4 ms·

I'd argue it is. From the article: >Canada criminalizes hate speech, Germany bans Holocaust denial, and the United States permits both — yet no one seriously

I'd argue it is. From the article: >Canada criminalizes hate speech, Germany bans Holocaust denial, and the United States permits both — yet no one seriously believes that America is a free society while the other two have somehow collapsed into illiberalism. Freedom isn't a boolean true/false. In my view America is more free than those countries when it comes to speech due to our more liberal definition of what constitutes free speech. I don't think that banning those forms of speech will trigger a collapse into illiberalism, but I would see banning that speech as an erosion of our rights.

fao_ 6y ago
The free speech argument confuses me. Isn't giving an unequivocal right to self expression essentially saying that people have a right to be Nazis? That they have a right to spout genocidal ideas in public spaces? There exist things such as "harmful ideas", one of those is the belief that genocide will make life better. The usual retort is that they should be debated in the 'battlefield of ideas' or whatever. But all these debates do is give them air and room to convince onlookers of their ideas. I don't believe that 'debating' something someone believes is at all a productive measure. The only way we can get rid of these people is by denying their ideas room. In other words, there is no room for debating the idea that genocide is bad. It's not something that should be debated. People have a right to existence. It's not a fire that should be given 'oxygen', or whatever else you want to call it. (There's a good video on why debating isn't necessarily an effective tactic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHPmVxtFw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHPmVxtFw8)
- joeblow9999 6y ago
  who gets to decide which ideas or not debatable?
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "There exist things such as 'harmful ideas'" The irony of the above being that we only got to where we are today because people were willing to advocate ideas that were universally considered "harmful ideas" like the abolition of the divine right of kings, freedom of religion, equality of all races, and equality of the sexes. What view considered "harmful" today will spawn the next protected class of tomorrow? If we listen to the parent poster, we will never know.
  - fao_ 6y ago
    I pretty clearly constrained it to genocide. Are you saying genocide is good? Or are you deliberately ignoring the words that I wrote?
- greenname2020 6y ago
  > People have a right to existence I fully agree. We need to immediately end the ongoing genocide known as "abortion" in this country and worldwide. Anyone advocating for abortion should be immediately shutdown as hate speech against the unborn. Planned Parenthood kills more black babies in a day than the police do in a decade and should be immediately defunded. Anyone supporting them should be deplatformed, and fired from their jobs for hate speech. There is no room for debate about the rights of the unborn. It's time to immediately defend their right to life and we should not tolerate anyone suggesting otherwise.
  - fao_ 6y ago
    It's interesting how I very clearly constrained this to genocide and you're ignoring that.
- david-s 6y ago
  Thanks for the video link.
  - fao_ 6y ago
    No problem! It was very interesting!
ojnabieoot 6y ago
My ideological priors: 1) I believe the US constitution should be amended to ban racist speech and membership of explicitly racist political parties. There should be a lengthy and precise amendment stipulating that the US government considers human beings to belong to only one race, Homo sapiens sapiens, and that any racialist understanding of human diversity (claiming whites and blacks are separate races, for example) is pseuedoscience, although not necessarily criminal. While racialism is not criminalized, anyone using racialist "science" to falsely claim intellectual or behavioral differences between different ethnic groups has committed a serious crime. Blacks, Native Americans, and Jews should be explicitly protected. This would mean that Charles Murray and Andrew Sullivan would go to jail. Likewise, anyone who uses provably false assertions about history to deny the occurrence of racist violence or genocide has committed a serious crime. This would mean David Irving would go to jail if he set foot in the US. Note that my amendment is specifically about race and not ethnicity. 2) I respect that most anti-racists disagree with me and I acknowledge that the "thoughtcrime" problem with my proposed amendment is very real. I am aware that the amendment in point 1 could very easily criminalize legitimate anthropological research, and so on. But our laws against human subject research risks criminalizing legitimate research in medicine (and certainly creates heavy barriers for researchers). So in my view I think the risk pales in comparison to the danger posed by Holocaust/slavery/etc denial. But I think your view of "freedom" is a bit shallow - specifically conflating "freedom" and "rights" is a problem. For instance: people used to have the "freedom" to resolve disputes with a duel to the death. The government constrained this freedom but it is difficult to believe that anyone's rights were violated. Likewise, only true zealots seriously believe that "a right to bear arms" is "a right to bear whatever weapon you want." The government constrains your freedom to own missiles and automatic weaponry but this is not a constraint of your rights. Similarly, I just plain disagree that people have the right to express racist views or endorse Nazism. Given that racist conduct and expression can be defined fairly precisely, even given that bigoted or ethnically prejudiced conduct cannot, I think such an exception to free speech rights is legally workable. More philosophically, racism is so uniquely dangerous, and so indefensible intellectually, and so useless for anything other than spreading hatred and violence, that it should be an explicit exception to our understanding of free speech laws and our natural rights around self-expression. Again, I am not accusing people who disagree with me of indifference to racism.

