Yes, not during the 1812 war when the White House was invaded. Not during the 1860s when our country was at war with itself. Not during the 1940s when we were in a depression and a giant war.
Every year and every election always seems more historically significant than it is - because you're living it now.
Too true. When Hillary wins she will undo Citizens United to make sure no one can make a feature film that criticizes her ever again. Sure, you might be able to make a book, but so few people read it could never matter.
Fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Glad to see the article mention the more civilized cases of free speech suppression such as the Yale one, in addition to the really gruesome and macabre ones across the world. We should prevent a death by a thousand cuts if possible AND obviously do something about the brutality in other parts of the world.
From what I've seen in the videos of students complaining about missing safe spaces, I wouldn't call it civilized. For Ivy League students, I found the discourse rather uneducated, one-sided, and free of tangible arguments. That said, what wouldn't bother me seems to be a huge discomfort for the complaining students, and they surely had a different upbringing than me for them to feel that way. I mean, I grew up in Western Europe and am likely unaware of some of the finer details in their cultural background.
I don't know about you but when I turned 18 I didn't immediately set up a budget, open a retirement account, and sign up for a subscription to The Economist.
Actually I kinda did but that's besides the point. Not everybody grows up at the same rate.
That's an awkward part of our society. Yes, legally they are, but we have some social conventions saying they are not. I agree with you that they legally are, and should be treated as such, but it's not so black and white, unfortunately.
In 1944, 18 year olds were storming the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe. In 2016, 18 year olds demand that college administrators protect their fragile psyches from pro-Trump chalk on the sidewalk.
The biggest problem isn't the student protesters, illiberal and hateful though they are. It's the cowardly (or the shrewd politically-motivated) college administrators who acquiesce to their demands for censorship. It's also the fault of the federal government, which has been pushing absurd readings of civil rights laws to force "hate-speech" codes on college campuses.
If a society wants its values to survive, it needs to have the confidence to defend them and pass them on to the next generation.
I agree with the first and third paragraphs but not the second. I don't believe campus administrators are the weak link. The truism among elementary teachers is: forty years ago, when the student comes home with an F, the parents yelled at the student; today they yell at the teacher. The US has a shortage of skilled trades workers, I think because everyone "deserves" to be a white collar professional now. I am not saying university admins are commendable, but rather that they have no room to do a good job. It's becoming less and less clear what a good job would be, as the liberal arts education becomes more and more of an obvious anachronism.
Rather I believe your first paragraph is the larger answer. We have tossed aside the notion for sacrifice for the greater good.
I don't disagree in general, but today I believe there is cause to worry. Consider that there is positive correlation between campus outrage and tuition at the college. The richer the students, the more they are outraged. Consider rape in this context. Private colleges are generally relatively safe for women and girls, yet students at these universities regularly protest the "rape culture" they perceive themselves to be enduring. This reflects an embarrassing lack of self-awareness and compassion for women in rural meth centers and decaying urban areas.
Anti-semitism is rising as well. Students at these elite institutions are eager to condemn Israel and her supporters, as if the struggle in the occupied territories were morally black and white. If only the Jews would quit being mean the problem would go away.
What about the young woman at Yale who cursed at her dormitory head for his unwillingness to police Halloween costumes?
Are you sure you're OK with this? I thought the comparison between Islamism and campus authoritarianism in the article was apt.
No-one asked the dormitory head to police Halloween costumes. What actually happened was the university sent out a letter students asking them to think about whether their Halloween costumes were mocking other people, and he insisted that this was an attack on student freedom of speech because having to think about this might make them uncomfortable wearing certain costumes - and we certainly can't have student's thinking about viewpoints outside their own in ways that make them uncomfortable.
Because all the recent stuff about student freedom of speech and the importance of exposing students to viewpoints that make them uncomfortable is actually just a push by the right-wing to move universities to the right, the students who objected to this were the ones who were portrayed as being the ones who couldn't cope with views they disagreed with.
In my view the hostility to free speech on campus comes from the left, not from the right. Lots of people seem to think of authoritarianism as developing exclusively from the right only, but Stalin is a counterexample.
Did you watch the videos? Read the articles? The wild screaming, incoherent rage and hate expressed in response to a thoughtful, respectful email from one of their /professors/? The incredulity that he dare have a different opinion, and the deep need to punish him for it?
There's a strong need for students to be able to experiment and express themselves and say what they feel and think without being abused and crucified. Similarly with professors. There's a certain respect for thought that is inherent to a healthy academic culture. The left (of which I am very much a part) used to defend it vigorously, now I find we are the ones trying to destroy it.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali expressed the difference between classical and modern liberalism perfectly. Classical liberalism values freedom, whereas today's liberalism often favors justice. To take Islam as an example: the classical liberal response would be to strive for the the freedom of individual women, heretics, and homosexuals. Today's liberal response would be more along the lines of judging how justly society treats Muslims as a group. Identity politics is rife in modern liberalism. In Ali's view (and mine) freedom is a precursor to justice.
College 'kids' are adults and if they act as children it is only because we enable such behavior by coddling them. I wonder if college would be better for most if they lived a year on their own first. I know I would have gotten more out of college if I had a more concrete view of how the world worked (namely the importance of networking and knowing people).
I think this article treated the campus free speech debate very fairly, but isn't there a pretty important difference between government suppression and social suppression? As an extreme example, it would be wrong for the government to prosecute the Westboro Baptist Church for their speech, but it's not wrong for the rest of the country to ostracize them. As long as students aren't advocating for actual laws curbing speech, it seems like a fundamentally different category.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, I just think it's a different problem. And I think it's important to acknowledge that free speech doesn't mean all speech must be equally respected, it just has to be allowed.
> isn't there a pretty important difference between government suppression and social suppression?
Yes, and when government funded public universities suppress and openly support the suppression of free speech, it's very clearly a government problem.
Yeah that would clearly cross the line. Most of the complaints I've heard are about private universities, or just student movements that don't get much support from the institution.
Edit: Actually "clearly" might be a little too strong. Public schools shouldn't be restricted to only reacting to illegal behavior. But in most realistic cases I agree with your comment.
Why is Economist pushing the narrative that Innocence of Muslims had anything to do with the embassy attack and murder of the US Ambassador in Libya when that cover story was completely debunked?
Seems like the facts listed in the first paragraph are substantial indications for it having at least something to do with the attack. It wouldn't be the first time or the last time extremist muslims reacted violently. Do you have a source for that complete debunking?
Edit: The article as a whole isn't about just that incident either. It is about the growing suppression of speech from regimes of all kinds.
It is the corner stone of the Benghazi investigations. HRC wrote in an email that they "knew" the attack was planned and had nothing to do with the video yet kept repeating that it was because of the video to the public. Her defense was pretty pathetic. [0]
I am not sure I buy the whole cover up story totally. But I do think it was handled poorly by the Administration because they thought it would be convenient to portray the events through a particular political lens. Even if the attacks were motivated in some small way by the video have we really gotten to the point of blaming the filmmakers for murders committed by people offend by the flim? I don't care how "in poor taste" the film is.
It wasn't debunked. While, unlike the attacks at US embassies in Egypt, Yemen, Indonesia, and other US diplomatic and cultural facilities in the same week (and protests without attacks at many more), there were no protests at the Embassy in Libya (and some early reports had tied the attacks to nonexistent protests about the film), numerous eyewitnesses did report that the attackers claimed to be motivated by the film, and while the later claim of responsibility from al-Qaeda claimed a different retaliatory motivation, it's also al-Qaeda (al-Qaeda central, not regional affiliates, in both cases) that was behind the hijacking of previously planned protests over a different issue in Egypt to focus on the film that culminated in the attack on the US embassy in Egypt.
The only thing that was debunked were the early reports of protests in Benghazi, that the film played a role in motivating the attacks was never debunked.
This seems pretty tenuous, but still it raises questions. The video is still on Youtube. Why were all the "protests" over within a month? Why don't they continue to this day?
(I have other questions, but they veer even further into the realm of politics, so I'll keep those off HN.)
> Why were all the "protests" over within a month? Why don't they continue to this day?
I think the attention span for those things is rather limited. You can't cry "Outrage!!1!" every day over the same thing again and again and still mobilize people for your cause. This seems to be a rather common phenomenon regardless of the group or cause you support.
Also, to organize such a protest, you need people with time and resources to reach out. I assume, that at some point, these people deicide, that it makes more sense to steer resources into other projects.
It happens all the time. There's some big event, it gets a lot of attention, the event never goes anywhere but people lose interest and move on. MH370 was never found but the coverage faded away. The Bring Back Our Girls campaign pretty much died out even though no girls were brought back. Everybody was outraged when Russia annexed Crimea, but nobody cares now.
For the same reason other protests eventually end. People get back to their daily lives, some of them learn that they were lied to or misled about the target of their protests, others find other causes for protest, or they feel satisfied that they've done their part for now.
> The video is still on Youtube. Why were all the "protests" over within a month?
George W. Bush was president into January of 2009, but the protests of the Bush v. Gore decision were largely over shortly after his election (protests of his actual policies didn't take too long to start happening, but that's a different focus of protest.)
Protests over some offense tend to fizzle out without new, serious harms directly attributable to the focus of protest without some other more specific target to blame: e.g., protests over ongoing wars, policies or practices that are viewed (reasonably or not) as directly causing deaths, sickness, etc. may go on for an extended time (e.g., Vietnam or Iraq War protests, protests of the Israeli occupation of Palestine; anti-abortion, anti-vax or anti-GMO protests, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.)
But other protests tend to burn out fairly quickly, after a short, sharp peak of outrage, without new stimulus to keep them going.
the video was available long before the problems ascribed to it came about and the problems only grew in issue once the video was blamed for the event because it gave said video even more exposure.
however to the person to whom you replied, why is this in the article. Well the US election cycle is in full swing and the Economist is firmly in one camp and certainly will do their best to support them.
Hell, if they wanted a good segue about the violence used to silence opinion they could have pointed out the recent attacks on Trump supporters who were attacked by very obvious Democratic party supporters organized by groups who are funded by them.
Still in the end the US has no reason to crow about its position in the world when colleges silence talk they don't like either directly or even violence. when the US government uses public agencies to prevent groups from exercising their rights to assemble and express their opinions during elections.
Some other legal restrictions on communication that aren't normally included in the "free speech" debate:
* 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.
Most of those involve people entering into contracts or making agreements not to share information (pirating, medical information, insider trading, market manipulation, attorney-client privilege, jurors, probably anti-boycott?). Slander/Libel, obscenity and holocaust denial are the only ones on that list that I think are truly problematic.
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.
The anti-boycott law is absolutely a political restriction on freedom of speech: it prevents companies from answering questions about whether they source or interact with Israel and exists specifically to try and stop citizens mounting grassroots campaigns against Israeli actions. It's specifically intended to crush organised resistance to a foreign (!) government, which is the point of censorship.
+1 I think you make a reasonable argument. I'm not entirely sure that companies should enjoy the same protections as individuals. Being an employee places you under contractual obligations that may restrict your freedom of speech, which can be resonable as I discussed previously. I'm open to being persuaded on this specific issue.
I think it's reasonable to place legal obligation on people and organisations that collect data on others. The data isn't their speech even if they own it, in the same way that I can own a book but the author has the copyright because it's in some sense their speech and not mine even though it's in my posession. Data protection laws are an enforced default contract in the same way as copyright. I think it's reasonable to assign rights to individuals over data about them, or pass laws obout how that data should be managed.
I don't think they should be though. Restrictions on free speech should be narrowly restricted to the enforcement of other laws, as in the example I gave of it being reasonable for it to be illegal to incite crimes. I think defamation should be a civil matter.
I feel fine about them, thanks for asking. I think it's reasonable to make a distinction between those and images of sexual crimes on the basis of protecting the victims depicted in illegal pornography. Reportage also serves a valuable informative social purpose which images of sex crimes do not serve.
> What if the victims of the sex crime are dead (of natural causes)?
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.
No. I was specifically talking about pornography. As I explained replying to later comments from other posters, before you posted your comment, I think the dynamics driving pornography are different enough to treat it as a special case.
But I never read any explanation as to why the dynamics are different. Especially considering that films of other crimes can be porn to the right individual (such as snuff).
> 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.
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.
"Free speech" is not "free beer." Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater has been widely accepted as harmful speech and as such is not free.
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?
It's ironic when people use this quote to justify banning "harmful speech", not knowing it was an excuse for jailing peaceful protesters under the police-state 1918 Sedition Act. 'Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater' is a phrase from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the Schenck v. United States in 1919, which held that the defendant's speech in opposition to the draft was not protected free speech under the First Amendment.
