Well, popular opinion needs no protections.
Unfortunately, as far as most of what I can find on the subject, most Iranians (who live in Iran) are either indifferent or opposed to the people currently protesting in Iran and Iran has a majority population that is highly religious and loyal to the current government.
It's mostly in the big cities, like Tehran or Shiraz where the protests enjoy support and the population is more liberal, but outside of the big cities in more rural areas people are much more religious and supportive of the regime.
I am certainly welcome to be corrected on this though.
The unpowerful, unpopular ideas don't even get calls for protection
In fact, the point you are making about unequal protection under imbalances of power is perhaps even an argument for maintaining an absolutist stance against reasonable exceptions - because that's an effective tactic for protecting something in a flawed political world that can turn those exceptions into things you didn't imagine when voicing support for them.
Kinda similarly, the "right to bear arms" interpretation of the 2nd amendment didn't really happen until the Black Panthers. Everybody talks about the "right to bear arms" part of the amendment but for some reason we no longer bring up how that sentence starts: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"
It's kind of a confusing amendment in general. For most of it's history it was basically treated like 3rd Amendment (about soldiers not having to be quartered). It seemed kinda odd and in fact was the second least often cited amendment behind the 3rd amendment because of this.
It was actually the Black Panthers, a bunch of young hip highly educated commies (mostly), that strongly pushed for this interpretation.
Both "right to bear arms" and "free speech" are much more recent in American politics/history than most people realize. Yes the original amendments had those words, but the meanings of them weren't really hashed out until rather recently.
On the second, privately owned ordnance weapons and warships were extremely common in the 1800s, and the definition of "well-regulated" was closer to "well-equipped" than to the modern word "regulated." In fact, the earliest "gun control" laws were about when and where you could fire your cannons. It took until the really 1920s to start thinking of the second amendment as a "collective" right which allowed any restrictions.
On the first amendment, it has been under societal attack since the founding of the country. The laws against sedition were some of the first laws ever passed, and were an attack on speech. In the early 1900s, it was all about preventing protests from labor groups and women who wanted to vote. The red scare was a very recent instance. Thankfully, the judiciary, since 1800, has been very good at striking down governmental attempts to control speech, and created the strongest legal regime around free speech that has ever existed. This regime had its last great test with the red scare. Twitter-FBI "state-informed" moderation and these ridiculous speech codes are just another attempt, in a 200 year old tradition, of the powerful to control other people's speech.
You are looking at a narrow slice of American history and generalizing from it. The whole history of the country is quite encouraging in terms of the rights of the individual, and I think we will see a turnaround on the current situation around speech, as we have every other time.
Meet the new puritans, same as the old puritans.
> Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald, many constitutional historians disagreed with the court that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to “keep and bear Arms” for the purpose of self-defense in the home. Indeed, for more than two centuries there had been a consensus among judges as well as scholars that the Second Amendment guaranteed only the right of individuals to defend their liberties by participating in a state militia. However, by the late 20th century the “self-defense” interpretation of the amendment had been adopted by a significant minority of judges.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Amendment/Origins-an...
If you would like to back up your argument from authority with actual evidence, can you pull out a gun control law from before 1900 that bans anything close to the weapons that are banned today?
Can you address the claims with facts and reason? Resorting to ad hominen attacks seems to indicate the facts and reason are lacking.
I'm not sure that's true. The record is mixed, afaik. For example, political repression of the left has been repeatedly allowed.
> Twitter-FBI "state-informed" moderation
AFAIK, the evidence amounted to very little or nothing happening in that regard?
Of course we disagree with our political opponents and feel that the policies they advocate are not optimal. It might be convenient to your politics if your opposition’s voice is dampened, but your opposition feels the same of your voice and does so for reasons no less sincere than your own.
That’s the fundamental bargain. You are neither obligated to hand anyone a megaphone, nor obligated to confiscate theirs.
Your comment has made me realize that I could have written my original comment more clearly; my dissatisfaction isn't about political agendas, but about deception – promoting free speech for the moment as a tactic rather than out of a dedication to the ideal, while claiming the latter.
Indeed, when people say "let's keep politics out of it", they're in effect trying to quell any challenge to the status quo, which arguably is inherently political, and this should probably be called out more often.
"You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations." From "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which everyone should read: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
This is a pretty uncharitable take, and one that I see too often.
I could just as easily say that people pressure others into turning every space political because they feel entitled to dominate every space with their politics, and they cannot tolerate any kind of truce or neutral ground. It's just another tactic to control the conversation.
And I think you're right! It seems very likely to me that that happens.
Playing devil's advocate for myself, however: the comment was not uncharitable because it did not attribute intent. Someone saying "let's keep politics out of it" may be trying to avoid conflict or simply be respectful, but unknowingly in effect quashing challenges to the status quo.
