You do realize your comment perverts the very meaning of the word "freedom" to mean the opposite of its actual meaning, right?
You are "freeing" people from the freedom to access information and ideas you find unacceptable.
That is not freedom, that is the opposite of freedom.
Banning "unacceptable" ideas is the staple of Orwell's 1984, and appropriately, we are starting to use Newspeak as well: "Freedom is Slavery".
> Throughout history society has decided what (legal) things are acceptable in public
This is a dominant used book seller banning private individuals from selling a book to each other to read in private settings. Nothing about this is "public".
> This is different from Mein Kampf or Marquis de Sade, or Lolita
As if anyone will be surprised when our new commissar overlords at eBay and Amazon ban these books next.
It's not a perversion at all; in fact, this sense of freedom being more than raw ability to "do whatever you want" was recognized as early as Rousseau and possibly even earlier. This also led to the creation of the concepts of positive and negative liberty. "Freedom from" is absolutely a valid form of freedom, and a core one in our society. It's why things which aren't harms (and sometimes barely even hurts) are prohibited - public nudity, playing loud music on a bus, and other forms of nuisance. The canonical example is the fact that there is no harm-based reason to ban corpse desecration. In fact, it's a law based on the offence principle. There is some space in our society for laws like that, but we need to be careful with them, of course.
This case is even more benign - we have here a company refusing to sell these items. You speak of 'information and ideas', but these ideas can still manifest even on Ebay. No 'unacceptable idea' has been 'banned'. I'm not sure who you're saying is using Newspeak. As was pointed out by Marcuse in the 60s we're well past Orwell - now the contradiction is hidden in the noun itself.
What we describe as 'free societies' are full of restrictions on some freedom to ensure the development and use of greater freedoms. That's a core part of liberal society.
What the woke mob is doing right now is to extend this paradoxical definition of "freedom" to the extent that nobody will have any (real) freedom at all.
In a nutshell, the woke argument is: "I should have the 'freedom' from being offended, and this 'freedom' overrides and cancels all your freedoms."
For example, in this case: "I am offended by the idea that someone, somewhere, will read a book containing ideas I dislike, therefore your very important rights to publish and read such books are hereby revoked".
This is the same line of reasoning that led to the establishment of totalitarian utopias (favored by Marcuse) which inevitably end up as 1984-style dystopia.
All views of freedom are paradoxical other than the most basic view, which is that everyone has the freedom to do anything to anyone. The law provides freedom from armed bandits, or the worry of armed bandits, attacking you at night. At least, it aims to. Property rights provide freedom from your things being appropriated by others (including a government). The right to representation at trial provides freedom to fair judgements in the legal system. This isn't a dystopia.
>In a nutshell, the woke argument is: "I should have the 'freedom' from being offended, and this 'freedom' overrides and cancels all your freedoms."
Nobody has made that argument, but as I mentioned, the canonical case is corpse desecration. People in general desire freedom from that offense, and this freedom overrides and cancels the freedom to desecrate corpses.
>For example, in this case: "I am offended by the idea that someone, somewhere, will read a book containing ideas I dislike, therefore your very important rights to publish and read such books are hereby revoked".
I don't think we should do that, and I don't think the "woke mob" in general really thinks that either. Political philosophy consists of more than a worrisome story written eighty years ago.
No, there is a valid view of individual freedom that is limited by other people's freedom. In fact, that's the traditional American view of freedom.
I have the freedom to do anything that doesn't actively restrict the freedom of others. I can walk into an empty space. I can't walk into a space you occupy.
> Political philosophy consists of more than a worrisome story written eighty years ago.
If only 1984 was just "a worrisome story written eighty years ago".
Instead, it describes the totalitarian regime created by Marxist takeover of the Soviet union.
We are now experiencing an attempted Marxist takeover of our own society.
Books are being banned. Ideas are becoming unacceptable, shunned, erased from public discourse, and from our memories.
President Obama praised, quoted, and recommended Dr. Seuss's books in official press releases throughout his presidency, all the way to his last year as president - 2015:
https://nypost.com/2021/03/03/barack-and-michelle-obama-prai...
But now, barely 6 years later, the Leftist Mob has come for Dr. Seuss, and we're all bullied to recite that Dr. Seuss is racist, was racist, has always been racist.
And his books are, accordingly, being erased. Cancelled.
To quote Orwell: "The past was alterable. The past never had been altered."
The real point isn't that Dr. Seuss is actually racist (he never was), but to condition us to reject, ban, and shun "unacceptable" ideas, thoughts, and expressions - on social command.