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).
And of course, it was overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio in order to protect the Ku Klux Klan and their ability to burn crosses, a symbol they used to threaten blacks who stepped out of line with lynching. Anyone who claims that freedom of speech somehow protected the powerless in the US is full of shit.
Thank you! I think most are missing the context of the quote. My high school history textbook had this direct quote, mentioned it was a Supreme Court case, but did not discuss the case itself. Funny how that works.
I understand your viewpoint and from a moral perpective, I agree with it. But how can you assert the US, or western civilization as a whole, is consistent in it's protection of freedom of speech? Your first sentence illustrates that example perfectly.
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.
By banning shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, you also prevent people from warning you when there IS fire. Now you've created perverse incentives. I suspect there might be a fire, but will not speak up until it is too late.
Bad speech can be countered by MORE speech. Ban on speech cannot.
Depends on intent. Your example of manslaughter would imply no initial intent to cause harm, therefore you are held responsible for the outcome and not what caused it. If you were to shout fire with the intent to cause death, then that would be premeditated murder. In that case you are held responsible for the outcome as well as what caused it.
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.
> Free expression is a staple of Western civilization
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.
Differences in free speech law geographically? France & Germany are a western countries, have a constitutional protection of free speech, and ban Holocaust denial. The USA is a western country, has a constitutional protection of free speech, and Holocause denial is legal. France, USA and Germany disagree if "banning Holocaust denial" counts as interfering with free speech.
A very interesting, very old exemption. Its been around for generations, and is pretty much the entire topic around all issues of what is allowable and what is not.
Which is a bad law, it simply opens the door for banning other "harmful" speech that somebody gets to decide for everybody else. It's the old shameful joke that no one reads history so they keep repeating it.
The legacy of Nazi Germany is a national shame. Millions of people cannot be un-murdered. It could have also resulted in much worse conditions for Germans and national sovereignty (like America's domination of Japan's postwar constitution).
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.
I'm not saying they need or will go back there. I'm saying that the act of banning one type of speech always leads to a group with power and not so honorable intentions the ability to ban speech they don't like. The law is already there for that.
Freedoms, rights, and laws don't exist in a void. At least in the United States, they exist to better the welfare of the people. It's not a "new exemption" - jails do exactly that: limit one person's rights and freedoms to maintain those of others.
No right is unlimited, and that isn't new. You waive your rights when they directly endanger other people's rights. You don't have a right to life if you're about to kill someone, you don't have a right to liberty if you're a danger to the public, you don't have a right to free speech if your speech is directly harming people.
I don't see why you think that one shouldn't be able to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater, and be prosecuted accordingly for inciting a riot and damage to the property if such were the case (but not for the speech itself).
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.
But it is a position that we apply all the time in a complex society. We have speed limits which we enforce because higher speeds could lead to an accident. We have building codes because shoddy construction practices could lead to a fire. We have vaccination requirements because a lack of them could lead to an outbreak.
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.
> But it is a bias that we apply all the time in a complex society. We have speed limits which we enforce because higher speeds could lead to an accident.
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..
That's a fair enough point, but I think most would agree that the constitution doesn't always keep up with the times. This leads to our constant interpretation and reinvention of it (see the conflicting decisions of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education). I don't think it's perfect, but I would also argue that it's not dangerous, in fact it's necessary.
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.
Perhaps I didn't phrase it well. I should say "unsubstantiated and speculative anti-vaccination speech". If you've got a study that is generally accepted by the medical community, that's one thing. Going on Oprah or taking out ads in magazines is another entirely.
> If you've got a study that is generally accepted by the medical community
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?
Fairly confident, if only because we already do it, and don't seem to suffer for it. I want to emphasize that I'm not advocating the suppression of research, but of demonstrably false and harmful claims. That is something that exists and is a fairly narrow test. Arguing for healthy people to not receive vaccines definitely falls into this category. It not only harms the people who don't get them it harms the rest of us as well.
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.
We're fine with free speech as long as it doesn't threaten the status quo.
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.
I would rather live in a western democracy where speech is considered free until it is curbed, instead of a Muslim theocracy or Asian dictatorship where speech is forbidden until it is permitted.
Not only was the "fire in a crowded theatre" thing a quote from an oppressive anti-free-speech decision that has since been overturned, it was dicta that was neither citing nor setting precedent and has never been an accepted application of first amendment law.
So why aren't the journalist who wrote about the surveillance programs being arrested? Maybe because the government understands that that is their right / free speech.
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.
No right is unlimited. It's not difficult to come up with a consistent definition of free speech that disallows all or most of your examples.
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.
The "free speech" concept in its most noble and pure form is about government censorship.[1] It's not about about commercial censorship (e.g. Facebook) or social censorship (e.g. your Flying Spaghetti Monster offends my sacred Zeus.)
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.
Very well put. Any article that conflates the term "free speech" with using some private organization's resources against their terms is garbage, this one included.
That's a funny thing to hear here on HN, considering that most of opression in socialist regimes of our former countries here have been by private organizations (which caved due to pressure from government on them).
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).
You know what? You're right. I didn't read the article. I see it is focused much more broadly on the globe and govornment-sponsored censorship. I assumed it was another dumbass article chicken-littleing about social media companies choosing how much hate to allow on their platforms.
Are you alluding to the previous article? This one is worth reading. It mentions how the US military begged a pastor to not promote hate because it jeopardizes security on foreign soil.
>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).
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.
Opinions are not a protected demographic like gender or age. Making opinions a protected demographic will prevent your ability to fire someone because they're an asshole.
The problem is that today's suppression of "free speech" by private organizations helps shape public opinion about the government doing it tomorrow. I.e., when a generation have grown up believing Google, Facebook, etc. silencing "free speech" on their platforms to be reasonable actions they may become more amenable laws being passed in the future ("Facebook bans hate speech and it's a better place for it, I think maybe federal laws against hate speech would be a good thing").
If you're given the right to control what Facebook has the right to censor, then you're actually removing Facebook's freedom of expression. After all, their code and their website is a form of expression of their own, despite being composed in part by users' content.
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.
But in its general form, its about the American ideal of the free sharing of ideas in public. That's entirely independent of Constitutional arguments. We can reasonably argue that Facebook is being fundamentally UnAmerican in their behavior, and should be censured for it.
I could create a website and delete any comments I don't like. Many websites do. It's not unAmerican if I do it, nor is it unAmerican if Facebook does it. I would detest the possibility of government censure of my website or of Facebook's.
Facebook is not 'a website'. Its a hosting service for lots of collaborative websites. Clearly debatable whether its more like an ISP than a publisher.
Not every action by a country must be taken by the government. Being un-American is in fact something that the government must tolerate under the First Amendment. However, if you believe that American culture and values creates a good society, and that freedom of speech is a cornerstone of that culture and values, then you can use your freedom of association to boycott Facebook for being un-American.
I'm not talking about boycott. Boycott all you want. He said that the government should censure Facebook. He's dead wrong. Can't even believe I'm having this argument on here.
First, this isn't just about government censorship. It might be legal to draw Muhammed cartoons in Western countries, but everyone's afraid to do it because of what some hothead might do in revenge. We have some groups deciding to impose censorship on the wider community by threat of violence, no-platforming, etc, with the same result as if the government had done it. If the outcome is the same (censorship and fear of free discussion) how is this not related to freedom of speech? 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?
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.
> First, this isn't just about government censorship.
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.
If one is too afraid to use First Amendment rights because of non-state actors that the state does not stop, do we really have First Amendment rights?
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.
Are you suggesting that the government should use its military and para-military forces to actively defend freedom of speech?
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.
I didn't mention military and I think that's a bit overblown on your part.
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 must have misunderstood your initial point. I agree that the government (police is para-military) has the responsibility to prosecute everyone equally. If your point was that it could ignore prosecuting some in order to suppress freedom of speech, than I agree, that the government should in some way be required to prosecute all people fairly (though this is easier said than done I fear).
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.
This is more or less what I'm saying. I don't really see how the government can have a direct and active defense of the First Amendment as it applies only to the government. I'm just speaking of the other laws on the books that the government may choose to not enforce that will lead to a person unable to exercise free expression. I interpret that type of inaction by the government as a form of a First Amendment violation.
> If one is too afraid to use First Amendment rights because of non-state actors that the state does not stop, do we really have First Amendment rights?
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 not saying the oppressive group is violating your First Amendment rights, I am saying they are actively suppressing you from exercising your rights. What's the easiest way for the state to silence a group under free speech protections? Allow a non-state actor to do it instead. In my statement you quoted, I am putting the weight of my accusation on the state itself.
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.
> I am saying they are actively suppressing you from exercising your rights.
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.
I am making the argument that if a non-state actor is actively suppressing your speech with illegal activities and the state does nothing to prevent it, then the state is complicit in those actions. Take speech and the First Amendment out of it for a second; if a non-state actor oppresses you via illegal activities and the state does not step up to stop said illegal activities, then it is complicit in that oppression.
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.
>I'm confused as to how Facebook even comes into this discussion.
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.
As I said, I don't necessary agree with the Facebook thing. I can see why people complain about their behavior, which is fine. I was saying that I think the subject is irrelevant to the discussion.
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.
> 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.
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?
Please explain in another way how it lacks entirely of meaning, because your current explanation is essentially lacking entirely of meaning.
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.
I'm not ignoring it, you're claiming a right you don't have. You do not have a right of free speech/expression outside of not having the government trample on it. Non state actors don't have to break the law to censor you, they have the legal right to do it on their own property. If someone is oppressing you illegally call the cops or sue them, the state already protects you against illegal activities. You're complaining about individual acts of corruption and calling them state support, this is incorrect.
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.
Explain to me how punching me in the face while standing in a public space to make me shut up is a legal right on private property? With police standing nearby to witness the whole thing and yet do nothing. You keep going back to private property to deflect from what I'm saying.
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.
Assault is a violation of your right to not be physically attacked. The reason for the attack is generally irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it was something you said, jealousy induced hatred, road rage, gang initiation, and so on.
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.
>Then it isn't about "freedom of speech" which is a right that means free from government censorship
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.
Government is just one form of a society's self regulation.
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?
The problem with this is that restrictions on "no-platforming, etc" are themselves restrictions on speech. Which makes the entire concept inconsistent and something that only provides freedom for the (usually right-wing) speech its proponent agrees with.
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.
I've recently seen this used as an excuse to do some horrible things.
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.
> then we need a new word to mean freedom to express ideas without people actively organizing to try to hurt you.
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.
Yes, it is an intriguing thing to witness. Bullies claiming they need the power to restrict the speech of their bullies. Sometimes they are correct when they point out the alleged bullies, but too many times the "bully" is someone that simply disagrees.
So you'll have no problem with a world where homosexual advocates, communists and anti-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? The Hollywood Blacklist - published by the Hollywood Reporter and implemented by studios - was 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.
(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?)
> So you'll have no problem with a world where homosexual advocates, communists and anti-racists are socially shunned and economically excluded?
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?
> 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.
Do you have a problem with a world where those who oppose homosexual activity, corporations and racists are socially shunned and economically excluded?
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.
> In order to discover places where we currently are wrong, we need to be tolerant of people expressing dissenting points of view.
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 not suggesting you should accept my ideas that you believe are wrong.
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?
You haven't reached epistemic closure on racism? Donald Sterling's comments: "It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people", and, "You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want", but "the little I ask you is ... not to bring them to my games" - you haven't reached epistemic closure on that?
The downvotes are particularly hypocritical and self-serving. I guess tolerance of "of people expressing dissenting points of view" has particular requirements.
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.
>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
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".
> 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
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!
It seems to me that there are two separate legal structures that protect me from your hypothetical: 1. The government can't send black helicopters because of freedom of speech and 2. A private organization can't deploy black helicopters to take me into custody for any purpose (that's kidnapping). This is why it's important to hold government to a higher standard: they can legally do far more things than private organizations.
First, OP said nothing about kidnapping - there's a lot of intimidation that can be done that isn't explicitly illegal. Even more that won't be prosecuted when say the "private organization" and "government" enjoy a cozy relationship.
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.
The confusion around this issue is generated by the rise of protected classes and the selective application of discrimination suits against institutions.
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.
That "narrow" definition is called the 1st amendment, so it actually does follow because that's been the law for over 200 years. Laws against violence and assault stop private organization from deploying black helicopters to take you out.
> 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.