fao_ 6y ago

The free speech argument confuses me. Isn't giving an unequivocal right to self expression essentially saying that people have a right to be Nazis? That they have a right to spout genocidal ideas in public spaces? There exist things such as "harmful ideas", one of those is the belief that genocide will make life better. The usual retort is that they should be debated in the 'battlefield of ideas' or whatever. But all these debates do is give them air and room to convince onlookers of their ideas. I don't believe that 'debating' something someone believes is at all a productive measure. The only way we can get rid of these people is by denying their ideas room. In other words, there is no room for debating the idea that genocide is bad. It's not something that should be debated. People have a right to existence. It's not a fire that should be given 'oxygen', or whatever else you want to call it. (There's a good video on why debating isn't necessarily an effective tactic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHPmVxtFw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHPmVxtFw8)

joeblow9999 6y ago
who gets to decide which ideas or not debatable?
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "There exist things such as 'harmful ideas'" The irony of the above being that we only got to where we are today because people were willing to advocate ideas that were universally considered "harmful ideas" like the abolition of the divine right of kings, freedom of religion, equality of all races, and equality of the sexes. What view considered "harmful" today will spawn the next protected class of tomorrow? If we listen to the parent poster, we will never know.
- fao_ 6y ago
  I pretty clearly constrained it to genocide. Are you saying genocide is good? Or are you deliberately ignoring the words that I wrote?
greenname2020 6y ago
> People have a right to existence I fully agree. We need to immediately end the ongoing genocide known as "abortion" in this country and worldwide. Anyone advocating for abortion should be immediately shutdown as hate speech against the unborn. Planned Parenthood kills more black babies in a day than the police do in a decade and should be immediately defunded. Anyone supporting them should be deplatformed, and fired from their jobs for hate speech. There is no room for debate about the rights of the unborn. It's time to immediately defend their right to life and we should not tolerate anyone suggesting otherwise.
- fao_ 6y ago
  It's interesting how I very clearly constrained this to genocide and you're ignoring that.
david-s 6y ago
Thanks for the video link.
- fao_ 6y ago
  No problem! It was very interesting!

ojnabieoot 6y ago

My ideological priors: 1) I believe the US constitution should be amended to ban racist speech and membership of explicitly racist political parties. There should be a lengthy and precise amendment stipulating that the US government considers human beings to belong to only one race, Homo sapiens sapiens, and that any racialist understanding of human diversity (claiming whites and blacks are separate races, for example) is pseuedoscience, although not necessarily criminal. While racialism is not criminalized, anyone using racialist "science" to falsely claim intellectual or behavioral differences between different ethnic groups has committed a serious crime. Blacks, Native Americans, and Jews should be explicitly protected. This would mean that Charles Murray and Andrew Sullivan would go to jail. Likewise, anyone who uses provably false assertions about history to deny the occurrence of racist violence or genocide has committed a serious crime. This would mean David Irving would go to jail if he set foot in the US. Note that my amendment is specifically about race and not ethnicity. 2) I respect that most anti-racists disagree with me and I acknowledge that the "thoughtcrime" problem with my proposed amendment is very real. I am aware that the amendment in point 1 could very easily criminalize legitimate anthropological research, and so on. But our laws against human subject research risks criminalizing legitimate research in medicine (and certainly creates heavy barriers for researchers). So in my view I think the risk pales in comparison to the danger posed by Holocaust/slavery/etc denial. But I think your view of "freedom" is a bit shallow - specifically conflating "freedom" and "rights" is a problem. For instance: people used to have the "freedom" to resolve disputes with a duel to the death. The government constrained this freedom but it is difficult to believe that anyone's rights were violated. Likewise, only true zealots seriously believe that "a right to bear arms" is "a right to bear whatever weapon you want." The government constrains your freedom to own missiles and automatic weaponry but this is not a constraint of your rights. Similarly, I just plain disagree that people have the right to express racist views or endorse Nazism. Given that racist conduct and expression can be defined fairly precisely, even given that bigoted or ethnically prejudiced conduct cannot, I think such an exception to free speech rights is legally workable. More philosophically, racism is so uniquely dangerous, and so indefensible intellectually, and so useless for anything other than spreading hatred and violence, that it should be an explicit exception to our understanding of free speech laws and our natural rights around self-expression. Again, I am not accusing people who disagree with me of indifference to racism.