The overarching theme here is control: in the leftist vision, society must control and regulate the consciousness of all its members, in order to create a perfect Utopian centrally-controlled society.
Exactly! In this way, your freedom is limited for the sake of other freedoms. However, as with the corpse desecration example, your freedom is also limited for the sake of various freedom froms. With assault, for example, there is no freedom to write and post threatening letters. If I receive a threatening letter, my freedom to do things hasn't been impacted. However, my freedom from threats has been impacted. Even the traditional American view of freedom is very widely restrictive, and for good reason.
>We are now experiencing an attempted Marxist takeover of our own society.
If this is a 'Marxist takeover', I'd have to say the Marxists are doing a pretty poor job of it. I don't recall Marx writing that racist depictions in children's books shouldn't be sold at auction, though.
>But now, barely 6 years later, the Leftist Mob has come for Dr. Seuss, and we're all bullied to recite that Dr. Seuss is racist, was racist, has always been racist.
No, you're not. Who's forcing you to say that? In fact, who's even forcing you to accept that view? The very fact that we're having this discussion is evidence that this isn't happening.
>but to condition us to reject, ban, and shun "unacceptable" ideas, thoughts, and expressions - on social command.
This is conspiratorial thinking. We are already conditioned to shun unacceptable ideas, thoughts and expressions; it comes from two elements of our world - freedom of association, and moral autonomy.
>The overarching theme here is control: in the leftist vision, society must control and regulate the consciousness of all its members, in order to create a perfect Utopian centrally-controlled society.
I'm a leftist and I don't share that view, at least. I can't really think of anyone who does. All the leftists with influence (from Marx to academics) has never shared this view. In fact, they called out the capitalist regulation of consciousness and its control through culture. The 'leftists' were the first to systematically investigate the role of ideology in the modern world.
If we are all "free" to not ever be offended, then nobody has any sort of freedom at all, because any expression or action might be offensive to someone, somewhere, at some point.
As soon as anyone is willing to claim offense (which is actively encouraged by the left), whatever happens to offend them is banned and cancelled.
We are actively cancelling books, people, scientific research, and numerous other ideas and expressions. Our politicians are explicitly promoting government-mandated limits on "offensive speech".
If you object or resist any of these social trends, you are a bigot, and you will be cancelled.
We are not yet in a 1984 zero-freedom Marxist dystopia, but we are well on our way there. The ideological foundations for this dystopia have been laid and accepted by most on the left, including those unaware of their ultimate outcome.
Marx and his original supporters likewise didn't intend or foresee the Soviet totalitarian dystopia that resulted from their ideology.
Much like leftists today, they excused incursions on individual freedom because it will lead to "greater good" such as "freedom from harm", "freedom from want", etc.
It ended with gulags, commissars, purges, mass executions, genocide, and the elimination of all actual human freedoms in pursuit of some idealized, self-contradictory mirage of "perfect freedom".
This was not intended, but it's also not an accident. Once you ideologically commit to sacrificing individual freedom in pursuit of other goals (social justice, a socialist Utopia, etc) then totalitarian oppression becomes a distinct possibility - arguably, an inevitability.
But the decision to stop selling this book was made by capitalists in a capitalist system. Marxists and leftists have nothing to do with this. You say "Once you ideologically commit to sacrificing individual freedom in pursuit of other goals (social justice, a socialist Utopia, etc) then totalitarian oppression becomes a distinct possibility", but this decision is due to individual freedom at its height. It's a perfect example of the exercise of individual freedom in the marketplace of ideas. Indeed, any other outcome would be a contraction of individual freedom.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises decided to stop publishing the book. That is, they exercised their individual freedom to stop publishing the book. No one made this decision for them except for themselves, particularly not the government. In fact, it's only due to their limited monopoly over the rights of this work that they are able to have this freedom. Marxists and leftists would disagree with the concept of "intellectual property" outright. Dr. Seuss Enterprises would not be able to stop the publication of these books under a Marxist system because they would not have the right to make that decision; anyone could decide to publish them if Dr. Seuss Enterprises didn't want to. It sounds like maybe you are taking the Marxist position on this one.
eBay decided to stop selling the books. It is their right as a corporation to decide what they want and what they don't want on their platform. This decision was made by the capitalists who own and control the eBay corporation. The alternative would be the government forcing them to sell the books on their platform. How would that in pursuit of individual freedom? Marxists and leftists would say that the workers at eBay should make this decision, for they are the ones who should own and control eBay. But I fail to see how capitalists deciding what they should do with their platform, under a capitalist system, is somehow a reflection of Marxist ideology gone haywire.