By your narrow definition, China and Thailand have complete freedom of speech. It's just that upon entering, you enter into a contract whereby you exchange money or time in jail to say things someone does not like.
Codifying protection of a concept into law necessarily restricts the scope of any definition to what makes sense to express in law. This does not mean said resulting law covers the whole concept.
It is you who are choosing to adopt this law as the entirety of what the concept means to you.
It's codified into law that way for a reason, any further guarantee about freedom of speech beyond non-government interference would be a violation of someone else's property rights. Your rights end where others begin and telling a company/person what they can and can't do with their own properties tramples on their rights. My website/land/newspaper/company etc are my property and I can censor you while on it if I wish because you have no right of free expression on my property.
Yes, I don't disagree with what you've just said. But as I've been saying there is more to freedom of speech than what is possible to guarantee legally. For instance, there is definitely a lack of freedom of speech on twitter/facebook/etc. This does not automatically imply that they should be forced to carry disagreeable content or that their service should be nationalized. In this case, my statement is meant to encourage people to seek out Freer software.
> For instance, there is definitely a lack of freedom of speech on twitter/facebook/etc.
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.
So we're really just arguing over whether the term is a singular and specific, or can be a more general concept. To me, including nonidentical behavior that has similar effects on society is the better choice.
Furthermore, the actual text of the first amendment does not define freedom of speech, but explicitly references it as an external concept.
>any government is isomorphic to a perfect "Libertopia" where a single corporation owns everything.
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?
A corporation is of, for, and by the shareholders. A country can be thought of as a similar entity where every citizen gets a share.
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.
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.
The primary motivations of corporations and governments are vastly different, and the exponentially larger expanse of governments gives it different properties in its operations.
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.
Is the distinction of government censorship and censorship by entities which have a dominating position on some communication channels and with a budget larger than some small countries really that sensible?
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.
That's a very US-centric approach. American first amendment is about government censorship. Free speech is about free exchange of ideas. That's the usual benefit and justification.
No it's not. The first amendment is not free speech, and America isn't the world. Chilling effects can flow from anyone with power, regardless of whether they are "officially" recognised as a "government". 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".
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.
>If people are afraid to speak their mind due to murderous vigilantes,
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?
>Here is article 19 of the UDHR, which correctly does not mention governments:
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.
You're confusing levels. That means that the member nations are the people doing the defending of free speech, not that they are (necessarily) the people from whom free speech is defended.
> 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.
> 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 actors (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."
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.
>When an actor is unspecified, the obvious answer is "anyone"."
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".
> 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.
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.
>"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.
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.
All of those things are nonsensical extrapolations of things I didn't say.
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.
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.
Not sure why you think that government censorship is the only enemy of the noblest form of free speech. The government is the only actor restricted by the constitution, because the constitution's purpose is to set the structure and limitations of the government.
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."
As others have said, freedom of speech is not the first Amendment and America is not the world. But even American thinkers themselves define it more broadly, (and always have) e.g.
> 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.
>But I think in that case one should just admit that they don't see free speech as a fundamental human right.
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.)
Where do you have free speech? Where will you have said free speech that someone else can actually hear?
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.
Absolutely. It feels especially jarring to hear this from a paper based in the UK, with its notoriously muzzling libel laws. Then again, libel laws tend to defend the rich and powerful, who are much more a part of the Economist's readership than the typically poor immigrant Muslim communities who are endangered by hate speech calls for violence.
I would argue that the consistent principle is to protect the right to freely express ideas, arguments and points of view, no matter how stupid or poorly supported they may be. _That_ is what should be protected; not the literal interpretation of "anything that comes out of a mouth".
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.
Add to that list "criticizing Islam, Muhammad and quran."
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.
>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
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.
> The point is we're always a bit selective about what counts as free speech
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
> * 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
The trend here is that the information is provably false or misleading. It isn't slander if it's true. You're allowed to use someone's trademark to refer to their products. You can't claim someone else's copyrighted words as your own but you can convey the same information in your own words and when you have a need to use the author's words there is fair use. Insider trading is fraud via a lie of omission -- publish the information and it isn't insider trading.
Professional confidentiality obligations:
> * HIPAA and medical information privacy laws
> * Breaching attorney-client privilege
> * Military and government classified information (thanks rmc!)
The defining characteristic is that you signed up for that profession. The Pentagon Papers were classified but The New York Times can still publish them because they never agreed not to. If the client blabs attorney-client privileged information to the other side or the press then they can use it.
Obscenity:
> * FCC and obscenity laws in US media
> * Distribution of illegal porn (for various definitions of illegal)
These are, honestly, free speech violations, and often get struck down. But at least they're easy to cordon off.
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.
sorry if it offends, but this is the cause of these issues shown in the post. perhaps I should explain that i believe cults (religions being cults accepted by a large enough group of people) are the primary mechanism that is used by people in authority to divide and conquer, and control by fear.
Further more if people really want to solve these issues , a major effort should be put towards showing people what all cults really are and rid the world of them.
It's not that it "offends", it's that religious flamewars are a proven way to destroy the quality of discourse we strive for here. We ban accounts that won't stop doing it, so please stop doing it.
It's really hard to say how our world will look in the coming decades...
On one hand, we have all this explosively liberating technology, cheap and powerful, that is changing the way we communicate and share information. On the other hand, you see the 'natural' result of all this power moving towards the individual: states and governments gripping tighter than ever to control it and maintain their elevated status.
It serves to illustrate how asinine our arguments over 'appropriate' speech are. The result of any kind of forced censorship is the same no matter what the content of the speech is : less freedom.
Is it really so hard? The technology we have mostly helps people to free themselves from non-US, non-western-European "oppressing" governments (so basically all their enemies get trouble with their population, and the population becomes more open to our culture and more dependent on our technology).
But inside our borders we become more and more dependent on the technology, have less and less insight into what is happening in this technology. Also increasing the power of forementioned US and western European governments.
The only thing maybe becoming a problem is the eastern hemisphere with China, Russia, S.Korea, Japan and Taiwan (if they decide to work together, but happy for us they are pretty much split in the middle).
The magnitude of the efforts to criminalize BDS activism is far too big for this exclusion to to be considered as something forgotten, unintentionally unmentioned.
My fiancé is Jewish and pro-BDS. Maybe I live in the leftist-Jewish bubble, but there is quite a bit of political divide in the Jewish community right now over Israel. Criticism of Israel for a long time in the Jewish community, and still to this day, is considered blasphemy. Questioning the idea of a Jewish state vs. a secular one is even worse.
I'm agnostic but grew up Christian, but it's fascinating to me to see it all unfold...I have American friends who have joined the IDF growing up who were super pro-Israel so it's interesting to see this rift appearing.
I don't know, islamic terror in particular seems to stand out from the rest. I mean, china, or the mexican drug lords are directly defending their interests. Islamic terror is not, it's revenge against a nebulous 'enemy' that they are being forced to tolerate (terrorists are not defending the honor of the peaceful muslims (who wouldnt even read charlie hebdo); instead they are trying to radicalize them).
> he could not live “in any country where free speech is allowed”
There is something to be said about incompatibility of certain cultures here.
Most Islamic terrorism in our age can be traced to the hyper-conservative madrasahs all over the world sponsored by (Sunni) Saudi Arabia, which seeks to dominate Islamic discourse and blunt the influence of (Shia) Iran.
Also worth noting that the vast majority of global Islamic terrorists (as in not secretarian violence like was seen in Iraq, but rather acts of terrorism in predominantly non-Muslim areas) are Sunni.
Yes, there may be compatibility, but there is also a great degree of deliberate cultural programming that we often do not notice or even consider.
As usual, religion is a smokescreen. The most salient motivation for Saudi and other quasi-state support of "radical" Islam is to focus the populace's dissatisfaction outward toward the West instead of inward toward the horrific authoritarian regimes that rule these areas.
Bingo. Any time powerful people advocate for anything on moralistic grounds (like "make the world safe for democracy"), my immediate reaction is to ask "if these people get their way, what else do they get out of it?"
Why do you deny sincere religiosity and direct reading of the texts as the motivation for the acts of religious people? Through the ages the humanity has done a lot of harm to "others" based on much less than what's in the holy texts of "the religion that can't be named." But that particular religion has spread especially based on the idea of fighting the war for religion and benefit of the fighters (both in this world and as the shortcut to heaven), all in the "holy" texts.
For Christianity's witch hunting, only one verse in Bible was enough (Exodus 22:18). Luckily, there was at least:
Edit: return0, your "only very few lines have being pursued" signals to me that you don't know the content of the "holy" texts being discussed (that is, of the religion that can't be named). The visual presentation of the extent of hate directed to unbelievers is stunning -- almost every chapter remains heavily marked once we attempt doing this. And the ideas and demands are often, almost hypnotically, repeated. It's easy to prove it, there are enough translations even on-line.
There are millions of things that could happen if one follows religious books to the letter. Don't you find it suspicious that only very few (convenient for some interests) lines have being pursued?
In Islam, there are "sword verses" and "peace verses". Christianity likewise has verses that are pretty violent (particularly in the Old Testament), and passages that promote peace and tolerance.
I do feel that comparing which text is more violent by nature is kind of pointless. Is Sura 9 any "better or worse" than Deuteronomy 20? I don't know, they both seem pretty vanquish-all-your-enemies to me.
So what you focus on is "interpretations". And so many times, the "interpretations" have a political bent. That Islam is tied to so much radicalism and terrorism is troubling. But a lot of the root source of this does seem to be the petro-economy, particularly Saudi Arabia. Example: Would Islamic terrorism be so big had Saudi Arabia not pushed Wahhabism so hard, tying it to politics (and thus dominating more mystical forms of Islam like say the Sufis)? Would we have a Taliban had the Wahhabist Saudis not fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (thus radicalizing the Deobandis)?
The problem with calling out entire religions is that you often sweep up people who have much different interpretations. A Western equivalent (not in terms of impact perhaps but in ideas) would be to say that Christianity itself is anti-gay. Some Christian churches are anti-gay, and there are a couple passages in the Bible that are anti-homosexual, but there are also Christians that dismiss these verses. Judaism mostly downplays violent passages ala Deuteronomy 20, and likewise, Islam could downplay their violent side if they wanted to (some sects do in fact). Most religious holy books are very multi-faceted.
The fact that a side of Islam doesn't has a lot to do, in my opinion, with the politics and military ties of certain kleptocrat petro-economies (Saudi Arabia is a big one) or other external events (the American invasion of Iraq is another as had that not happened, there probably would be no ISIS).
> Most religious holy books are very multi-faceted.
Most other books. But finding peaceful parts in the "book of the exact sayings of God" (according to that religion and the book itself (!)) is almost impossible except when the quote is not full. E.g. the US president quoted the part of 5:32 but not the 5:32 and 5:33 in full, which at once is much less peaceful, as everybody can check for himself. And the president would surely select a better one, if it existed. But it doesn't. Which presents the problem that simply just reading the original texts radicalizes the readers. That there's so much intolerant "stuff" inside is the major problem that most of people are still somehow too afraid to acknowledge (and even less check for themselves).
> Islam could downplay their violent side if they wanted to (some sects do in fact)
Only one sect I know of, less than 1.4 percent of the rest, founded 1889, and not accepted as believers by the remaining 98.6 percent:
Well, I mentioned Sufism (which doesn't renounce all violence per se -- most religions don't -- but has a more mystical interpretation that makes it less prone to fundamentalist Islam style jihad), and there's also the Mouride. Of course, you can say that all of these combined is a low percentage of the dogma.
I still am not sure where this line of reasoning goes though. We can spin lots of circles trying to prove one ancient very violent text is more violent in nature than the other. For the record, I would agree that the Quran "out-violences" the Old Testament. (I disagree that the Quran is not multi-faceted though). And yet, I am not sure that this matters much.
I could also say that Buddhism is way more pacifist then either Christianity or Islam. Yet I can find examples of Buddhist terrorism. I can also describe the origins of Christianity as an apocalyptic cult (the "great tribulation" being a key cornerstone of that faith). Yet it doesn't appear to inspire ISIS style violence these days.
As a general rule I am personally wary of linking violence in media very directly to external violence. I know in the United States all sorts of people try to link our often violent entertainment media to various other events (from school shootings to aggressive behavior). But the more in depth studies seem to only indicate casual correlation... or not even that.
So sure, the text of the Quran is pretty violent, some conquer your enemies stuff, very Old Testament. The answer is, yes, and? If you're trying to directly link the Quran to terrorism (versus what I more suspect, terrorists using the Quran for their own ends), that's a pretty tall accusation. 1.6 billion people follow this book after all. Most of the 1.6 billion people are not terrorists or even very violent.
