8 ms·

Why Is Freedom of Speech Important?

42 points by nkurz 10y ago

Tomte 10y ago
Free Speech is important. Germany has it. The Netherlands have it. Australia has it. Estonia has it. Brazil has it. Many countries in the world have it. What Americans defenders of Free Speech never seem to grasp is that their variant of Free Speech is only the most extreme one on a whole spectrum of "Free Speeches", and that their variant does not really deliver more benefits than the (ImO) more sensible variants. I would argue the extremist position is -- as usually -- inferior to the nuanced, balanced ones.
- virmundi 10y ago
  How do you know that something is extreme if you can't hear it? How do you engage individuals, hopefully productively, if you don't allow them to speak? If the answer is social norms, how do you prevent those norms from drifting overtime into authoritarianism? Start small, attack only the extremists. Then slowly turn your forces against your opposition. This is the kind of thought that Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote about in "First they came...." Notice that historically that poem applied to Germany and even Estonia and Australia. These countries were or seem to be morphing into an authoritarian state. Edit spelling
  - physicalist 10y ago
    The reason for this poem is also the reason for the restrictions on speech in Germany. Go figure. Also, the US has been morphing into an suthoritarian state for quite a while. What is not the freedom of white affluent males is under constant attack there. From the war against drugs to the war against women's rights, there are countless examples.
  - quirkafleeg 10y ago
    > How do you know that something is extreme if you can't hear it? How do you engage individuals, hopefully productively, if you don't allow them to speak? Or, perhaps more importantly, how do you challenge or disprove their arguments? The answer to "bad" speech is to counter it and illustrate its flaws; banning some speech can have the effect of giving it credibility that it doesn't deserve.
- aytekin 10y ago
  There is too much self censorship by the media and by the people that even in the countries that supposed to have it, it is not really practiced. So, free speech is just a buzzword. Nobody speaks their mind unless it is in a range that is currently accepted by the society.
  - meheleventyone 10y ago
    A world where everyone blurts out whatever is in their head free from any consequence isn't as I understand it the desirable end goal of the right to freedom of expression. Moreover that sort of view on it is profoundly anti-human since, as you note, we live in large groups with an attendant milieu that is unavoidable.
- Ralfp 10y ago
  I tend to agree. Rallying thousands of people to get somebody fired because he or she said something out of the line is extreme approach to free speech I don't see outside of America. ;)
- pkinsky 10y ago
  Germany has free speech, except if you want to criticize foreign dictators [1]. I think I'll stick with our extremist variant, thanks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair
  - x0137294744532 10y ago
    This particular article of the german penal code is a relic of the German Empire (1871). Last December, the government decided to get it removed from the penal code.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - germanier 10y ago
    As the article correctly notes, the criminal case was dropped. Also, the law parts of the case was based on was practically forgotten for a few decades now and will be removed soon.
- quirkafleeg 10y ago
  > Free Speech is important. Germany has it. East Germany also had it, so did Nazi Germany. Yes, on the same principle: as long as you didn't want to say things that the Government deemed verboten you were free to say whatever you liked.
  - x0137294744532 10y ago
    > East Germany also had it, so did Nazi Germany. No, they didn't. Declaration of Human Rights: > Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, _in the cases determined by the law_. In East Germany and Nazi Germany, people were persecuted and killed without being brought to trial and facing justice.
    - quirkafleeg 10y ago
      > No, they didn't. Well, yeah. The point is neither does Germany today. > In East Germany and Nazi Germany, people were persecuted and killed without being brought to trial and facing justice. Whereas being arrested, tried and merely jailed for something you say, as happens in Germany (and Austria), is your idea of justice and not being persecuted? BTW, don't try to make out this is an argument about today's Germany being as unsophisticated and brutal as Nazi Germany or East Germany. Obviously it isn't. This is solely about the principle of free speech: you either believe in someone's right to say what they want or you don't. You can't just sometimes believe in it.