If anything your problem is with capitalism.
Your imagined "takeover" is merely a 21st century re-imagining of literal nazi propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism
The idea that we're "being bullied" into believing that a man who drew extremely racist anti-Japanese war propaganda was perhaps not beyond reproach in terms of his views on race is, itself, revisionism. When you say "he was never racist", you're either woefully misinformed or lying.
He very much was racist; and after the war, regretted it, and ended up campaigning against the sorts of "America first" views he once championed.
Did you actually read the article? The owners and publishers of the books decided they contained images that they felt were offensive and didn't want to be associated with so stopped publishing. Should they be forced to continue? Why are their rights different from yours?
The 'ideas' in the books are still available to view on the internet, you can print them out and share them with your friends. The originals may be copyrighted but you can make similar pictures with the same ideas and sell your own books containing them.
Do we want to live in a society where certain corporations decide which training wheels to put on us? The discussion isn't about their legal right, but about what their policy should be when X group comes along saying Y is offensive. I doubt these decisions were made from a cynical bottom-line perspective. No one as far as I'm aware was boycotting these places because they sold offensive children's books. The most disturbing thing to me is they did it purely because they thought it was the right thing to do. Their policy is what we're saying is wrong.
We 'attack' ideas all the time; in fact, that's what most of us are doing on HN. There's nothing wrong with such an 'attack' on an idea. In fact, if you open Ebay right now, you'll likely find works of philosophy and law debating whether parents and teachers can use offensive works to a productive end.
>The discussion isn't about their legal right, but about what their policy should be when X group comes along saying Y is offensive.
That's a good question, but it does not demand an answer culminating in an accusation that actually rather reasonable answers constitute an attack on the very idea of freedom. We recognize 'offense' even in law in every country on the planet, and it seems to me that so long as corporations have less power than governments, there is at least some room for reasoning from moral or practical principles that are not available (nor do we wish to be available) in law.
The very fact that it's a not a legal question actually seems to tilt the scales towards reasons why a private entity should exercise moral autonomy in the market.
>The most disturbing thing to me is they did it purely because they thought it was the right thing to do. Their policy is what we're saying is wrong.
This isn't disturbing to me; the market is a big part of our social life, and with the law generally more restricted on dealing with moral issues, actors in the market can step in and make those decisions for themselves. There is nothing repugnant about acting on the basis of what you find wrong or right. There may be something wrong with the moral reasoning of Seuss' estate and Ebay (if it even is moral reasoning - to a consequentialist this wouldn't even matter). But the form of the decision (moral reasoning) and its content (the morality of facilitating the sale of racist caricatures, if the books really are that bad) are two different questions.
I have zero problem with a stock exchange refusing to sell tobacco or even alcohol or strip club stocks. I may disagree with them - maybe I think alcohol and strip clubs are not morally wrong businesses. But I can't see any reason to disagree with their exercise of moral autonomy. Their exercise of moral autonomy is a contribution to the moral discourse, and censorship of that discourse is a bigger concern, and not merely from theoretical reasons.
To me these externally imposed training wheels hurt our ability to move forward. The _policy_ is misguided, and hiding the past destines us to repeat it. These companies are entering the business of vigilante thought police, there's really no other way to explain what's happening here.
Freedom from saying forbidden words, freedom from thinking forbidden thoughts, freedom from all the people who write, research, or joke about controversial subjects, freedom from anything that could potentially offend or upset anyone ever, freedom from anything that doesn't comply with the dogma.
Boy, I can't wait to be liberated from all the wrongthink!
What's funny is that it's the publishing house themselves that decided to stop selling the book. Shouldn't they have the freedom to decide that?
You don't have that right. The world is not safe. Nowhere are you guaranteed happiness, or refuge from upsetting ideas. You are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness. The outcome is a function of how fast your legs are.
In a nation that sincerely values the concept of Liberty, the Public Safety (a subset of which is your presumed "freedom from") always takes a second seat. To have it any other way is to put an end to the very ideal at the center of the United States. Liberty is scary. Freedom makes no guarantees. Non-hackers can feel free to not consume in their own spaces, but don't start trying to dictate what others should or should not have access to.
Throughout history society has decided what (legal) things are acceptable in public - public executions, graphic sexuality, violence. Today, (I think) the majority of society seem to have accepted that racism and racist stereotypes are bad and don't want to see them in childrens books, TV programs and films etc.
This is different from Mein Kampf or Marquis de Sade, or Lolita being available in bookshops - the majority of people reading them would know what they were getting into.