There was a time when the "status" of Islam and Christianity was reversed, after all. From roughly 800 AD to 1300 AD, Islam experienced its "Golden Age"; certainly there was some military activity then, but the sections encouraging wisdom were also in play (resulting in many mathematical and scientific advances). It was the Abbasid caliphate leaders that encouraged this. The Christian world was meanwhile stuck in the Middle Ages, whose popes used Biblical dogma to justify the Crusades.
Likewise today, I see far more connection between politics and Islamic terrorism versus the Quran itself and Islamic terrorism. If a heck of a lot of Islam followers do have a jihadist dominant interpretation of the Quran, I would blame that entirely on religious and political leaders that actually emphasize the jihadist portions. Not the book. This is religion after all. After all, some big political positions in religion arise that have nothing to do with holy texts at all. :)
> From roughly 800 AD to 1300 AD, Islam experienced its "Golden Age"
The so-called "golden age" was the result of occupying the new lands and taking over the control over the non-Muslim knowledge, accumulated through the thousands of years in these areas by non-Muslims. And the reason that age ended was the more fundamentalistic enforcement of the rules from the holy texts. No more science, everything is in the holy books. What can be learned from this then?
How can you say that the laws are anything but serious reading the holy texts, as the whole article documents? Or that it's the invention of just a land or two?
Honestly it was not just conquest (though that certainly spurred a lot); there was some organic internal growth as well (the most well known of course being algebra).
But, yes, I do think there are some things that can be learned, of course:
A) Sharing knowledge is by and large a good thing (some of the "Golden Age" is probably a result of having a large stable empire with not as much internal faction fighting, a common language (Arabic), and all those influences, from the Greeks to the Egyptians to the Chinese).
B) A society that turns away from rationality, and turns towards anti-rationalist fundamentalist religious dogma, is a society that's in trouble.
> there was some organic internal growth as well (the most well known of course being algebra)
The "Arabic numerals" were actually taken from India, and in that areas the astronomy, using complex calculations was practiced many centuries before, also using better numerals (positional, using letters, just like programmers use A-F in hex today) than the Roman ones which weren't practical. But yes, once that huge knowledge was taken over, there was some period of some improvements. But it ended more than 750 years ago, never to return, as the core of the religion itself actually never supported it. The developments during the following 750 years and the state of human rights in countries that claim to be based on the Islamic law are certainly illustrative and shouldn't be ignored.
"An estimate of the number of people killed, based on the Muslim chronicles and demographic calculations, was done by K.S. Lal in his book Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, who claimed that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million."
To compare, the total population of the world was at that time less than 550 million.
The "core of the religion" obviously supported greater knowledge for roughly 500 years. That's a fairly long time. And yes, they were conquerors. But historically who wasn't in 800-1200 AD? Remember, one of the reasons the Islamic Golden Age ended was that Baghdad was conquered by the Mongols. (We've had a relatively stable world map since World War II... that's historically pretty rare.)
I do think that the last 750 years of the Arab world have been dominated by more stronger church-oriented viewpoints, which is unfortunate for the advance of ideas. But that does not imply extreme intolerance per se or radical violence. To be honest, I don't know anything historically as radical as Saudi Wahhabism or its terrorist spin-offs (well, nothing so "mainstream" at least). The Ottoman Empire and Mughal Empire, as far as I know, displayed some tolerance towards different religious sects (although they were never equals and tolerance varied wildly on the ruler), and the justice / law system in place seems roughly close to what the Christian world had before the Renaissance / Enlightenment days. The forced conversion stats you are quoting are, as the Wikipedia article says, controversial... and the times were different anyways.
Today, although the human rights of many Islamic countries are wretched, I certainly can think of several of non-Islamic countries with worse human rights problems, compared to Islamic countries such as Jordan, India, post-revolution Tunisia, or heck even a middle-of-the-road semi-violator like Indonesia. (See: Congo, North Korea, pre-reform Mynamar)
That's not to excuse the fact that a large portion of Islam nations suffer from wretched human rights. But, again I will ask you: if you really believe that Islam is fundamentally violent and this fact can't be changed, what's your solution to this? Personally, I believe that thought pattern is rather dangerous. This is what 1.6 billion people believe. Are you condemning all of them?
If the focus was more narrow, like Wahhabism, that's a different story: Wahhabism has touched a lot of radical Islamic terrorist groups, and Wahhabism is clearly a religious tool of the Saudi state. Now, many Western countries like the United States are allies with Saudi Arabia. If we were really concerned about Islamic terrorism, you'd think we'd be rather concerned about this relationship. (There's political reasons behind this relationship, of course...)
> The "core of the religion" obviously supported greater knowledge for roughly 500 years.
No, what was before 750 years 1) was not what today's religious authorities recognize as the core and 2) was what doesn't exist in that form in the holy texts. In order to claim what you claim you'd have to demonstrate at least either 1 or 2. Because in fact the period existed is spite of the content of the texts and not because of them. The official religious core has the specific names: Sharia ("a body of moral and religious law derived from religious prophecy, as opposed to human legislation.") and Jihad ("the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and specialists in the hadith understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.")
Fantastically, the confusion in the Western world about the "core" doesn't come from any rationally obtainable and provable fact about that religion, but only because of bad analogies. We all "know" the myth about Jesus, and the apparent "distortion" of the core faith by later church practices. The lazy mind concludes, using also completely false "common knowledge" like "every religion is the same" that ergo those born as members of that specific religion and the world would benefit from the return to the core. Which is unbelievably stupid. The same "sola scriptura" idea, that gave the Western world after enough wars and enough suffering enough deaths for religious beliefs, at least some hook to get free from some negative teachings and practices of the religion, if applied to the texts of this another religion (about which we worry now) uncovers immense hate, intolerance and the war until only one religion remains (everything written in the core)! That's the plainly visible truth for anybody who actually reads "the book."
> This is what 1.6 billion people believe. Are you condemning all of them?
What it "this" in that sentence of yours? Actually just the Western thought projects and supports both the "return to the core" (e.g. through being allies as you note) and the belief in "peacefulness" of "every religion" if the core is applied (which can't be farther from the truth). I claim that among these 1.6 billions you mention most of the people can understand that exactly these ideas ("return to the core good") can lead to more torture and suffering, and that they wouldn't want to be a part of it. It's we, the Western world, that should understand that simple truth. And stop using false analogies.
> If we were really concerned about Islamic terrorism, you'd think we'd be rather concerned about this relationship.
This argument is just "our leaders always know what they're doing, we don't have to worry or check if they lie and don't have to attempt to influence them democratically, and we can even blindly repeat their claims in our arguments without appearing uninformed." And it's completely false (war because of "Irag and WMD" and "to bring democracy for Iraq" is just one of the recent examples). Please read just the whole 5:32 and 5:33 and compare that with that part of 5:32 that the US president officially presented as the image of the religion and then tell me that you stay behind that. It's an insulting attempt of deception to anybody who knows even just these two verses (not to mention the book) in full (which includes enough believers).
Then read and think about the reforms of Ataturk, that's the only long-term direction for these parts of the world and these believers that we should support. He knew that the "return to the core" or even increasing that kind of religiosity there was plainly bad. It's surely bad for the whole humanity.
Islam has many references about seeking knowledge, probably best expressed in the hadiths (Al-Tirmidhi 74 and 108 for example) but also found to some extent in the Quran. With learned knowledge (eg science) in the Arabic world at a very low point these days, it's clear that your answer is pretty much #1.
Yes, an Ataturk direction would be a good direction to go. It is true as another poster mentioned that Judaism's rather barbaric Old Testament is tempered by knowledge-seeking scholarly tradition in Judaism and the reforms of the New Testament in Christianity. Too much of Islam does not have much of this at the moment, in fact, recent history has somewhat undone the reforms first undertaken by the Ottoman empire (mixed civil based on French law and sharia, a system still in some countries like Jordan) and the later reforms of Ataturk.
Ataturk's perspective is good to note. He was very much against political Islam. He did not seem to be against Islam itself (and in fact encouraged study by sponsoring and radio-reading Quran translations etc.). Actually, he felt religion was an important institution, if I recall, but it should be personal, and not magical, superstitious, or archaic.
Part of the reason why I really don't care about trying to prove one religion has more violent text than another, is that I believe anti-rational, political oriented religious fundamentalism is a danger period, no matter what the form. It is not "equal" at the moment, by far. But in the US we have too many Christian fundamentalist pointing fingers at the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism... while simultaneously trying to lead us in that direction. I don't want American Christians to take us where Islam went 750 years ago.
> But in the US we have too many Christian fundamentalist pointing fingers at the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism
If your political opponents speak the truth, you still shouldn't lie! If you do, you are the one who actually motivate otherwise moderate voters to vote for those who actually speak the truth, even if their hidden (or less visible) goals are much worse. People still don't want being too openly lied.
> I don't want American Christians to take us where Islam went 750 years ago.
Well there are already enough (enough to be dangerous for the whole world, again because of the influence and money, just like Saudis and other rich entities in Islam world) American Christians that are anyway at least 350 years behind Europe with their ideas, denying effectively everything that the science discovered since Galileo: that's how much they have to deny to be able to claim that the Earth exists only 6000 years. As far as I understand, any European Christian believer that claims something like that got his Kool Aid from across the Atlantic.
If Ataturk would be alive today in the US, he would be declared by the right and as the left atheistic extremist for enforcing secularism and by the left as the pure right extremist for trying to limit the unquestioned expansion of influence of the political Islam. Awful, as he achieved almost 100 years ago what today in the US looks impossible only because of such partisan thinking like the one you displayed: "but the other side says that, then we can't, even if it's true." Really?
I don't dispute that the Bible has violent verses, but Deuteronomy 20 is not inciting violence. It's saying "When you go to war...", not that the reader SHOULD go to war. It also has a paragraph "When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace." Later on, it mentions specific historical groups of people that the letter is specifically talking about.
On the other hand, the Surah verse is more of a call to war, referring to "unbelievers" and "polytheists," also saying that the reader should "...kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush."
I'm sure you could find verses in the Bible that are more violent, but I doubt you'll find any comparable to the worst that Islam has to offer.
Islam, fundamentally, has no new testament equivalent. Christians can draw a line between old and new rules without theological issues.
Jews interpret the old testament as laws for Jews, by Jews. There is no prerogative to convert.
Islam has neither of those. It is a violent old testament with a legal code inscribed focused on converting or otherwise making lives miserable for other people of the book (not to mention what they consider pagans).
This is the most infuriating thing to me. Everyone is aware of this, yet it never comes up in politics and the US keeps pretending that the Saudis are our great allies. I don't understand it one bit.
I think the idea of non-state actors using force to ensure they are not offended is a degree or two worse than governments doing the same thing. Governments usually behave in predictable, plodding ways. Ten thousand vehemently angry, violent people do not.
So we're agreed on that. What's worse is the fact that it's not just Islamists. I wish that it were. Instead, we're growing a generation of internet-connected anger-junkies. The internet mob scene is well-known and well-documented. It continues to grow. I am afraid that soon we'll not just see Islamists, but multiple groups willing and able to use deadly force at the least offence.
Ah, I see. I misread. I'm speaking of violence and other illegal activities. But, it's early yet.
EDIT: this was the definition I was thinking.
Deadly force, as defined by the United States Armed Forces, is force that a person uses causing, or that a person knows or should know would create a substantial risk of causing, death or serious bodily harm or injury.
If you look at it from the perspective that Islamists want to take over the world, it looks more like they too are simply defending their interests as well.
The bunch of radicals that believes this can be easily defeated (as shown by the russian intervention), if it weren't for the fragile petrol-fueled balance of alliances in the region. The terrorists inflict terror in an attempt to recruit more "fighters". That is not a defensive act, there is not yet anything to defend..
This has little to do with the religion itself or the koran (e.g. the muslim Ottoman empire was a tolerant empire that lasted for centuries). It's about a certain culture that seems to be gaining ground within this religion.
That said, i agree that the silence and reluctance to defend western values has done more harm than good. There is a belief that we can't have a firm discussion about what values we want allow the west to have without killing each other. That's immature and wrong, resulting in shameful incidents such as the coverup of the Cologne rape incidents. State actors from all sides consider the populace "too immature" to handle the truth.