      - x0137294744532 10y ago
        > Well, yeah. The point is neither does Germany today. According to the definition of the Declaration of Human Rights, they actually do. > Whereas being arrested, tried and merely jailed for something you say, as happens in Germany (and Austria), is your idea of justice and not being persecuted? Freedom of speech alone doesn't guarantee freedom, liberty or justice. > This is solely about the principle of free speech: you either believe in someone's right to say what they want or you don't. You can't just sometimes believe in it. That's the problem; we have different definition of "freedom of speech". The US interprets "freedom of speech" according to the definition given by the Bill of Rights, while the rest of the world use the definition of Declaration of Human Rights.
- emsy 10y ago
  Germany does not have free speech. You are not allowed to deny the Holocaust by law.
  - fatbird 10y ago
    Except they obviously do have free speech. The fact that they can't say everything doesn't mean they can't say anything. By your standard, no one has free speech. In America, you're not allowed to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government: 18 U.S. Code § 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385)
    - emsy 10y ago
      Advocating violence and denying a historic fact are two completly different things. You're not allowed to threaten someone with murder either, but that's not a restriction of freedom of speech. Threats of violence are neither ideas nor opinions. However denying the Holocaust is very much an opinion and freedom of speech would mean that I could freely state this opinion and have it judged on the free marketplace of ideas.
      - fatbird 10y ago
        Like sedition, denying the Holocaust (and hate speech generally) is a speech act with real world consequences, not merely an opinion. The point remains that freedom of speech is not a binary condition. No one has total freedom of speech; having some restrictions isn't the same as existing under a dictatorship with no freedom of expression at all.
        emsy 10y ago
        Freedom of speech means free to speak, not free of consequences. That was never my argument. A threat of violence is an attack, and I should expect defensive consequences. Stating the opinion that the Holocaust never happened is not an attack. Nobody is hurt by this, unless people judge it to be a valid idea and act accordingly. But freedom of speech also means to trust people to deem such an idea preposterous. There are instances in history where this didn't work out, but the general tendency indicates it to be a good protocol. The alternative is to forbid certain ideas or opinions to be perpetuated. However, who can assure you that the power to ban certain ideas and opinions will not be used for malicious intent in the future? So, yes, free speech can only be a binary condition.
- vixen99 10y ago
  Balanced and nuanced according to whom?
VLM 10y ago
The essay misses an obvious opiate of the masses effect, more specifically: There's less surprise in society when the opposition to the establishment is always spouting off. Perversely this strengthens the establishment during times of rapid change when the masses who are not paying much attention continue to hear the same old stuff, its just now being heard from the establishment instead of the radicals. Note how the 60s radicals are basically the mass media today. There's also a "three minutes hate" feature of blowing off steam where permitting people without any power or influence to talk until they're tired of talking is better for the establishment than bottling them up until furious armed revolution topples the establishment. You want Klansmen to talk, to talk a lot, to talk so much they have no time or energy to lynch, for example. An establishment that pays attention to the speech both in the old days and on social media can trivially figure out a map of the vocal opposition when it comes time to round up the radicals. An establishment that allows free speech is more likely to survive turmoil than the opposite, they simply have more intel on the opfor. Sometimes free speech is funny. The court jester is just simply funny and a world with more laughs is better than one with less.
- hsitz 10y ago
  > Note how the 60s radicals are basically the mass media today. Huh? You do realize that someone who was 20 in 1967 would be 70 years old today? How many in "mass media" do you think are 70 years old?
  - jhbadger 10y ago
    While he is far from being a 60s radical, probably the most influential person in mass media today is Rupert Murdoch who is 85. He controls newspapers and television news across continents.