The comment was meant to be an observation of unwitting outcomes rather than secret intentions, but maybe that's in fact what you're objecting to ("it's easy to be pessimistic about the aggregate effects of small, inoccuous actions, and that attitude deserves some pushback").
Libertarianism works better without libertarians. It works better with collectivists than individualists. It works better with people who care about other people's freedoms than with those who care about their own freedoms.
Freedom of speech as a negative liberty means that the government does not criminalize speech. Some people would like to extend that to other powerful entities banning / limiting speech, but then the government would be suppressing those entities' other liberties.
The freedom of speech people care about is a positive liberty. It's about being entitled to have a platform for your speech. Maybe even a platform with an audience, or a platform you feel safe to use. In order for your opponents to have freedom of speech – a platform – your liberties must be suppressed. Either by an authority by force, or by yourself voluntarily.
Ultimately, freedom of speech is about you being obligated not to confiscate the megaphone.
What’s the paradox there?
If I attend a political rally and the speaker uses a megaphone, that's fine, I have consented to it's use.
However other places I have witnessed their use has questionable legality due to breach of the peace because the audience has not consented e.g. getting heckled when entering a University site or getting assailed by someone promoting their batshit Christian cult when trying to do some shopping. I don't think anyone would assume a universal right to make unwanted amplified noise.
Convenient that we're only doing that because "we have unpopular opinions". But did it ever occur to you that they're unpopular because we're not allowed to speak our minds fully and rationally convince others of our ideas' merits?
Bold claims have a heavy burden of proof. One could quickly retort with the opposite, i.e. perhaps they are unpopular because they have been refuted many times but the proponents believe the 97th time will be the charm. Who's right?
Also, the refutals that supposedly make them unpopular seemingly have no impact in reality. That kind of suggests that either the models used for refutal are grossly incomplete or big errors have been made due to political reasoning.
Notwithstanding my ignorance of the particular unpopular opinion you hold, did it ever occur to you that no matter how fully you express your mind, and no matter how rationally you believe your points, the popular resistance to your unpopular ideas may simply be proof that they do not have merit?
If history shows us anything it’s that intelligent people can become convinced by unintelligent ideas.
The whole "popular opinion" game is very one-sided from the start, especially in a setting where only a few people have immediate access to reach others like today. I've seen popular, but ultimately wrong, news travel around and solidify often enough to conclude, at least for myself, that "resistance to your unpopular ideas" is not sufficient to make any statement about its quality.
After all both opinions are or were popular so which one are we supposed to pick among the popular options?
People are free to hold stupid ideas, and they’re free to state those ideas in public, and the rest of us are free to jeer them for doing so… freedom of speech does not imply freedom from being laughed at and abused for holding on to such manifestly stupid ideas.
If someone believes in a powerful sky wizard who oversees all of humanity, they can teach their children of this magical being. They can even take them once a week to a place of education about this belief. IMO, it’s none of my or your business or right to be constantly present to present alternative points of view.
Personally I’d go further… teaching children that the world is flat should be considered criminal child abuse, as you’re intentionally impairing a child’s ability to function in any society, including your own echo chamber.
What I do object to is insisting that there is never a time when parents can teach their children arbitrary topic X without always having someone from the societal ministry of truth to be there to fact-check/align it.
There seems to be a significant power imbalance between the ministry and a parent.
A state of affairs that’s now pretty much been replicated, about a century after we first tried to learn the lesson that Fascism is a bad idea.
If you're answer to that question is, "no, because those children were abused by others lying about Santa, they will never be capable of overcoming that lie and will continue to propagate that lie" then it begs the question: what right does anyone have to tell anyone anything since all of us have experienced some sort of indoctrination at some point? Are we not all "broken" in that sense?
No matter how many people believe the earth is flat or the sun circles around the earth, it won't make it true. We have day and night cycles because earth is a sphere that is rotating so that only one side of earth is exposed at the same time.
No matter how unpopular this opinion is and no matter how big the mob's desire to lynch me is, it is still closer to the truth than the potentially popular opinion of earth being flat and the sun circling around the planet.
That is, not until after the advent of the Internet and YouTube… both of which, ironically, depend on the Earth being non-flat to function.
The Majority is very often simply wrong.
In fact is, look at all progressive movements (those that you’d have to be pretty insane to dispute today). They all began with the majority opposing them. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, homosexual rights, etc.
Each of the movements responsible for those achievements went directly against the grain. You were crazy to side with any of those at certain dates in the past.
The most fascinating part is to think which movements haven’t occurred yet. Which topics are we all collectively wrong about. Whatever they are it’s the first amendment that will enable them to be rectified.
I have many ideas what these will turn out to be, but that’s another topic.
