3 ms·

Sorry, autocratic rule by those on the left is still autocratic rule. > The First Amendment does not guarantee consequence-free speech. Civics 101. My right

by bb88 6y ago

Sorry, autocratic rule by those on the left is still autocratic rule. > The First Amendment does not guarantee consequence-free speech. Civics 101. My right to through my fist stops at your face. Simple. Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, etc. etc. Political speech, ie, expressing ones viewpoint, is and has always been protected by the First Amendment -- even if it's false or racist speech. > I would add that after a decade of watching the First Amendment cited almost exclusively to protect hate speech from psychopaths... What would you replace it with? Seriously. Are you going to punish people for lying? Lock them up for something just slightly racist? Who do we trust to make these judgements? Republican appointed judges? What?

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Civics 101. [...] Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, etc. etc. > Are you going to punish people for lying? We punish people for lies that cause harm all the time. Though a bad example to use (because it is dicta unsupported by the law at the time in a particularly repugnant case suppressing core political speech that was later overturned, so that the quote at issue was never part of the substantive case law itself, wasn't particularly supported by the substantive case law, and was issued in a case now widely recognized as having been wrongly decided), the quote you wave your hand in the vague direction of about falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater is also an odd one to raise if you are going to turn around and sneer at that idea.
- bb88 6y ago
  Political speech, specifically. See above.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
I think the tension here has always come from the fact that we've never had a right to free speech with no respect to context. If I run a coffee shop and let people pin flyers to the corkboard, I have a say in what flyers get to stay up. If Bob posts flyers for his Alt-Right Potluck Dinner, I'm going to take them down. I may, in fact, ban Bob from the coffee shop entirely. If Bob protests "but you've let Jennifer post flyers for her Antifa Vegan Cookbook," I'm going to say, "Yes, Bob, and her dairy-free brownies are surprisingly delicious." Bob doesn't have a protected constitutional right to use my space. It's certainly true the left can have illiberal tendencies, and there's some indication that's on the rise, and that's worrisome. But when people yell "cancel culture" in a crowded online letter, it's always worth asking how many people have been "cancelled" and to what degree. Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss have never been denied an audience and will almost certainly continue to have huge ones. J.K. Rowling, for all of the articles about her "cancellation" over the past couple of months, turns out to still be a multibillionaire author who still has a book contract. Yes, every day brings us complaints from prominent conservatives about how Twitter is stifling their voice -- complaints generally tweeted to their millions of Twitter followers who like and retweet them in support. In any case, while I'd be loathe to carve out explicit exceptions to the First Amendment, I'd also be loathe to invoke it too cavalierly. Would I lock someone up for "something just slightly racist"? No, but in practice that's very rarely what we're arguing about when we argue about cancel culture: you mentioned it was a social media phenomenon in another comment here. Would you demand that social media networks not be allowed to make decisions about what content they're willing to carry? How about employers? Firing someone for that "something just slightly racist" is harsh, but do we want to say that HR departments are no longer allowed to make those calls? If so, who is?
- bb88 6y ago
  > Would I lock someone up for "something just slightly racist"? I mean, if you don't have protected free speech, you have regulated speech. If you can't say "I believe in X because .... " where X might be racism, then it's no longer freedom, and therefore subject to potential criminal legislation. See John Adams and the sedition act. > But when people yell "cancel culture" in a crowded online letter... Bari Weiss made it clear it was the anger from the Tom Cotton essay where she felt her career at the times became untenable. When did we decide that an essay by Tom Cotton was too dangerous to be published? That his speech was so dangerous that the core ideas could not just have been countered with... wait for it... more speech. And no one said that freedom of speech never meant freedom of jobs. Nor did freedom of speech ever mean that people would buy your product after your ugly ideas came to light. So what is cancel culture? It's this. Specifically this article: https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/9/25/20883697/cancel-culture-has-it-gone-too-far-carson-king-outrage-twitter https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/9/25/20883697/cancel-cu...
  - watwut 6y ago
    But like, all oposition against him was speech. And he advocated using force against protesters ... which is speech.

by bb88 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Civics 101. [...] Yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, etc. etc. > Are you going to punish people for lying? We punish people for lies that cause harm all the time. Though a bad example to use (because it is dicta unsupported by the law at the time in a particularly repugnant case suppressing core political speech that was later overturned, so that the quote at issue was never part of the substantive case law itself, wasn't particularly supported by the substantive case law, and was issued in a case now widely recognized as having been wrongly decided), the quote you wave your hand in the vague direction of about falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater is also an odd one to raise if you are going to turn around and sneer at that idea.

bb88 6y ago
Political speech, specifically. See above.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago

I think the tension here has always come from the fact that we've never had a right to free speech with no respect to context. If I run a coffee shop and let people pin flyers to the corkboard, I have a say in what flyers get to stay up. If Bob posts flyers for his Alt-Right Potluck Dinner, I'm going to take them down. I may, in fact, ban Bob from the coffee shop entirely. If Bob protests "but you've let Jennifer post flyers for her Antifa Vegan Cookbook," I'm going to say, "Yes, Bob, and her dairy-free brownies are surprisingly delicious." Bob doesn't have a protected constitutional right to use my space. It's certainly true the left can have illiberal tendencies, and there's some indication that's on the rise, and that's worrisome. But when people yell "cancel culture" in a crowded online letter, it's always worth asking how many people have been "cancelled" and to what degree. Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss have never been denied an audience and will almost certainly continue to have huge ones. J.K. Rowling, for all of the articles about her "cancellation" over the past couple of months, turns out to still be a multibillionaire author who still has a book contract. Yes, every day brings us complaints from prominent conservatives about how Twitter is stifling their voice -- complaints generally tweeted to their millions of Twitter followers who like and retweet them in support. In any case, while I'd be loathe to carve out explicit exceptions to the First Amendment, I'd also be loathe to invoke it too cavalierly. Would I lock someone up for "something just slightly racist"? No, but in practice that's very rarely what we're arguing about when we argue about cancel culture: you mentioned it was a social media phenomenon in another comment here. Would you demand that social media networks not be allowed to make decisions about what content they're willing to carry? How about employers? Firing someone for that "something just slightly racist" is harsh, but do we want to say that HR departments are no longer allowed to make those calls? If so, who is?

bb88 6y ago
> Would I lock someone up for "something just slightly racist"? I mean, if you don't have protected free speech, you have regulated speech. If you can't say "I believe in X because .... " where X might be racism, then it's no longer freedom, and therefore subject to potential criminal legislation. See John Adams and the sedition act. > But when people yell "cancel culture" in a crowded online letter... Bari Weiss made it clear it was the anger from the Tom Cotton essay where she felt her career at the times became untenable. When did we decide that an essay by Tom Cotton was too dangerous to be published? That his speech was so dangerous that the core ideas could not just have been countered with... wait for it... more speech. And no one said that freedom of speech never meant freedom of jobs. Nor did freedom of speech ever mean that people would buy your product after your ugly ideas came to light. So what is cancel culture? It's this. Specifically this article: https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/9/25/20883697/cancel-culture-has-it-gone-too-far-carson-king-outrage-twitter https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/9/25/20883697/cancel-cu...
- watwut 6y ago
  But like, all oposition against him was speech. And he advocated using force against protesters ... which is speech.