    - quirkafleeg 10y ago
      > who is 85 He's more yer 50s radical then. Like Joe McCarthy.
  - bitwize 10y ago
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood... We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. -Dr. King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail
moomin 10y ago
Yes, free speech is valuable, but unless you have thought through the following three issues, it doesn't matter how many philosophers you quote, you deserve to be taken as seriously as Casubon. 1) We have scientific evidence that repeating lies often enough causes perfectly rational people to behave as if they're true, even when they know they're not. 2) There's plenty of speech out there that is specifically targeted to exclude voices from conversation. 3) What is known as stochastic terrorism, where people with large audiences speak in a way that is guaranteed to get a violent response out of a small part of the audience. To put 1&2 another way, do you believe the fuzzing in Snow Crash should be constitutionally protected?
- RodericDay 10y ago
  Also important to consider: When "free speech" truly threatens powerful people, they find ways to shut it down. e.g.: > "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic. The phrase is a paraphrasing of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919, which held that the defendant's speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... and you'd think okay, harmful speech is out... but then you have Brandenburg vs. Ohio > Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".[1][2]:702 Specifically, it struck down Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence. In the process, Whitney v. California[3] was explicitly overruled, and doubt was cast on Schenck v. United States,[4] Abrams v. United States,[5] Gitlow v. New York (1925), and Dennis v. United States.[6] [...] Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader in rural Ohio, contacted a reporter at a Cincinnati television station and invited him to cover a KKK rally that would take place in Hamilton County in the summer of 1964.[7] Portions of the rally were filmed, showing several men in robes and hoods, some carrying firearms, first burning a cross and then making speeches. One of the speeches made reference to the possibility of "revengeance" against "niggers", "Jews", and those who supported them. [...] The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brandenburg's conviction, holding that government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law violation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio --- some use "free speech" as a thought-terminating cliche. for example, they claim to automatically disqualify and reflexively oppose anyone who's position is deemed to be against free speech, no matter what said speech was, but turn out to be much more charitable when the no-platforming involves people paying for airtime and views being silenced by moneyed interests rather than angry hooligans. > the point isn't whether or not free speech should exist, the point is that inasmuch as it does exist, it's invoked selectively and politically. and saying that well it ought to have been invoked consistently, and ignoring the material reality of how it is invoked, ends up being tantamount to accepting the existing power structures of the society (or at least to the degree to which they rely on this). and therefore, terminating the discussion once someone has brought up free-speech concerns seems dubious.
lngnmn 10y ago
Freedom of Speech is one of the most fundamental principles in political philosophy, not just an optional decoration. It contributes to sustainability of a democratic system by guaranteeing that no issue or critic of the government could be silenced or hushed up. The independent press, free information laws and freedom of speech as the main principle is the immune system of a democratic society, so to speak, which defends it from deceases such as the one US got a few months ago.
fatbird 10y ago
Mill's great, but this essay misses the essential point in our current culture wars where free speech is concerned, namely: whose speech is being protected? For the latter half of the 20th century we adopted an extremist standard, where we tested our commitment to freedom of expression by protecting the most extreme examples we could--racism, pornography, pseudoscience--under the belief that this would shelter all other, less extreme versions. But what we've found is a tyranny of the grossest: the loudest, most attention grabbing, least useful speech drowns out the quieter and more moderate voices. Privileging the extreme edge of freedom of speech has the practical consequence of disempowering the middle.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  That seems to come from mass media confusing (willfully or not) "freedom of speech" with "right to be heard". Thus they pull those extremists in as counterpoints to the moderates claims, thus giving the extremist views an air of credibility.