For most people, another person doesn’t need to be contrarian to be interesting.
I’d go one further and say that contrarians are intrinsically uninteresting. They are very predictable and tedious in their inability to accept ideas just because they are accepted by others. Being systematically opposed to ideas because they are perceived as mainstream is just as much of a fallacious reasoning than the other way around.
Except that there are many types of unpopularity that you have conflated.
Having intolerant views about trans people for example does not in my opinion make you interesting.
It just makes you intolerant.
Unfortunately, those are nowhere near universally unpopular views at this point in our human journey.
Sure, if both parties already agree on the meaning of "intolerance", but what qualifies as intolerance is exactly the dispute.
The megaphone analogy is limited in applicability. It only applies where the recipient never opted to hear the message, but it is forced upon them.
Free speech issues are about interfering with speech where there is a willing audience. Even in cases where someone is offended by a message, often it's not that they don't want to hear the message; it's that they don't want others to hear the message.
I think the university is trying to find a middle ground here: The university - as institution and administrative body - is acting as the entity that "gives free speech to them" here: They are permitting those arguments be made in public events, on flyers, posters, etc. Of course they can't force students to listen to that speech. So I'd imagine that calls to boycott certain classes still remain valid. However, what they do is forbidding people from blocking others from listening, e.g. by demanding that certain people don't speak at all, blocking entrances to lecture halls, etc. That seems like a reasonable approach to me.
More generally: I've seen the "free speech does not apply to private entities/free speech is no right to be listened to/free speech is not freedom from consequences" arguments online a lot - they seem to be the standard counter arguments of some groups - and I've always found them deeply problematic.
First of all, I think there are a lot of authoritarian states who would be more than happy to adopt the "public only" definition of free speech without any substantial loss of control: "Yes of course, dear dissident, you're perfectly in your legal rights to accuse me of human rights violations on your website. But I'm afraid, I won't be able to help you if the country's ISP makes a private decision to block your site, if your employer spontaneously exercises its right to fire you the next day and if a crowd of concerned private citizens with privately-owned baseball bats will gather in front of your house tonight. Consequences!"
Secondly, the arguments rely on a situation where most services that faciliate discussion in a society - i.e. the media sector - are provided by private companies and are not subject to democratic decision making. So basically they rely on a weak state. That's originally a right-libertarian vision of society and I don't think anyone who calls themselves "left" should be comfortable adopting that vision.
Indeed, but right leaning libertarianism with a weak state is where conservatives have been leading the country for decades. Now it’s the right leaning libertarians like the Freedom Caucus who are are the loudest that private platforms should be forced to carry certain speech, which is what they’ve been fighting against this whole time (at least if you take them at their word).
I don’t think many leftists are arguing that the status quo is okay. At least what I’ve argued is that today it’s wrong to force Twitter or any private entity to carry speech they don’t want to. By doing so I’m not adopting a right-leaning libertarian worldview, because that doesn’t preclude public options that would carry all speech.
If this is the indeed the truth, then the trillions we currently invest in "reversing man made climate change" would be better invested in "preparing for the inevitable".
Even if powerful people rally for free speech in order to achieve an (maybe evil) political goal, THATS OBVIOUSLY BETTER THAN using censorship to achieve a (probably evil) political goal.
I find it unbelievable that this is such a hard concept to grasp.
If powerful people use free speech to spread nonsense, then just present your counter arguments, god damnit.
I know that it "takes more time to refute bullshit than to produce bullshit", sadly, that's just how it is. The bitcoin community has spent more than 12 years now to refute bullshit and people still fall for all the debunked FUD. This just means that we need a better tool to refute bullshit faster and more efficiently.
Wikipedia was a good first try, but of course since it succumbed to the woke mind virus, it is no longer viable.
There is a civilisation altering opportunity here to produce a new tool like it. I don't know how such a tool would look like.
How do you know it's not disinformation? My understanding, from many years of reading, is that those questions were settled long ago and there is not even somehwat evidence or arguments.
> The bitcoin community has spent more than 12 years now to refute bullshit and people still fall for all the debunked FUD.
Cryptocurrencies are an example of credible, true information?
> woke mind virus
Pejoritives are a signal that there are no facts or reason to support the claim.
I've also seen instances of individuals defending free speech because they hold unpopular (or sometimes even hurtful) opinions and want to be taken seriously, or want a megaphone – both of which they are free to demand but which no one is obligated to give them.
I signed the MIT Free Speech Alliance's petition and signed up for its newsletter because I agree with the aims of the movement, but I had the impression that some of the alumni leading the alliance have political motives, or are less angry about the loss of freedom at universities [1] than they are about the social opinions of the rising generation, which worries me.
[1] which IMO ought to be the paragons of free speech.