first article of the basic law.
Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
and freedom of expression while enjoying numerous protections reaches its limitations when that dignity is under attack (article 5):
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour.
Does your right to spout hate speech about my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion?
Does your right to spend $1B on amplifying your political speech drown out my political speech and effectively nullify it?
Other countries have answered yes to those questions while the US has answered no.
Does your right to criticize my religion infringe on my right to freely and safely practice my religion? No. Even if the criticism is harsh, even hateful. I find this a particularly curious example, because there's a long history of criticism of religion, from Nietzsche to Dawkins, much of it harsh, even hateful. I'm not aware of any countries that ban these writers, though apparently Dawkins got cancelled for also applying his criticism to islam. And what if your religion itself entails beliefs that makes other people, such as women or homosexuals, fear for their rights? Then they are not allowed to hate on your religion, because that makes you fear for your freedom of religion?
It is legal in the US to say that all Muslims are terrorists that deserve to be shot with bullets dipped in pig's blood. How would you feel hearing that if you were a Muslim? Would you feel that you could safely and openly practice your religion?
You say this as if these are clearly defined categories. Take the charlie hebdo cartoons: Criticism, blasphemy or hate speech? At any rate, your argument applies even to criticism. Criticism can lead people to infringe on your freedom of religion.
On this specific one, it’s not a matter of drowning you out, it’s being able to compete with someone else spending $1B endorsing the opposite opinion. Or more importantly, being able to pay for your message to be distributed rather than having to own a media empire to get it published.
If it weren’t for the Citizens United decision being decided in the correct direction, you’d be a the media landscape would be a slave to whoever owns it. People or organizations that make their money elsewhere would be stifled from expressing their opinions through advertising purchases.
The alternative is that only billionaires that control media empires get to pick what messages you hear.
More importantly, the CU ruling was that groups of non-billionaires (ex: a union or PAC) could pool their resources together in order to amplify their combined message.
> That is trading one devil for another. I don't want a good guy with $1B battling a bad guy with a $1B. That doesn't fix anything.
It sounds like you just want to silence voices that may be louder than your own.
> I want everyone's political speech to be on a more even playing field. That currently can't happen due to the First Amendment and the interpretation that says money is equal to speech.
If I spend my time making and selling widgets but feel strongly about a political issue or candidate, why can I not spend the money I earned (and paid taxes on!) to promote that issue or candidate? Must I purchase a TV network or a newspaper in order to push my agenda? That's what CU addresses.
That outcome is one alternative, it is not the only alternative. We can put laws in place to regulate how the media talks about political issues. We used to have the fairness doctrine for example. I wouldn't necessarily want that reintroduced exactly how it existed, but something along those lines would help the US political system.
>More importantly, the CU ruling was that groups of non-billionaires (ex: a union or PAC) could pool their resources together in order to amplify their combined message.
So what? These organizations are free to advise their people how to voice their opinion and they can even facilitate doing so through internal programs such as voter registration drives or petition drives. We don't have to allow them to pool money to voice their opinion to the general public.
>It sounds like you just want to silence voices that may be louder than your own.
"When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression." I want voices to be equal. The people who have the loudest voices will probably feel like I want them silenced.
>If I spend my time making and selling widgets but feel strongly about a political issue or candidate, why can I not spend the money I earned (and paid taxes on!) to promote that issue or candidate? Must I purchase a TV network or a newspaper in order to push my agenda? That's what CU addresses.
You can still promote your issue or candidate. I just want the medium of exchange to be your time and not your money. That would help even out the balance of power. Why should the people with more money be able to spread their message further than people without it?
It is equality of opportunity. What you seem to want is equality of outcome.
Nothing stops you or your politically minded allies from pooling your own resources.
> You can still promote your issue or candidate. I just want the medium of exchange to be your time and not your money. That would help even out the balance of power. Why should the people with more money be able to spread their message further than people without it?
Why should the unemployed or those on the dole, with all the time in the world, have an advantage over the employed?
Look how often constitutional ammendments were proposed in the past compared to today. We're fossilizing the idea of our country into a religion instead of continuing to have useful debate on why today isn't like yesterday and on what updates we need to make now.