  - ourmandave 10y ago
    The distinction is really important. Every banned-from-a-forum troll argues "suppressing my freedom of speech!" Not if it's a soapbox that you don't own and it's not the government.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      You are conflating the legal consequences of the American 1'st amendment with a much broader concept of free speech. There's a lot more to the concept than that. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first-amendment/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... I actually live (part time) in a country where people who speak against the consensus may be socially ostracized, they are at risk of being fired from their job and blacklisted, and they are at risk of violence from non-government parties. The government often turns a blind eye to such violence. People with views outside the mainstream are afraid to speak up. The government takes little direct action to hinder speech. Do you believe I really have free speech?
arca_vorago 10y ago
Freedom of speech is important because it is a foundational bedrock upon which other liberties are built and flourish. Without it, other liberties are undermined and slowly eroded away. It is worth reminding people that one of the revolutionary facets of the US Constitution is that it was created to protect, not to establish, already existing natural rights. That seems to be the main issue I have seen with the current leaning towards nordic-europeanism in the intelligensia and academia, is that they have forgotten the foundational matter that the American revolution was about natural rights that exist completely independent of the decleration, the bill of rights, or the constitution themselves. In the end, freedom of speech is about natural rights, and natural rights by their nature are about individual freedom. Individual freedom is the true American Exceptionalism, that has been perverted and twisted into jingoistic vapid-nationalism by the oligarchs. The oligarchs then strawman against individual freedom (the main true threat to their power), by attacking the false narrative they created and pushed in the first place. Key reading for natural rights: John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Zeno of Citium (and the stoics in general), Martin Luther, gnostic religions in general, Hegel, Benjamin Tucker, Ludwig von Mises.
- Entangled 10y ago
  And Murray Rothbard.
Entangled 10y ago
Easy. Absolute free speech in public property. Absolute owner control in private property. However you define property is irrelevant to the universal principle it holds.
- darawk 10y ago
  What does absolute free speech entail though? Can you use a megaphone? Can you broadcast over FM and drown out the 'owners' of that spectrum? If the answer to #1 is no, how loud are you allowed to yell? Can I do that yelling at night? Does my right to disturb the air end where your eardrums begin? We really have all kinds of restrictions on speech. For the most part, what we do is restrict the location and mode of speech, and try to blind our judgments on those issues from the content of speech. We have decided this to be the spiritual meaning of 'free speech' - but of course, it is not its literal definition.
  - Entangled 10y ago
    Speech as in content, not as in airwaves. You can not trespass on my property (body or house) with your airwaves the same way you can't not with light or matter. The quantity allowed is proportional to the force and resources necessary to defend such property from invasion.
    - darawk 10y ago
      So, if i'm standing outside your property speaking, am I trespassing by vibrating the air over your property?
stevebmark 10y ago
There have been a few "free speech" thinkpieces recently. Is anyone really doubting the importance of free speech? They just seem like obvious thoughts in an echo chamber to me. I'd rather read someone tackle actually thought provoking issues around free speech, like how free speech is fine right now, not under any obvious attack, and trying force someone to listen to someone else is itself a violation of freedom.
notadoc 10y ago
This can't be a serious question?
bleamishboy 10y ago
Isn't political content like this (interesting as it is) off-topic for Hacker News?
- grzm 10y ago
  Here's a list of links from the mods on politics on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527940

