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The flip-side, and what I'd like to address to those hopping on the surging "anti-fascist" bandwagon, is that unless you've familiarized yourself with those phi
by psyc 10y ago
The flip-side, and what I'd like to address to those hopping on the surging "anti-fascist" bandwagon, is that unless you've familiarized yourself with those philosophers, it doesn't matter how many likes and retweets you get for comparatively shallow but "brave" stances on e.g. "hate speech".
The bottom line of the reasoning in your comment is profoundly anti-liberty, unless of course you consider it a more fundamental right to be free from statistical harm. The notion that governments should be making laws to restrict activity and expression that can be shown to cause indirect harm in aggregate, points straight towards totalitarianism, regardless of how good and pure the ends are.
Now, of course, as time goes on, and governments add more laws than they subtract, they already do enact policy with this type of justification. The question is whether they should continue on that road and extend such principles to speech, and whatever else besides.
But be clear. I'm not singling you out, but rather the growing number of young Americans voicing this rhetoric. Come out and say that you want hate speech laws. Come out and say that you think too much liberty was a mistake, and you want to move towards more authoritarianism. But maybe first you have to realize what you are saying.
- moomin 10y agoSorry, didn't see this comment earlier and it deserved a decent response. For the record, I live in a country with anti-hate-speech laws. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference. There's still plenty of people peddling racist viewpoints who aren't anywhere close to violating said laws. Equally, some of the things I've mentioned _are_ already illegal in the US, if not heavily enforced. The question of liberty is a fundamental one, but I'm going to ask you the converse question: what are you prepared to do when your liberty is threatened by someone exploiting your system to do it? This isn't theoretical: Chavez' Venezuela demonstrates a good example where a democratic result was used to plunge a country into authoritarianism. I'm sure you can find authoritarians in your own country that are staunch supporters of the first amendment, they're not as incompatible as you might think. The Snow Crash example is extreme, but there will always be (and have always been) bad actors. Some of these people will be exploiting the laws as they exist to cause harm. Some of these people will be lawmakers exploiting situations to gain greater control. We need to be on our guard against both.