> e.g. the muslim Ottoman empire was a tolerant empire that lasted for centuries
I don't know how tolerant they really were. Look up the janissaries, the jizya and the rest of the details of dhimmitude. It's probably better described as 'sufferance' rather than 'tolerance.'
I'll grant that they were probably more tolerant than Western Europe was at the time, given that they let Jews & Christians reside in the empire during centuries when Jews & Moors were expelled from European nations.
> the muslim Ottoman empire was a tolerant empire that lasted for centuries
I've never heard something like that. What was that tolerance, can you please specify? They didn't kill all the Christians, but that would be against their religious texts, as long as the "people of the book" (the way the Christians and Jews are referred to) accept to pay the tax that only they have to pay, they can live.
Specifically, and certainly not "tolerant" Ottomans also enforced the "tribute in blood," which actually wasn't supported by their religious texts:
I am only talking about religious tolerance, and only to contrast it with the modern radical islamic hateful version. Of course the ottomans were invaders and they did commit atrocities. The Jannissaries however were not primarily a means of inflicting terror or to promote conversion to islam. By (forcefully) recruiting non-muslim boys, who thus did not have family connections to power, the Jannissaries were guaranteed to be faithful to their masters (same reason why they weren't allowed to marry). They were well compensated and were high ranking officers ; They could be compared with the use of Eunuchs in china.
> The Jannissaries however were not primarily a means of inflicting terror or to promote conversion to islam.
Excuse me? "Not primarily to inflict terror"? The custom of mothers making their own children disabled with their own hands only to prevent them being taken away, their old memories destroyed, is not the result of the terror? The total number of people living there was much smaller then than today.
The non-muslim boys were regularly taken away from their families and converted to Islam. The forceful conversion existed, the pressure to non-muslims existed (and that was surely not the only one) exactly to push the non-muslims to finally convert, which actually succeeded among Albanians and in Bosnia.
And that explains the religious separation of that part of Europe today. There were no Muslims there before. Now millions.
Not to mention that the Ottomans very non-peacefully fought wars up until Vienna, which was under siege twice. Start with 1359 then look at the following pictures through the years here:
Several people are currently in jail without trial for making non-specific verbal or written threats against schools in the USA.
One could play devil's-advocate and argue that is free-speech since the threat is non-specific and no actual action was taken.
Using that same logic however, insulting a religion specifically to demonstrate/cause violent reaction should trigger a per-emptive jail term without trial in the USA?
But now you've got me defending an abrahamic religion, I feel like I need to take a shower to get clean.
Well again, not to defend the religion, but they tend to go after people, not just the religion, and yes those people get killed.
Like the idiots who go and kill people in headgear who turn out to be Sikh and not even muslim. Started happening after 9/11 and still happens every few years when the flames are fanned.
> Using that same logic however, insulting a religion specifically to demonstrate/cause violent reaction should trigger a per-emptive jail term without trial in the USA?
Constitution says no, but if they call you a terrorist, the government could put your ass in Gitmo and you'd never be heard from again.
I think we need a better reference these days because no-one has been added to gitmo in eight years and certainly not any US citizen (that we know of, who knows for sure?)
However I don't think there are even examples of terrorists without trials in supermax? Again that we know of, because we tend to not find out these things until someone gives up their own freedom to leak out what is really going on years later.
I do know there are people in jail, not prison, without trial for threatening schools. That's as close as we get to prison-for-speech?
What about Homan Square in Chicago where the local police set up and utilized a "secret" detention center where people were held, without charges or access to an attorney?
US attacks on whistleblowers are not mentioned. US religious ’fatwahs’ against abortion doctors aren’t mentioned, but much is made of Muslim misbehavior.
Kind of a bad article. It also doesn’t mention anything about UK slander laws.
> And we all know Islam is a race, not a religion, so it deserves the same protections from discrimination.
In Europe, "racism", in law, means discrimination to someone on the grounds of their race, ethnicity, national origin or religious background. It's been that way since the 1960s.
That wasn't the case in the UK, where Jewish people got protection under race discrimination law, Christians got protections under blasphemy laws[1], but Muslims weren't protected by either.
It was fine to say things about Muslims and Islam that you could not say about Jews or Christians.
This loophole was used by far-right groups - the BNP, EDL, etc to avoid prosecution.
[1] And before you say the blasphemy laws were never used the film "Life of Brian" only got permissions for Glasgow cinemas in 2009, and Stewart Lee went through a very expensive blasphemy court case for "Jerry Springer the Opera".
Jews are an ethnicity first and foremost — you can't really compare it to being christian or muslim. You can choose to accept or refuse a religion, but you can't change your ethnicity (at least at a modern DNA therapy level).
> And we all know Islam is a race, not a religion, so it deserves the same protections from discrimination.
In the US, at least, religion has been protected by Constitutional law longer than race has been. (In fact, its a category that has some -- though minor -- protection in the Constitution before the bill of rights, in the religious test clause.)
Disturbing thought, I wonder if free speech is only politically feasible under the assumption of limited distribution. If we look at free speech two decades ago, the two ways of enjoying free speech were, you could convince an editor, or you could copy a few hundred leaflets and distribute them by hand. The first case limits the distribution to people who buy the newspaper (or who buy from that publisher, there's a reason that explicitly Anarchist bookshops are a thing) and the second limits both the numbers and the geographic distribution.
Today anybody can, at least in principle, overcome these limitations just by getting a youtube account, with the effect that for all X, group X is constantly confronted with vile hatred. The effect is, everybody is pissed off, while only groups which are explicitly pro freedom of speech tell themselves that they have to live with the trolls.
The idea is, that as long as freedom of speech was limited by the practicalities of distribution to a, for most people, tolerable level, everybody was happy to endorse free speech. Nowadays it is no longer constrained by distribution and people start to revisit their assumptions about free speech.
The Internet may have a wide reach but there is also an awful signal-to-noise ratio. You can say whatever you want and share it with your friends but that doesn't mean they will share it or even read it.
So given that, I don't think the semi-frictionless free expression is all that different from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" leaflets of the late 18th century.
It is only sad that people refuse to revisit their assumptions about whatever X is where contradictory voices about X would drive them to think the solution is to cause violence.
Absolutely. If you are truly confident in your position, and know it is correct then a dissenting voice shouldn't bother you. Instead you should just feel sorry for them.
It's the people who can't handle that a dissenting voice is causing cognitive dissonance that feel like violence is the solution.
It's interesting that many who advocate a "free speech über alles" approach have a curious exemption for property rights. They claim the right of Facebook/Twitter/reddit/etc. as privacy companies to control their property (i.e. their websites) apparently trump right to free speech. An earlier free speech article also from the Economist, which is linked from the sidebar[1], claims that private companies should be exempted from free speech rules, and should be allowed to publish, or not publish, anything they want.
Should Facebook's property rights overrule my free speech rights?
Have you read EULAs these days? Everyone has technically "agreed" that these companies can take down anything they want to on their platform or suspend/delete an account just because they can.
If you don't like Facebook's censorship policies, don't use Facebook.
I suppose an argument could be made that due to its size, Facebook is sort of like a "utility" and has a duty to provide "service" to everybody regardless of its opinions about their use of the service. But unlike the electric company, which is the only place you can buy electricity, Facebook is not a monopoly: There are plenty of other websites where you can publish your speech (or you can even get your own domain and VPS and host your own site very cheaply).
> If you don't like Facebook's censorship policies, don't use Facebook.
Why? Don't I have a right to free speech (on Facebook)?
Should it be moral for the government to set up small, limited, "free speech zones" far away from everywhere and say "If you want free speech, go here?". (Yes I know that has sorta happened in USA) What about requiring that all bookshops/newspaper sellers in a certain area only sell books/newspapers that don't mention $TOPIC. You're quite free to go to a bookshop 100km away which will sell you anything. Is that not a restriction on free speech?
No, you don't have a right to free speech on Facebook.
No, the government can't ban bookshops from selling books about $Topic.
One of these would be the government suppressing free speech (the bookstore's free speech, not their customers'), the other does not involve the government at all.
> Why? Don't I have a right to free speech (on Facebook)?
Absolutely not. Your right of free speech applies only to freedom from government censorship and that's it. Facebook can do whatever they want on their website, you have no rights at all on their website. Please go read the first amendment.
That same first amendment also contains the ostensible provision for businesses to bar African Americans via freedom of association. But as country we (rightly) decided that that's bullshit and enacted laws to stop that practice. It's not inherently unreasonable for someone to suggest that we need to similarly rein in platforms acting against the intellectual discourse values this country was founded upon.
I'm not sure I agree that it does, it used to be interpreted that way but what really changed was the courts interpretation of equal treatment under the law as well as the incorporation of the first 10 amendments which allowed it to say no the first amendment doesn't allow states to discriminate because those amendments apply to the states as well. We as a country didn't decide anything, the supreme court did all on its own.
Additionally I'll any attempt to demand private companies stop censoring their properties hurts free speech and is in fact a direct violation of it.
You're just confusing morals and laws. Facebook censorship might be immoral, but the only way to make it illegal would be to rescind Facebook's freedom of speech, by making them publish whatever the government wanted.
If the government were forcing Facebook to censor some topic, that would be immoral and illegal. All of your examples fall into this category.
Freedom of the press also should protect you from compelled speech from other parties. Nobody should force you to publish an article under your byline in a newspaper you own and distribute, nor do you have to publish every letter to the editor you receive. Facebook and Twitter should be allowed the same rights. Their ball, their rules.
Now, for shared resources owned or partially owned by the government, like airwaves or arguably the Internet (specifically the interconnection of the network), there is a public interest in sharing those resources across all points of view.
Its still debatable whether Facebook and Twitter are "publishers" or just some utility companies. Should your ISP be allowed to censor what you post? Most of us would think, no. Its a blurry line.
The ISP and the phone line (in the U.S. and most countries) use infrastructure subsidized by the government, so should have to follow regulations.
Your local highway/bridge might be owned by a private company, but they require connections to the local roads, owned by the government, and so is expected to be a 'utility'. Fedex might use public roads, but nobody would expect them to be forced to become a 'common carrier', or some such. They can 'censor' whatever packages they want.
> private companies should be exempted from free speech rules, and should be allowed to publish, or not publish, anything they want.
Yes, isn't this obvious? Freedom of speech protects you from government suppression, that's it. It doesn't mean anybody has to respect what you're saying, and it doesn't mean you get to force anyone to broadcast your message.
>It's interesting that many who advocate a "free speech über alles" approach have a curious exemption for property rights
You find this to be a curious exemption? I think the term "freedom of speech" generally means the freedom to let your ideas be known without fearing official (i.e. government) reprisal or suppression.
I don't think "freedom of speech" has ever been generally understood to mean that companies/venues/clubs/etc cannot regulate communication according to their own rules, or have an editorial policy where they choose what gets published and what doesn't.
The right of Facebook to set their own rules on their "property" (websites) absolutely trumps your desire to force them to air your views, both morally and legally. This has no effect on your freedom of speech (as that term is traditionally applied) -- because Facebook has no monopoly on speech venues.
>Should Facebook's property rights overrule my free speech rights?
Yes, because "declining to provide you with a free unlimited platform for speech" is not the same thing as "denying freedom of speech".
I don't think this is a particularly controversial view.
I don't think this is controversial at all. If someone decides to spraypaint a racial slur on my car, am I denying them free speech by cleaning it off? Anyone is free to make their own Diaspora or GNU Social, but the idea that any kind of editing of user submissions to your website is unethical suppression of free speech could have some really bad consequences.
And yet, this article often refers to Google possibly taking down search results.
The article also talks about individual people committing murder, something that's already a crime, rarely about state actions. If a lone murderer & criminal counts as a "threat to free speech", why not talk about who owns the space?
Google is supposed to accurately represent the internet. And sometimes monopolies lose rights that other companies have. Facebook you could perhaps argue. Twitter and reddit are not that big.
When murders are part of a political campaign, they stop being 'lone'.
Google taking down search results is mentioned because it is an act forced by governments. Twitter and Facebook choosing to take down content they don't like is different in character because it is not.
It's important to distinguish between rights and values. Yes, they have a right to restrict speech on their platform. If they value free speech, they shouldn't. The legal guarantee of free speech is just one expression of a more general value.
I don't understand why this is "curious." It's pretty common to have different views on what government should do versus what private individuals should do. For example, I don't think the government should endorse any religion, but I think it's fine for private individuals to do so.
Assuming that writer isn't doing it just to obfuscate, holy hell they need an editor. More words does not make something better, but I can see how it would impress a certain segment.
Rather than just dropping a link, what's your takeaway from this article? What did you synthesize from it?