42 points by nkurz 10y ago

Tomte 10y ago

Free Speech is important. Germany has it. The Netherlands have it. Australia has it. Estonia has it. Brazil has it. Many countries in the world have it. What Americans defenders of Free Speech never seem to grasp is that their variant of Free Speech is only the most extreme one on a whole spectrum of "Free Speeches", and that their variant does not really deliver more benefits than the (ImO) more sensible variants. I would argue the extremist position is -- as usually -- inferior to the nuanced, balanced ones.

virmundi 10y ago
How do you know that something is extreme if you can't hear it? How do you engage individuals, hopefully productively, if you don't allow them to speak? If the answer is social norms, how do you prevent those norms from drifting overtime into authoritarianism? Start small, attack only the extremists. Then slowly turn your forces against your opposition. This is the kind of thought that Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote about in "First they came...." Notice that historically that poem applied to Germany and even Estonia and Australia. These countries were or seem to be morphing into an authoritarian state. Edit spelling
- physicalist 10y ago
  The reason for this poem is also the reason for the restrictions on speech in Germany. Go figure. Also, the US has been morphing into an suthoritarian state for quite a while. What is not the freedom of white affluent males is under constant attack there. From the war against drugs to the war against women's rights, there are countless examples.
- quirkafleeg 10y ago
  > How do you know that something is extreme if you can't hear it? How do you engage individuals, hopefully productively, if you don't allow them to speak? Or, perhaps more importantly, how do you challenge or disprove their arguments? The answer to "bad" speech is to counter it and illustrate its flaws; banning some speech can have the effect of giving it credibility that it doesn't deserve.
aytekin 10y ago
There is too much self censorship by the media and by the people that even in the countries that supposed to have it, it is not really practiced. So, free speech is just a buzzword. Nobody speaks their mind unless it is in a range that is currently accepted by the society.
- meheleventyone 10y ago
  A world where everyone blurts out whatever is in their head free from any consequence isn't as I understand it the desirable end goal of the right to freedom of expression. Moreover that sort of view on it is profoundly anti-human since, as you note, we live in large groups with an attendant milieu that is unavoidable.
Ralfp 10y ago
I tend to agree. Rallying thousands of people to get somebody fired because he or she said something out of the line is extreme approach to free speech I don't see outside of America. ;)
pkinsky 10y ago
Germany has free speech, except if you want to criticize foreign dictators [1]. I think I'll stick with our extremist variant, thanks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair
- x0137294744532 10y ago
  This particular article of the german penal code is a relic of the German Empire (1871). Last December, the government decided to get it removed from the penal code.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- germanier 10y ago
  As the article correctly notes, the criminal case was dropped. Also, the law parts of the case was based on was practically forgotten for a few decades now and will be removed soon.
quirkafleeg 10y ago
> Free Speech is important. Germany has it. East Germany also had it, so did Nazi Germany. Yes, on the same principle: as long as you didn't want to say things that the Government deemed verboten you were free to say whatever you liked.
- x0137294744532 10y ago
  > East Germany also had it, so did Nazi Germany. No, they didn't. Declaration of Human Rights: > Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, _in the cases determined by the law_. In East Germany and Nazi Germany, people were persecuted and killed without being brought to trial and facing justice.
  - quirkafleeg 10y ago
    > No, they didn't. Well, yeah. The point is neither does Germany today. > In East Germany and Nazi Germany, people were persecuted and killed without being brought to trial and facing justice. Whereas being arrested, tried and merely jailed for something you say, as happens in Germany (and Austria), is your idea of justice and not being persecuted? BTW, don't try to make out this is an argument about today's Germany being as unsophisticated and brutal as Nazi Germany or East Germany. Obviously it isn't. This is solely about the principle of free speech: you either believe in someone's right to say what they want or you don't. You can't just sometimes believe in it.
    - x0137294744532 10y ago
      > Well, yeah. The point is neither does Germany today. According to the definition of the Declaration of Human Rights, they actually do. > Whereas being arrested, tried and merely jailed for something you say, as happens in Germany (and Austria), is your idea of justice and not being persecuted? Freedom of speech alone doesn't guarantee freedom, liberty or justice. > This is solely about the principle of free speech: you either believe in someone's right to say what they want or you don't. You can't just sometimes believe in it. That's the problem; we have different definition of "freedom of speech". The US interprets "freedom of speech" according to the definition given by the Bill of Rights, while the rest of the world use the definition of Declaration of Human Rights.
emsy 10y ago
Germany does not have free speech. You are not allowed to deny the Holocaust by law.
- fatbird 10y ago
  Except they obviously do have free speech. The fact that they can't say everything doesn't mean they can't say anything. By your standard, no one has free speech. In America, you're not allowed to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government: 18 U.S. Code § 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385)
  - emsy 10y ago
    Advocating violence and denying a historic fact are two completly different things. You're not allowed to threaten someone with murder either, but that's not a restriction of freedom of speech. Threats of violence are neither ideas nor opinions. However denying the Holocaust is very much an opinion and freedom of speech would mean that I could freely state this opinion and have it judged on the free marketplace of ideas.
    - fatbird 10y ago
      Like sedition, denying the Holocaust (and hate speech generally) is a speech act with real world consequences, not merely an opinion. The point remains that freedom of speech is not a binary condition. No one has total freedom of speech; having some restrictions isn't the same as existing under a dictatorship with no freedom of expression at all.
      - emsy 10y ago
        Freedom of speech means free to speak, not free of consequences. That was never my argument. A threat of violence is an attack, and I should expect defensive consequences. Stating the opinion that the Holocaust never happened is not an attack. Nobody is hurt by this, unless people judge it to be a valid idea and act accordingly. But freedom of speech also means to trust people to deem such an idea preposterous. There are instances in history where this didn't work out, but the general tendency indicates it to be a good protocol. The alternative is to forbid certain ideas or opinions to be perpetuated. However, who can assure you that the power to ban certain ideas and opinions will not be used for malicious intent in the future? So, yes, free speech can only be a binary condition.
vixen99 10y ago
Balanced and nuanced according to whom?

