Given that the Alien and Sedition Acts took less than 10 years after the passing of the Bill of Rights, and were passed by many of the same people working on the original Constitution, I would dare say that it wasn't all that unanimous.

But, and perhaps more importantly, relatively few people at the time could vote - in 1789 it was about 6% of the population as a whole. On the federal level, there was basically no protection of the right to vote at all - there was that bit about states having to have a "republican form of government", but it wasn't codified, and the broad understanding was that property requirements, poll taxes etc are all compatible with it. So, it was a very different environment overall.

(I'm not disagreeing with your basic premise - I support, it actually. But US is not a good historical model for it. I don't think there's any country that really is, or ever was. Those of us who believe that democracy is dead without radical free speech, have to figure out how to make it all work in a way that is, at least, tolerable to those who disagree with us.)

It's a common way to dismiss Founding stuff, but I'm a fan of the Frederick Douglass view that the Constitution is a "glorious liberty document."

So what if the writers didn't always practice it? If it's been unequally applied - there's no stronger case than to hold people to account with the law of the land.

> This is literally the foundation of American govt structure namely the respect for unalienable rights of individuals to express themselves.

> It’s the first line in our enumerated rights.

> This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.

I never said anyone shouldn't have the right to express themselves. Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there.

IMHO, lies are toxic to free speech, and it's in everyone's interest (and moral obligation) to do their best to limit their spread.

> lies are toxic to free speech

IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant.

You don't need to protect speech everyone finds unobjectionable.

You need to protect speech that is almost universally opposed.

Minorities need protection, majorities don't, and this the basis of the American notion of freedom - insofar as the individual is the smallest minority.

> Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there.

Clearly it isn't and I believe in freedom of association completely too. If a business wants to not serve anyone for any reason, I recognize that - clearly law has developed to qualify this.

This notion of freedom of association has no bearing on my ability to criticize Youtube for doing something I find wrong.

I can simultaneously believe that what Youtube is doing is wrong and they're completely allowed to do it.

> IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant.

Defending speech I find repugnant is not the same thing as defending a nonexistent right to post lies on Youtube.

Host the lies on your own website. Create flyers and pass them out. Talk to people in public settings. Write to the newspaper (they might not post your lies, but you're free to try to get them). Hold conferences. Do whatever you want. As long as the lies don't violate a few well-established exceptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

But the right to have your lies hosted for free (and given a valuable, far-reaching audience) on a private platform, no matter the consequences to others or to the platform itself? It doesn't exist.

The whole point is the sanctimonious, heavy-handed nature of a platform that otherwise likes to act like they're concerned about the public good.

I recognize they have a right to do it, but I have a right to make noise about it and criticize them.

We got so many pop-ups, accounts suspended, etc. around the Hunter Biden stuff, and what do you know - it turns out there was substance to the story.

This never happened around the Russian collusion stuff and I suspect most of the city lib elite that inhabits tech companies wouldn't find that a sanctimonious.

> I recognize they have a right to do it, but I have a right to make noise about it and criticize them.

Nobody suggested otherwise, and your statement that "you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant" is clearly a sidestep. You can support free speech without supporting the nonexistent (and unrelated) right to post lies on Youtube.

You're not really offering any solutions with these platitudes, because if we take your statement to its conclusion, heck it seem we'll just have to live with a third of the population being lulled into supporting potentially violent and seditious people who want to subvert democracy itself. Oh, guess we'll just have to let them or allow the situation to devolve into a civil war.

This is what a lot of hacker dudes seem to want, I feel despair.

> IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant.

I am extremely confident that I can find examples of speech you wouldn't defend. How do you feel about false advertisement? Sharing of confidential military secrets?

I’m arguing about free expression and unpopular speech, not illegal speech.

Things aren't made illegal by the universe. Humans decide what the difference is. You simply think that false advertisement is bad but other forms of speech aren't and that is reflected in the law. We chose that some forms of speech aren't protected.

Since you aren't willing to defend that speech and fight to make it legal, are you not interested in free speech?

Well, then, let's make lies illegal, if that's where you're drawing the line.

You realize how liable to abuse the idea of “truth” is in a tyrannical regime? Or even just fallible and misguided people?

Like, eugenicists in the 1920s would have a whole host of horrid “truths” they thought were scientifically supported at the time. Imagine the hurdles opposition would have in trying to voice their “factual truth.”

Of course it is abusable. The state has done all sorts of tremendously evil things when wielding its power. "Free speech" has never stopped the crushing of legitimate protest. This is not a surprise to leftist activists, who have been consistently violently attacked by the state for more than a century. I find these arguments so disingenuous when people throw them out while also doing little to nothing to curb existing state abuse. I've never seen right wing "free speech absolutists" at trans-rights protests or fighting against state interference in left-coded academic work.

General restrictions on state power don't work. Capitalism crushes people. When that state power turns on the majority, the majority complains that their voices are silenced and then they go right back to ignoring the continued problems of the minority.

Perhaps the solution is to approach each situation on a case by case process. Protest and agitate when the state harms people and celebrate when the state protects people. Make harm reduction the goal.

In software people often point to how focusing on metrics can make you fail to achieve your true goal. Similarly, we should focus on the thing that free speech is intending to achieve rather than free speech itself.

Freedoms enumerated in the bill of rights were chosen as a reflection of morality. You’re arguing utilitarianism about what’s a moral issue of the inherent right of people to express themselves.

Yet you oppose certain kinds of speech outright by virtue of the fact that the population has decided via democratic legislation that they should be crimes, presumably because of the harm that they cause.

I don't believe that the intention of the framers was that free speech was a good in-and-of itself but that making it difficult (but not impossible) to restrict speech has positive outcomes. At the very least, that is my read of things.

The whole “unalienable rights” of individuals suggests that this isn’t a democratic notion, it’s a moral philosophy and conviction.

Yet false advertisement is illegal and you even support its status as illegal speech.

> You don't need to protect speech everyone finds unobjectionable.

I wasn't talking about objectionable opinions or perspectives. I was talking about lies and falsehoods, which are becoming alarmingly widespread. Even now those things don't full First Amendment protections, which is why there can be laws against fraud and defamation, and the Supreme Court has even said "false statements of fact" do not enjoy protection [1].

You've recited many slogans, but it's important to consider what free speech is supposed to achieve, which, IMHO, is to allow progress towards truth. It's also important to keep other considerations in mind, and balance them. If you but too much focus on too small an area, you can easily find yourself becoming a Paperclip Maximizer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Do note that US v Alvarez did hold that false statements are not a sufficient basis to restrict speech--there needs to be something else to justify restriction of speech.

Or, a better quote from the syllabus:

> Although the Court has frequently said or implied that false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, see, e.g., Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 340, those statements cannot be read to mean “no protection at all.”

That's true, but we're actually talking about YouTube here, not the government. So if false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, then there's even less grounds to whine about a private party choosing not to disseminate them.

But that's not democracy.

Go is arguing that free speech is required for democracy, and that democracy is why we want free speech.

The founders didn't like democracy all that much though

> and that democracy is why we want free speech

We don't "want free speech," it exists and a government that represents free people will recognize that.

The founders arrived at a consensus with representative democracy. They realized the dangers of democracy.

It's just a made up concept though. It would be physically impossible for YouTube to ban anything if it was a real thing.

That there's a conversation about YouTube censoring people says that it is perfectly possible for free speech to not exist. It's not a physical law of the universe