Trouble with the Economist, they don't credit anything they write there. No idea who is speaking; not even the Editors get credit. I dismiss them outright, and refuse to read a word.
Seems obvious that they want to avoid personal repercussions. They very frankly embarrass other countries (deservedly), and they don't want to lose their ability to get a visa or even endanger their own safety.
Now we both got downvoted from all the strong opinions here. I think your question is valid.
If you read the text about the president needing to speak to a priest it is considered very bad that a person with a lot of military power needs to get so low and talk to a normal person without any military power directly. My interpretation of that kind of comment is that it feels anti free speech, pro surveilance, pro censorship.
Yep, the response to the BDS movement is the definition of double-standards. It's also proof that Israel loves to pull the anti-Semite card whenever it feels like it.
In my opinion, free speech only applies to the state as the state is not a product you can decide not to use such as Facebook and Twitter (from which you do not need free speech protection), that is the fundamental difference.
People should face no punishment other than the potential scorn of the public for their words. Say whatever you want, but be prepared to take disapproval for it.
Edit: I don't know how to explain what I said earlier but apparently I didn't get my point across so I'm going to remove it.
My partner has spent 30 minutes sitting in your lobby. If someone from the Economist is reading this, please ensure it doesn't happen to the next candidate as it's extremely unprofessional and a huge red flag.
100 years ago, a person in the wrong place in the United States who happened to say something someone else didn't like might end up getting murdered by a mob.
I guess that is getting to be a long time ago, but history should not be viewed with a tight lens.
The problem with the free speech debate is everyone has a different definition or understanding of what free speech is.
Free speech should be considered the right to publically criticise and call to account governments, police, judiciary and other state institutions.
It should not mean the right to say absolutely anything to anybody. Having laws on racism and hate speech (for example) provide well-meaning guidance on acceptable behaviour within civilised society and help reduce discrimination, bias etc.
But like all rights "free speech" confers privilege and responsibility on the holder: just because you have a right to doesn't mean you should (e.g the video referenced at the beginning of the article).
Sure but the definition of anything is subject to interpretation/context/intent etc. If you dealt only in absolutes it would be impossible to have any laws at all. Even defining something like "murder" has plenty of room for grey areas. But still I hope we agree that having a "no murder" law is probably desirable in society.
The point I'm making is that once you've opened the door to banning speech on completely subjective topics that a subset of the group gets to decide, then things will go bad.
But murder is a hugely different subject than something so abstract as "hate speech". I can define murder, I ask one to define hate speech. There is definite evidence of harm when it comes to murder, a person has been deprived of life by another. I fail to see how "hate speech" itself deprives anyone of anything nor causes real harm. Of course, incitement to violence due to speech is a potential problem, but that's already covered by existing laws.
Dude - abuse based on ethnicity, religion, disability etc can have a devastating impact on people, particularly the young. It can lead to social division, discrimination & violence. So absolutely it can a negative impact, not just on one persons' mental state, but wider society. It might not be as bad as murder, but still have horrendous consequences.
You say you can define "murder" - but that's my whole point: I can also define, and enshrine in law, something called "hate speech". Both definitions will be subject to interpretation, intent, mitigating circumstances etc, and it will be for the court and jury to thrash out whether an incident should be classed as "murder" or "hate speech". Of course some incidences may be clear cut. Lots won't be.
Ok, then I'll ask again, please define "hate speech".
To add to this based on your response, please define "hate speech" in the same easily understood definition of "murder".
I'm not saying that hate speech does not have a negative impact on people, of course it does. It's why people discuss trying to outlaw it in the first place. I'm simply saying that it's such a subjective topic that there is no way to accurately to define it, therefore the attempt to solve the problem will only make the problem worse. Never mind the fact that people with nefarious intentions will seize on the highly subjective language of the law to make use of it for themselves.
You're not thinking of free speech in its standard Western form. Enlightenment era ideals about the power of individuals to self-govern with reason, to dispose of laws that don't treat people like they are fully self-sufficient. Any offensive speech laws that purport to 'protect others' is infantilizing to one side and cynical about the other. Just saying, laws make assumptions about people. Protecting freedom of speech is really about protecting our inherent individualism. Minor concessions are a slippery slope. If you want to curb it, you're also likely saying you don't share the same classical enlightenment ideology of self-sufficiency.
Sorry, you don't think there are laws that regulate how rational self-sufficient actors interact with one another in a society? I invite you read any work by an enlightenment era thinker, maybe start with Voltaire or Rousseau, if you have interest in learning where Western freedom of speech ideals come from. If you're going to be arguing about the meaning of free speech you ought to have a little background in that.
> It should not mean the right to say absolutely anything to anybody. Having laws on racism and hate speech (for example) provide well-meaning guidance on acceptable behaviour within civilised society and help reduce discrimination, bias etc.
Sure! Let's start by defining "racism and hate speech" in ways that both prohibit them and do not allow the laws to be used to silence people for having different opinions. There shouldn't be any trouble distinguishing "free speech" from "hate speech" because it's always clear and obvious to every single person!
/s
In practice, the distinction tends to be almost entirely in the eye of the beholder. Which means whoever can convince the government that something is hateful has a big stick to wave at whoever disagrees with them.
Canada has blasphemy laws [1]? I knew they had "hate speech" laws which basically meant that they could prosecute you for saying anything that some might find offensive but I had no idea about blasphemy.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] threadWe are that close to it being gone. 2016 is the most important year in the history of this country, I am thoroughly convinced of that.
Every year and every election always seems more historically significant than it is - because you're living it now.
Kids grow up. They change. They look back and cringe. They think more for themselves than their standing in social circles.
Actually I kinda did but that's besides the point. Not everybody grows up at the same rate.
The biggest problem isn't the student protesters, illiberal and hateful though they are. It's the cowardly (or the shrewd politically-motivated) college administrators who acquiesce to their demands for censorship. It's also the fault of the federal government, which has been pushing absurd readings of civil rights laws to force "hate-speech" codes on college campuses.
If a society wants its values to survive, it needs to have the confidence to defend them and pass them on to the next generation.
Rather I believe your first paragraph is the larger answer. We have tossed aside the notion for sacrifice for the greater good.
Anti-semitism is rising as well. Students at these elite institutions are eager to condemn Israel and her supporters, as if the struggle in the occupied territories were morally black and white. If only the Jews would quit being mean the problem would go away.
What about the young woman at Yale who cursed at her dormitory head for his unwillingness to police Halloween costumes?
Are you sure you're OK with this? I thought the comparison between Islamism and campus authoritarianism in the article was apt.
Because all the recent stuff about student freedom of speech and the importance of exposing students to viewpoints that make them uncomfortable is actually just a push by the right-wing to move universities to the right, the students who objected to this were the ones who were portrayed as being the ones who couldn't cope with views they disagreed with.
In my view the hostility to free speech on campus comes from the left, not from the right. Lots of people seem to think of authoritarianism as developing exclusively from the right only, but Stalin is a counterexample.
There's a strong need for students to be able to experiment and express themselves and say what they feel and think without being abused and crucified. Similarly with professors. There's a certain respect for thought that is inherent to a healthy academic culture. The left (of which I am very much a part) used to defend it vigorously, now I find we are the ones trying to destroy it.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, I just think it's a different problem. And I think it's important to acknowledge that free speech doesn't mean all speech must be equally respected, it just has to be allowed.
Yes, and when government funded public universities suppress and openly support the suppression of free speech, it's very clearly a government problem.
Edit: Actually "clearly" might be a little too strong. Public schools shouldn't be restricted to only reacting to illegal behavior. But in most realistic cases I agree with your comment.
Edit: The article as a whole isn't about just that incident either. It is about the growing suppression of speech from regimes of all kinds.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10...
I am not sure I buy the whole cover up story totally. But I do think it was handled poorly by the Administration because they thought it would be convenient to portray the events through a particular political lens. Even if the attacks were motivated in some small way by the video have we really gotten to the point of blaming the filmmakers for murders committed by people offend by the flim? I don't care how "in poor taste" the film is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack
> Captured suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala stated that the assault was indeed in retaliation for the video Innocence of Muslims
The only thing that was debunked were the early reports of protests in Benghazi, that the film played a role in motivating the attacks was never debunked.
(I have other questions, but they veer even further into the realm of politics, so I'll keep those off HN.)
I think the attention span for those things is rather limited. You can't cry "Outrage!!1!" every day over the same thing again and again and still mobilize people for your cause. This seems to be a rather common phenomenon regardless of the group or cause you support.
Also, to organize such a protest, you need people with time and resources to reach out. I assume, that at some point, these people deicide, that it makes more sense to steer resources into other projects.
Bring back our girls have frequent demonstrations and are still campaigning, but are seldom heard.
George W. Bush was president into January of 2009, but the protests of the Bush v. Gore decision were largely over shortly after his election (protests of his actual policies didn't take too long to start happening, but that's a different focus of protest.)
Protests over some offense tend to fizzle out without new, serious harms directly attributable to the focus of protest without some other more specific target to blame: e.g., protests over ongoing wars, policies or practices that are viewed (reasonably or not) as directly causing deaths, sickness, etc. may go on for an extended time (e.g., Vietnam or Iraq War protests, protests of the Israeli occupation of Palestine; anti-abortion, anti-vax or anti-GMO protests, the Civil Rights Movement, etc.)
But other protests tend to burn out fairly quickly, after a short, sharp peak of outrage, without new stimulus to keep them going.
however to the person to whom you replied, why is this in the article. Well the US election cycle is in full swing and the Economist is firmly in one camp and certainly will do their best to support them.
Hell, if they wanted a good segue about the violence used to silence opinion they could have pointed out the recent attacks on Trump supporters who were attacked by very obvious Democratic party supporters organized by groups who are funded by them.
Still in the end the US has no reason to crow about its position in the world when colleges silence talk they don't like either directly or even violence. when the US government uses public agencies to prevent groups from exercising their rights to assemble and express their opinions during elections.
http://www.theonion.com/article/no-one-murdered-because-of-t...
* 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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 )
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Of course when a single company has a near monopoly due to network effect they become a defacto government.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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".
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality
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.
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
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]
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial
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
Laws regarding fraud and misrepresentation:
The trend here is that the information is provably false or misleading. It isn't slander if it's true. You're allowed to use someone's trademark to refer to their products. You can't claim someone else's copyrighted words as your own but you can convey the same information in your own words and when you have a need to use the author's words there is fair use. Insider trading is fraud via a lie of omission -- publish the information and it isn't insider trading.Professional confidentiality obligations:
The defining characteristic is that you signed up for that profession. The Pentagon Papers were classified but The New York Times can still publish them because they never agreed not to. If the client blabs attorney-client privileged information to the other side or the press then they can use it.Obscenity:
These are, honestly, free speech violations, and often get struck down. But at least they're easy to cordon off.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.
Further more if people really want to solve these issues , a major effort should be put towards showing people what all cults really are and rid the world of them.
On one hand, we have all this explosively liberating technology, cheap and powerful, that is changing the way we communicate and share information. On the other hand, you see the 'natural' result of all this power moving towards the individual: states and governments gripping tighter than ever to control it and maintain their elevated status.
It serves to illustrate how asinine our arguments over 'appropriate' speech are. The result of any kind of forced censorship is the same no matter what the content of the speech is : less freedom.
But inside our borders we become more and more dependent on the technology, have less and less insight into what is happening in this technology. Also increasing the power of forementioned US and western European governments.
The only thing maybe becoming a problem is the eastern hemisphere with China, Russia, S.Korea, Japan and Taiwan (if they decide to work together, but happy for us they are pretty much split in the middle).
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/02/16/greatest-threat-to-free-...
I'm agnostic but grew up Christian, but it's fascinating to me to see it all unfold...I have American friends who have joined the IDF growing up who were super pro-Israel so it's interesting to see this rift appearing.
There is J street and Jewish Voice for Peace, but I don't know how popular they are.
edit: It does seem to be a glaring omission. I would have expected better from the Economist.
> he could not live “in any country where free speech is allowed”
There is something to be said about incompatibility of certain cultures here.
Most Islamic terrorism in our age can be traced to the hyper-conservative madrasahs all over the world sponsored by (Sunni) Saudi Arabia, which seeks to dominate Islamic discourse and blunt the influence of (Shia) Iran.
Also worth noting that the vast majority of global Islamic terrorists (as in not secretarian violence like was seen in Iraq, but rather acts of terrorism in predominantly non-Muslim areas) are Sunni.