VLM 10y ago

The essay misses an obvious opiate of the masses effect, more specifically: There's less surprise in society when the opposition to the establishment is always spouting off. Perversely this strengthens the establishment during times of rapid change when the masses who are not paying much attention continue to hear the same old stuff, its just now being heard from the establishment instead of the radicals. Note how the 60s radicals are basically the mass media today. There's also a "three minutes hate" feature of blowing off steam where permitting people without any power or influence to talk until they're tired of talking is better for the establishment than bottling them up until furious armed revolution topples the establishment. You want Klansmen to talk, to talk a lot, to talk so much they have no time or energy to lynch, for example. An establishment that pays attention to the speech both in the old days and on social media can trivially figure out a map of the vocal opposition when it comes time to round up the radicals. An establishment that allows free speech is more likely to survive turmoil than the opposite, they simply have more intel on the opfor. Sometimes free speech is funny. The court jester is just simply funny and a world with more laughs is better than one with less.

hsitz 10y ago
> Note how the 60s radicals are basically the mass media today. Huh? You do realize that someone who was 20 in 1967 would be 70 years old today? How many in "mass media" do you think are 70 years old?
- jhbadger 10y ago
  While he is far from being a 60s radical, probably the most influential person in mass media today is Rupert Murdoch who is 85. He controls newspapers and television news across continents.
  - quirkafleeg 10y ago
    > who is 85 He's more yer 50s radical then. Like Joe McCarthy.
- bitwize 10y ago

wu-ikkyu 10y ago

>But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood... We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. -Dr. King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail

moomin 10y ago

Yes, free speech is valuable, but unless you have thought through the following three issues, it doesn't matter how many philosophers you quote, you deserve to be taken as seriously as Casubon. 1) We have scientific evidence that repeating lies often enough causes perfectly rational people to behave as if they're true, even when they know they're not. 2) There's plenty of speech out there that is specifically targeted to exclude voices from conversation. 3) What is known as stochastic terrorism, where people with large audiences speak in a way that is guaranteed to get a violent response out of a small part of the audience. To put 1&2 another way, do you believe the fuzzing in Snow Crash should be constitutionally protected?

RodericDay 10y ago
Also important to consider: When "free speech" truly threatens powerful people, they find ways to shut it down. e.g.: > "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic. The phrase is a paraphrasing of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919, which held that the defendant's speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... and you'd think okay, harmful speech is out... but then you have Brandenburg vs. Ohio > Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".[1][2]:702 Specifically, it struck down Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence. In the process, Whitney v. California[3] was explicitly overruled, and doubt was cast on Schenck v. United States,[4] Abrams v. United States,[5] Gitlow v. New York (1925), and Dennis v. United States.[6] [...] Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader in rural Ohio, contacted a reporter at a Cincinnati television station and invited him to cover a KKK rally that would take place in Hamilton County in the summer of 1964.[7] Portions of the rally were filmed, showing several men in robes and hoods, some carrying firearms, first burning a cross and then making speeches. One of the speeches made reference to the possibility of "revengeance" against "niggers", "Jews", and those who supported them. [...] The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brandenburg's conviction, holding that government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law violation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio --- some use "free speech" as a thought-terminating cliche. for example, they claim to automatically disqualify and reflexively oppose anyone who's position is deemed to be against free speech, no matter what said speech was, but turn out to be much more charitable when the no-platforming involves people paying for airtime and views being silenced by moneyed interests rather than angry hooligans. > the point isn't whether or not free speech should exist, the point is that inasmuch as it does exist, it's invoked selectively and politically. and saying that well it ought to have been invoked consistently, and ignoring the material reality of how it is invoked, ends up being tantamount to accepting the existing power structures of the society (or at least to the degree to which they rely on this). and therefore, terminating the discussion once someone has brought up free-speech concerns seems dubious.

lngnmn 10y ago

Freedom of Speech is one of the most fundamental principles in political philosophy, not just an optional decoration. It contributes to sustainability of a democratic system by guaranteeing that no issue or critic of the government could be silenced or hushed up. The independent press, free information laws and freedom of speech as the main principle is the immune system of a democratic society, so to speak, which defends it from deceases such as the one US got a few months ago.