>"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1]
But to address your key point, I'd bet a lot of people are down-voting the grandparent's superior/condescending tone, as exemplified by the following fragments:
>"America’s big problem... yet Americans take it on faith... Americans simply cannot entertain"
I also don't think the rate at which amendments are proposed is a good indication of how healthy our country is. Shouldn't things stabilize and require less revision eventually?
I don't think that's obvious at all, especially given changes in population, technology, and international situations over the same timeframe as that nation's institutional stagnation.
I think the freedom of speech Bannon has is fine. He's welcome to make whatever calls he wants - though I do wonder if he may have strayed from merely "uncivil" into "incitement".
But Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times... they don't need to amplify it. He is not entitled to their audiences too.
I would argue that this is exactly what legal and democratic systems that work but that don’t give such primacy to 1FA offer.
Facebook, twitter must not amplify one content over another or it loses it's neutral status. If it begins make decisions based on what it prefers content wise it would lose a common carrier status and should be regulated like those other entities and not be treated as neutrual platform.
The New York Times is a newspaper and doesn't belong.
It can't lose what it never had to begin with. Information services post Section 230 have 0 obligation to be "neutral". You should read the law instead of listening to Internet commentators' fantasies and wishlists of "neutrality" and "censorship makes you a publisher". This is all bullcrap.
So I believe we're mostly talking about a spectrum of what mechanisms there are and their consequences. Ie. is it OK for the entire planet to bully anyone in public until they lose everything? This is actually hard to prevent, if no mechanisms to do so are in place, while communication is as "free" as possible.
But my position is that not having the First Amendment also has negative effects, and those effects are worse. Such as, for example, creating a world where your post could be deleted merely for suggesting that the Constitution had a weakness.
I'm going to say stuff. Some of it will go against the prevailing narrative. I want to be able to say it anyway. Sometimes, I'll even be right. I think the right to do so is important.
None of which you enumerated
> But my position is that not having the First Amendment also has negative effects
Protections of free speech are much weaker in most of the rest of the free and rich world. Why don’t those negative effects show up there?
Because it's pretty obvious. You're trying to score some cheap rhetorical points, and I decline to give them to you.
> Protections of free speech are much weaker in most of the rest of the free and rich world. Why don’t those negative effects show up there?
They don't at the moment show up strongly in most of the rest of the free and rich world. They show up in, for example, China. (Though negative effects show up in England from their libel laws, for example. They just aren't as flagrant as what you see in China.)
To put the burden of proof on the other foot: Is there any reason to think that the absence of FA-type free speech guarantees is making things better in the rest of the free and rich world? If not, I'll keep the guarantee, because I really like being able to say what I please.
Yes. It's the negatives you were unwilling to enumerate.
And I note with some amusement that you are now the one unwilling to specify. Sauce for the goose...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25077547
Anyway, in short, I'm sure (and I mean this) you're a smart and well-read guy or gal, but from your entirely circular arguments here I don't think you've ever seriously spent time considering what the alternatives to the first amendment are. Everything you've claimed to like about it is just as true in other free, rich countries, and the negatives you repeatedly decline to mention are largely absent. You've brought in libel as an example, which of course is _not_ protected by 1FA. The importance of 1FA at this point is a national religion.
If you don't think this is negative, I guess we aren't talking about the same thing.
Did you actually read the article before reposting it? It's been illegal there since 1981. The article simply says it's been extended to include new groups.
Yes, I absolutely think hate speech should be restricted, and the laws of most countries agree with that, with the USA being a notable exception:
> A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
Do I think hate speech in private should be restricted? I think _probably_ not, but I think this is for the elected legislature to decide, not an idea that is edict from several hundred years ago.
So you _probably_ agree with me? This is the exact point. Many people that might agree that some public speech should be outlawed would recoil at the idea of private speech being similarly restricted. Yet this has been the case in Norway for 40 years. Now you might reply that it has caused no harm yet. And I admit I don't know the number of convictions for this type of private speech, but this is the very definition of chilling effect. Criminalization of private speech has been normalized. When the ratchet is tightened there will be no room to complain.
Freedom of speech is complicated and subtle, and that’s why a several hundred year law that binds the hands of the legislature to refine and update laws around it is a bad idea.