Yes, there may be compatibility, but there is also a great degree of deliberate cultural programming that we often do not notice or even consider.
Why do you deny sincere religiosity and direct reading of the texts as the motivation for the acts of religious people? Through the ages the humanity has done a lot of harm to "others" based on much less than what's in the holy texts of "the religion that can't be named." But that particular religion has spread especially based on the idea of fighting the war for religion and benefit of the fighters (both in this world and as the shortcut to heaven), all in the "holy" texts.
For Christianity's witch hunting, only one verse in Bible was enough (Exodus 22:18). Luckily, there was at least:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_unto_Caesar
Edit: return0, your "only very few lines have being pursued" signals to me that you don't know the content of the "holy" texts being discussed (that is, of the religion that can't be named). The visual presentation of the extent of hate directed to unbelievers is stunning -- almost every chapter remains heavily marked once we attempt doing this. And the ideas and demands are often, almost hypnotically, repeated. It's easy to prove it, there are enough translations even on-line.
I do feel that comparing which text is more violent by nature is kind of pointless. Is Sura 9 any "better or worse" than Deuteronomy 20? I don't know, they both seem pretty vanquish-all-your-enemies to me.
So what you focus on is "interpretations". And so many times, the "interpretations" have a political bent. That Islam is tied to so much radicalism and terrorism is troubling. But a lot of the root source of this does seem to be the petro-economy, particularly Saudi Arabia. Example: Would Islamic terrorism be so big had Saudi Arabia not pushed Wahhabism so hard, tying it to politics (and thus dominating more mystical forms of Islam like say the Sufis)? Would we have a Taliban had the Wahhabist Saudis not fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (thus radicalizing the Deobandis)?
The problem with calling out entire religions is that you often sweep up people who have much different interpretations. A Western equivalent (not in terms of impact perhaps but in ideas) would be to say that Christianity itself is anti-gay. Some Christian churches are anti-gay, and there are a couple passages in the Bible that are anti-homosexual, but there are also Christians that dismiss these verses. Judaism mostly downplays violent passages ala Deuteronomy 20, and likewise, Islam could downplay their violent side if they wanted to (some sects do in fact). Most religious holy books are very multi-faceted.
The fact that a side of Islam doesn't has a lot to do, in my opinion, with the politics and military ties of certain kleptocrat petro-economies (Saudi Arabia is a big one) or other external events (the American invasion of Iraq is another as had that not happened, there probably would be no ISIS).
Most other books. But finding peaceful parts in the "book of the exact sayings of God" (according to that religion and the book itself (!)) is almost impossible except when the quote is not full. E.g. the US president quoted the part of 5:32 but not the 5:32 and 5:33 in full, which at once is much less peaceful, as everybody can check for himself. And the president would surely select a better one, if it existed. But it doesn't. Which presents the problem that simply just reading the original texts radicalizes the readers. That there's so much intolerant "stuff" inside is the major problem that most of people are still somehow too afraid to acknowledge (and even less check for themselves).
> Islam could downplay their violent side if they wanted to (some sects do in fact)
Only one sect I know of, less than 1.4 percent of the rest, founded 1889, and not accepted as believers by the remaining 98.6 percent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadiyya
Do you know some other?
I still am not sure where this line of reasoning goes though. We can spin lots of circles trying to prove one ancient very violent text is more violent in nature than the other. For the record, I would agree that the Quran "out-violences" the Old Testament. (I disagree that the Quran is not multi-faceted though). And yet, I am not sure that this matters much.
I could also say that Buddhism is way more pacifist then either Christianity or Islam. Yet I can find examples of Buddhist terrorism. I can also describe the origins of Christianity as an apocalyptic cult (the "great tribulation" being a key cornerstone of that faith). Yet it doesn't appear to inspire ISIS style violence these days.
As a general rule I am personally wary of linking violence in media very directly to external violence. I know in the United States all sorts of people try to link our often violent entertainment media to various other events (from school shootings to aggressive behavior). But the more in depth studies seem to only indicate casual correlation... or not even that.
So sure, the text of the Quran is pretty violent, some conquer your enemies stuff, very Old Testament. The answer is, yes, and? If you're trying to directly link the Quran to terrorism (versus what I more suspect, terrorists using the Quran for their own ends), that's a pretty tall accusation. 1.6 billion people follow this book after all. Most of the 1.6 billion people are not terrorists or even very violent.
There was a time when the "status" of Islam and Christianity was reversed, after all. From roughly 800 AD to 1300 AD, Islam experienced its "Golden Age"; certainly there was some military activity then, but the sections encouraging wisdom were also in play (resulting in many mathematical and scientific advances). It was the Abbasid caliphate leaders that encouraged this. The Christian world was meanwhile stuck in the Middle Ages, whose popes used Biblical dogma to justify the Crusades.
Likewise today, I see far more connection between politics and Islamic terrorism versus the Quran itself and Islamic terrorism. If a heck of a lot of Islam followers do have a jihadist dominant interpretation of the Quran, I would blame that entirely on religious and political leaders that actually emphasize the jihadist portions. Not the book. This is religion after all. After all, some big political positions in religion arise that have nothing to do with holy texts at all. :)
The so-called "golden age" was the result of occupying the new lands and taking over the control over the non-Muslim knowledge, accumulated through the thousands of years in these areas by non-Muslims. And the reason that age ended was the more fundamentalistic enforcement of the rules from the holy texts. No more science, everything is in the holy books. What can be learned from this then?
Also, what's about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia
How can you say that the laws are anything but serious reading the holy texts, as the whole article documents? Or that it's the invention of just a land or two?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_of_sharia_law_by_c...
Note also the section on the "Abrogation." The violent passages are chronologically later and overrule the older less violent.
But, yes, I do think there are some things that can be learned, of course:
A) Sharing knowledge is by and large a good thing (some of the "Golden Age" is probably a result of having a large stable empire with not as much internal faction fighting, a common language (Arabic), and all those influences, from the Greeks to the Egyptians to the Chinese).
B) A society that turns away from rationality, and turns towards anti-rationalist fundamentalist religious dogma, is a society that's in trouble.
The "Arabic numerals" were actually taken from India, and in that areas the astronomy, using complex calculations was practiced many centuries before, also using better numerals (positional, using letters, just like programmers use A-F in hex today) than the Roman ones which weren't practical. But yes, once that huge knowledge was taken over, there was some period of some improvements. But it ended more than 750 years ago, never to return, as the core of the religion itself actually never supported it. The developments during the following 750 years and the state of human rights in countries that claim to be based on the Islamic law are certainly illustrative and shouldn't be ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests_on_the_Indian...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_India
"An estimate of the number of people killed, based on the Muslim chronicles and demographic calculations, was done by K.S. Lal in his book Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, who claimed that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million."
To compare, the total population of the world was at that time less than 550 million.
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop...
I do think that the last 750 years of the Arab world have been dominated by more stronger church-oriented viewpoints, which is unfortunate for the advance of ideas. But that does not imply extreme intolerance per se or radical violence. To be honest, I don't know anything historically as radical as Saudi Wahhabism or its terrorist spin-offs (well, nothing so "mainstream" at least). The Ottoman Empire and Mughal Empire, as far as I know, displayed some tolerance towards different religious sects (although they were never equals and tolerance varied wildly on the ruler), and the justice / law system in place seems roughly close to what the Christian world had before the Renaissance / Enlightenment days. The forced conversion stats you are quoting are, as the Wikipedia article says, controversial... and the times were different anyways.
Today, although the human rights of many Islamic countries are wretched, I certainly can think of several of non-Islamic countries with worse human rights problems, compared to Islamic countries such as Jordan, India, post-revolution Tunisia, or heck even a middle-of-the-road semi-violator like Indonesia. (See: Congo, North Korea, pre-reform Mynamar)
That's not to excuse the fact that a large portion of Islam nations suffer from wretched human rights. But, again I will ask you: if you really believe that Islam is fundamentally violent and this fact can't be changed, what's your solution to this? Personally, I believe that thought pattern is rather dangerous. This is what 1.6 billion people believe. Are you condemning all of them?
If the focus was more narrow, like Wahhabism, that's a different story: Wahhabism has touched a lot of radical Islamic terrorist groups, and Wahhabism is clearly a religious tool of the Saudi state. Now, many Western countries like the United States are allies with Saudi Arabia. If we were really concerned about Islamic terrorism, you'd think we'd be rather concerned about this relationship. (There's political reasons behind this relationship, of course...)
No, what was before 750 years 1) was not what today's religious authorities recognize as the core and 2) was what doesn't exist in that form in the holy texts. In order to claim what you claim you'd have to demonstrate at least either 1 or 2. Because in fact the period existed is spite of the content of the texts and not because of them. The official religious core has the specific names: Sharia ("a body of moral and religious law derived from religious prophecy, as opposed to human legislation.") and Jihad ("the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and specialists in the hadith understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.")
Fantastically, the confusion in the Western world about the "core" doesn't come from any rationally obtainable and provable fact about that religion, but only because of bad analogies. We all "know" the myth about Jesus, and the apparent "distortion" of the core faith by later church practices. The lazy mind concludes, using also completely false "common knowledge" like "every religion is the same" that ergo those born as members of that specific religion and the world would benefit from the return to the core. Which is unbelievably stupid. The same "sola scriptura" idea, that gave the Western world after enough wars and enough suffering enough deaths for religious beliefs, at least some hook to get free from some negative teachings and practices of the religion, if applied to the texts of this another religion (about which we worry now) uncovers immense hate, intolerance and the war until only one religion remains (everything written in the core)! That's the plainly visible truth for anybody who actually reads "the book."
> This is what 1.6 billion people believe. Are you condemning all of them?
What it "this" in that sentence of yours? Actually just the Western thought projects and supports both the "return to the core" (e.g. through being allies as you note) and the belief in "peacefulness" of "every religion" if the core is applied (which can't be farther from the truth). I claim that among these 1.6 billions you mention most of the people can understand that exactly these ideas ("return to the core good") can lead to more torture and suffering, and that they wouldn't want to be a part of it. It's we, the Western world, that should understand that simple truth. And stop using false analogies.
> If we were really concerned about Islamic terrorism, you'd think we'd be rather concerned about this relationship.
This argument is just "our leaders always know what they're doing, we don't have to worry or check if they lie and don't have to attempt to influence them democratically, and we can even blindly repeat their claims in our arguments without appearing uninformed." And it's completely false (war because of "Irag and WMD" and "to bring democracy for Iraq" is just one of the recent examples). Please read just the whole 5:32 and 5:33 and compare that with that part of 5:32 that the US president officially presented as the image of the religion and then tell me that you stay behind that. It's an insulting attempt of deception to anybody who knows even just these two verses (not to mention the book) in full (which includes enough believers).
Then read and think about the reforms of Ataturk, that's the only long-term direction for these parts of the world and these believers that we should support. He knew that the "return to the core" or even increasing that kind of religiosity there was plainly bad. It's surely bad for the whole humanity.
Yes, an Ataturk direction would be a good direction to go. It is true as another poster mentioned that Judaism's rather barbaric Old Testament is tempered by knowledge-seeking scholarly tradition in Judaism and the reforms of the New Testament in Christianity. Too much of Islam does not have much of this at the moment, in fact, recent history has somewhat undone the reforms first undertaken by the Ottoman empire (mixed civil based on French law and sharia, a system still in some countries like Jordan) and the later reforms of Ataturk.
Ataturk's perspective is good to note. He was very much against political Islam. He did not seem to be against Islam itself (and in fact encouraged study by sponsoring and radio-reading Quran translations etc.). Actually, he felt religion was an important institution, if I recall, but it should be personal, and not magical, superstitious, or archaic.
Part of the reason why I really don't care about trying to prove one religion has more violent text than another, is that I believe anti-rational, political oriented religious fundamentalism is a danger period, no matter what the form. It is not "equal" at the moment, by far. But in the US we have too many Christian fundamentalist pointing fingers at the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism... while simultaneously trying to lead us in that direction. I don't want American Christians to take us where Islam went 750 years ago.
If your political opponents speak the truth, you still shouldn't lie! If you do, you are the one who actually motivate otherwise moderate voters to vote for those who actually speak the truth, even if their hidden (or less visible) goals are much worse. People still don't want being too openly lied.
> I don't want American Christians to take us where Islam went 750 years ago.
Well there are already enough (enough to be dangerous for the whole world, again because of the influence and money, just like Saudis and other rich entities in Islam world) American Christians that are anyway at least 350 years behind Europe with their ideas, denying effectively everything that the science discovered since Galileo: that's how much they have to deny to be able to claim that the Earth exists only 6000 years. As far as I understand, any European Christian believer that claims something like that got his Kool Aid from across the Atlantic.