fatbird 10y ago

Mill's great, but this essay misses the essential point in our current culture wars where free speech is concerned, namely: whose speech is being protected? For the latter half of the 20th century we adopted an extremist standard, where we tested our commitment to freedom of expression by protecting the most extreme examples we could--racism, pornography, pseudoscience--under the belief that this would shelter all other, less extreme versions. But what we've found is a tyranny of the grossest: the loudest, most attention grabbing, least useful speech drowns out the quieter and more moderate voices. Privileging the extreme edge of freedom of speech has the practical consequence of disempowering the middle.

digi_owl 10y ago
That seems to come from mass media confusing (willfully or not) "freedom of speech" with "right to be heard". Thus they pull those extremists in as counterpoints to the moderates claims, thus giving the extremist views an air of credibility.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  The distinction is really important. Every banned-from-a-forum troll argues "suppressing my freedom of speech!" Not if it's a soapbox that you don't own and it's not the government.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    You are conflating the legal consequences of the American 1'st amendment with a much broader concept of free speech. There's a lot more to the concept than that. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first-amendment/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... I actually live (part time) in a country where people who speak against the consensus may be socially ostracized, they are at risk of being fired from their job and blacklisted, and they are at risk of violence from non-government parties. The government often turns a blind eye to such violence. People with views outside the mainstream are afraid to speak up. The government takes little direct action to hinder speech. Do you believe I really have free speech?

arca_vorago 10y ago

Freedom of speech is important because it is a foundational bedrock upon which other liberties are built and flourish. Without it, other liberties are undermined and slowly eroded away. It is worth reminding people that one of the revolutionary facets of the US Constitution is that it was created to protect, not to establish, already existing natural rights. That seems to be the main issue I have seen with the current leaning towards nordic-europeanism in the intelligensia and academia, is that they have forgotten the foundational matter that the American revolution was about natural rights that exist completely independent of the decleration, the bill of rights, or the constitution themselves. In the end, freedom of speech is about natural rights, and natural rights by their nature are about individual freedom. Individual freedom is the true American Exceptionalism, that has been perverted and twisted into jingoistic vapid-nationalism by the oligarchs. The oligarchs then strawman against individual freedom (the main true threat to their power), by attacking the false narrative they created and pushed in the first place. Key reading for natural rights: John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Zeno of Citium (and the stoics in general), Martin Luther, gnostic religions in general, Hegel, Benjamin Tucker, Ludwig von Mises.

Entangled 10y ago
And Murray Rothbard.

Entangled 10y ago

Easy. Absolute free speech in public property. Absolute owner control in private property. However you define property is irrelevant to the universal principle it holds.

darawk 10y ago
What does absolute free speech entail though? Can you use a megaphone? Can you broadcast over FM and drown out the 'owners' of that spectrum? If the answer to #1 is no, how loud are you allowed to yell? Can I do that yelling at night? Does my right to disturb the air end where your eardrums begin? We really have all kinds of restrictions on speech. For the most part, what we do is restrict the location and mode of speech, and try to blind our judgments on those issues from the content of speech. We have decided this to be the spiritual meaning of 'free speech' - but of course, it is not its literal definition.
- Entangled 10y ago
  Speech as in content, not as in airwaves. You can not trespass on my property (body or house) with your airwaves the same way you can't not with light or matter. The quantity allowed is proportional to the force and resources necessary to defend such property from invasion.
  - darawk 10y ago
    So, if i'm standing outside your property speaking, am I trespassing by vibrating the air over your property?

stevebmark 10y ago

There have been a few "free speech" thinkpieces recently. Is anyone really doubting the importance of free speech? They just seem like obvious thoughts in an echo chamber to me. I'd rather read someone tackle actually thought provoking issues around free speech, like how free speech is fine right now, not under any obvious attack, and trying force someone to listen to someone else is itself a violation of freedom.

notadoc 10y ago

This can't be a serious question?

bleamishboy 10y ago

Isn't political content like this (interesting as it is) off-topic for Hacker News?

grzm 10y ago
Here's a list of links from the mods on politics on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527940