If Ataturk would be alive today in the US, he would be declared by the right and as the left atheistic extremist for enforcing secularism and by the left as the pure right extremist for trying to limit the unquestioned expansion of influence of the political Islam. Awful, as he achieved almost 100 years ago what today in the US looks impossible only because of such partisan thinking like the one you displayed: "but the other side says that, then we can't, even if it's true." Really?
On the other hand, the Surah verse is more of a call to war, referring to "unbelievers" and "polytheists," also saying that the reader should "...kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush."
I'm sure you could find verses in the Bible that are more violent, but I doubt you'll find any comparable to the worst that Islam has to offer.
Jews interpret the old testament as laws for Jews, by Jews. There is no prerogative to convert.
Islam has neither of those. It is a violent old testament with a legal code inscribed focused on converting or otherwise making lives miserable for other people of the book (not to mention what they consider pagans).
So we're agreed on that. What's worse is the fact that it's not just Islamists. I wish that it were. Instead, we're growing a generation of internet-connected anger-junkies. The internet mob scene is well-known and well-documented. It continues to grow. I am afraid that soon we'll not just see Islamists, but multiple groups willing and able to use deadly force at the least offence.
It should make things...interesting.
Especially the groups seeking to have the state's legal power of force to be used on their behalf under the guise of fairness.
>> ...but multiple groups willing and able to use deadly force at the least offence.
I believe we are already there with the US Presidential campaigns this year.
> I believe we are already there with the US Presidential campaigns this year.
Do you have any documented examples of deadly force in this year's US Presidential campaigns?
EDIT: this was the definition I was thinking.
Deadly force, as defined by the United States Armed Forces, is force that a person uses causing, or that a person knows or should know would create a substantial risk of causing, death or serious bodily harm or injury.
The bunch of radicals that believes this can be easily defeated (as shown by the russian intervention), if it weren't for the fragile petrol-fueled balance of alliances in the region. The terrorists inflict terror in an attempt to recruit more "fighters". That is not a defensive act, there is not yet anything to defend..
Not anything?
"2.9 billon dollars total income"
"Their total assets are estimated to be 2 trillion dollars"
https://risk.thomsonreuters.com/infographic/islamic-state-ho...
And the whole world has to remain quiet lest the member of the self called "religion of peace" go on a killing spree
That said, i agree that the silence and reluctance to defend western values has done more harm than good. There is a belief that we can't have a firm discussion about what values we want allow the west to have without killing each other. That's immature and wrong, resulting in shameful incidents such as the coverup of the Cologne rape incidents. State actors from all sides consider the populace "too immature" to handle the truth.
I don't know how tolerant they really were. Look up the janissaries, the jizya and the rest of the details of dhimmitude. It's probably better described as 'sufferance' rather than 'tolerance.'
I'll grant that they were probably more tolerant than Western Europe was at the time, given that they let Jews & Christians reside in the empire during centuries when Jews & Moors were expelled from European nations.
I've never heard something like that. What was that tolerance, can you please specify? They didn't kill all the Christians, but that would be against their religious texts, as long as the "people of the book" (the way the Christians and Jews are referred to) accept to pay the tax that only they have to pay, they can live.
Specifically, and certainly not "tolerant" Ottomans also enforced the "tribute in blood," which actually wasn't supported by their religious texts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dev%C5%9Firme
Excuse me? "Not primarily to inflict terror"? The custom of mothers making their own children disabled with their own hands only to prevent them being taken away, their old memories destroyed, is not the result of the terror? The total number of people living there was much smaller then than today.
The non-muslim boys were regularly taken away from their families and converted to Islam. The forceful conversion existed, the pressure to non-muslims existed (and that was surely not the only one) exactly to push the non-muslims to finally convert, which actually succeeded among Albanians and in Bosnia.
And that explains the religious separation of that part of Europe today. There were no Muslims there before. Now millions.
Not to mention that the Ottomans very non-peacefully fought wars up until Vienna, which was under siege twice. Start with 1359 then look at the following pictures through the years here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_O...
One could play devil's-advocate and argue that is free-speech since the threat is non-specific and no actual action was taken.
Using that same logic however, insulting a religion specifically to demonstrate/cause violent reaction should trigger a per-emptive jail term without trial in the USA?
But now you've got me defending an abrahamic religion, I feel like I need to take a shower to get clean.
Like the idiots who go and kill people in headgear who turn out to be Sikh and not even muslim. Started happening after 9/11 and still happens every few years when the flames are fanned.
Constitution says no, but if they call you a terrorist, the government could put your ass in Gitmo and you'd never be heard from again.
However I don't think there are even examples of terrorists without trials in supermax? Again that we know of, because we tend to not find out these things until someone gives up their own freedom to leak out what is really going on years later.
I do know there are people in jail, not prison, without trial for threatening schools. That's as close as we get to prison-for-speech?
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-polic...
Kind of a bad article. It also doesn’t mention anything about UK slander laws.
And we all know Islam is a race, not a religion, so it deserves the same protections from discrimination.
When will these lovely jokes get old?
In Europe, "racism", in law, means discrimination to someone on the grounds of their race, ethnicity, national origin or religious background. It's been that way since the 1960s.
It was fine to say things about Muslims and Islam that you could not say about Jews or Christians.
This loophole was used by far-right groups - the BNP, EDL, etc to avoid prosecution.
[1] And before you say the blasphemy laws were never used the film "Life of Brian" only got permissions for Glasgow cinemas in 2009, and Stewart Lee went through a very expensive blasphemy court case for "Jerry Springer the Opera".
In the US, at least, religion has been protected by Constitutional law longer than race has been. (In fact, its a category that has some -- though minor -- protection in the Constitution before the bill of rights, in the religious test clause.)
Today anybody can, at least in principle, overcome these limitations just by getting a youtube account, with the effect that for all X, group X is constantly confronted with vile hatred. The effect is, everybody is pissed off, while only groups which are explicitly pro freedom of speech tell themselves that they have to live with the trolls.
The idea is, that as long as freedom of speech was limited by the practicalities of distribution to a, for most people, tolerable level, everybody was happy to endorse free speech. Nowadays it is no longer constrained by distribution and people start to revisit their assumptions about free speech.
So given that, I don't think the semi-frictionless free expression is all that different from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" leaflets of the late 18th century.
It's the people who can't handle that a dissenting voice is causing cognitive dissonance that feel like violence is the solution.
Should Facebook's property rights overrule my free speech rights?
[1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21699909-curbs-free-sp...
I suppose an argument could be made that due to its size, Facebook is sort of like a "utility" and has a duty to provide "service" to everybody regardless of its opinions about their use of the service. But unlike the electric company, which is the only place you can buy electricity, Facebook is not a monopoly: There are plenty of other websites where you can publish your speech (or you can even get your own domain and VPS and host your own site very cheaply).
Why? Don't I have a right to free speech (on Facebook)?
Should it be moral for the government to set up small, limited, "free speech zones" far away from everywhere and say "If you want free speech, go here?". (Yes I know that has sorta happened in USA) What about requiring that all bookshops/newspaper sellers in a certain area only sell books/newspapers that don't mention $TOPIC. You're quite free to go to a bookshop 100km away which will sell you anything. Is that not a restriction on free speech?
No. What makes you think you do?
Absolutely not. Your right of free speech applies only to freedom from government censorship and that's it. Facebook can do whatever they want on their website, you have no rights at all on their website. Please go read the first amendment.
Additionally I'll any attempt to demand private companies stop censoring their properties hurts free speech and is in fact a direct violation of it.
If the government were forcing Facebook to censor some topic, that would be immoral and illegal. All of your examples fall into this category.
Now, for shared resources owned or partially owned by the government, like airwaves or arguably the Internet (specifically the interconnection of the network), there is a public interest in sharing those resources across all points of view.
Your local highway/bridge might be owned by a private company, but they require connections to the local roads, owned by the government, and so is expected to be a 'utility'. Fedex might use public roads, but nobody would expect them to be forced to become a 'common carrier', or some such. They can 'censor' whatever packages they want.
Yes, isn't this obvious? Freedom of speech protects you from government suppression, that's it. It doesn't mean anybody has to respect what you're saying, and it doesn't mean you get to force anyone to broadcast your message.
You find this to be a curious exemption? I think the term "freedom of speech" generally means the freedom to let your ideas be known without fearing official (i.e. government) reprisal or suppression.
I don't think "freedom of speech" has ever been generally understood to mean that companies/venues/clubs/etc cannot regulate communication according to their own rules, or have an editorial policy where they choose what gets published and what doesn't.
The right of Facebook to set their own rules on their "property" (websites) absolutely trumps your desire to force them to air your views, both morally and legally. This has no effect on your freedom of speech (as that term is traditionally applied) -- because Facebook has no monopoly on speech venues.
>Should Facebook's property rights overrule my free speech rights?
Yes, because "declining to provide you with a free unlimited platform for speech" is not the same thing as "denying freedom of speech".
I don't think this is a particularly controversial view.
The article also talks about individual people committing murder, something that's already a crime, rarely about state actions. If a lone murderer & criminal counts as a "threat to free speech", why not talk about who owns the space?
When murders are part of a political campaign, they stop being 'lone'.
Is choosing which material to publish not itself a form of speech? Should your right to free speech overrule Facebook's right to free speech?
Rather than just dropping a link, what's your takeaway from this article? What did you synthesize from it?
I have to say I'm a little shocked of what I'm reading here.
If you read the text about the president needing to speak to a priest it is considered very bad that a person with a lot of military power needs to get so low and talk to a normal person without any military power directly. My interpretation of that kind of comment is that it feels anti free speech, pro surveilance, pro censorship.
Andrew Cuomo and Other Democrats Launch Severe Attack on Free Speech to Protect Israel
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/andrew-cuomo-and-other-d...
People should face no punishment other than the potential scorn of the public for their words. Say whatever you want, but be prepared to take disapproval for it.
Edit: I don't know how to explain what I said earlier but apparently I didn't get my point across so I'm going to remove it.
Blaming speech reminds me of a small child pleading that someone made them do it when they learn there are consequences for their actions.
100 years ago, a person in the wrong place in the United States who happened to say something someone else didn't like might end up getting murdered by a mob.
I guess that is getting to be a long time ago, but history should not be viewed with a tight lens.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272408166_Microaggr...
Free speech should be considered the right to publically criticise and call to account governments, police, judiciary and other state institutions.
It should not mean the right to say absolutely anything to anybody. Having laws on racism and hate speech (for example) provide well-meaning guidance on acceptable behaviour within civilised society and help reduce discrimination, bias etc.
But like all rights "free speech" confers privilege and responsibility on the holder: just because you have a right to doesn't mean you should (e.g the video referenced at the beginning of the article).
The point I'm making is that once you've opened the door to banning speech on completely subjective topics that a subset of the group gets to decide, then things will go bad.
But murder is a hugely different subject than something so abstract as "hate speech". I can define murder, I ask one to define hate speech. There is definite evidence of harm when it comes to murder, a person has been deprived of life by another. I fail to see how "hate speech" itself deprives anyone of anything nor causes real harm. Of course, incitement to violence due to speech is a potential problem, but that's already covered by existing laws.
You say you can define "murder" - but that's my whole point: I can also define, and enshrine in law, something called "hate speech". Both definitions will be subject to interpretation, intent, mitigating circumstances etc, and it will be for the court and jury to thrash out whether an incident should be classed as "murder" or "hate speech". Of course some incidences may be clear cut. Lots won't be.
To add to this based on your response, please define "hate speech" in the same easily understood definition of "murder".
I'm not saying that hate speech does not have a negative impact on people, of course it does. It's why people discuss trying to outlaw it in the first place. I'm simply saying that it's such a subjective topic that there is no way to accurately to define it, therefore the attempt to solve the problem will only make the problem worse. Never mind the fact that people with nefarious intentions will seize on the highly subjective language of the law to make use of it for themselves.
Sure! Let's start by defining "racism and hate speech" in ways that both prohibit them and do not allow the laws to be used to silence people for having different opinions. There shouldn't be any trouble distinguishing "free speech" from "hate speech" because it's always clear and obvious to every single person!
/s
In practice, the distinction tends to be almost entirely in the eye of the beholder. Which means whoever can convince the government that something is hateful has a big stick to wave at whoever disagrees with them.
Scary.
[1] http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...