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"Free speech means congress isn’t allowed to silence the media" That's the narrow redefinition of free speech that's currently in vogue with people who want to

"Free speech means congress isn’t allowed to silence the media" That's the narrow redefinition of free speech that's currently in vogue with people who want to crack down on free speech. The whole time I was growing up, until quite recently in fact, free speech meant the freedom to speak your mind. The idea that people would routinely get fired for voicing their opinions, which is the world the new ideologues want to create for us, would have seemed shockingly unfree. The classic cliché of the limits of free speech is "yelling fire in a crowded theater". That's where society used to draw the limit. Those lines are being way, way, way moved, and the people moving them are pretending that they're just reiterating the old standard. It's a radical shift, and everyone who doesn't subscribe to this orthodoxy can feel it, even if they're too vulnerable to be able to stand up to the priests.

snowwrestler 6y ago
Companies can fire employees who they believe are being disruptive to a productive workplace. This is not a recent development in America. Also, firing someone stops them from receiving a paycheck, not from speaking.
- neonate 6y ago
  Whacking their knees with a crowbar wouldn't stop them from speaking either, but we don't do that when someone expresses a wrong view, nor should we try to get them fired. Free speech as a cultural value requires that people actually be free to speak. If one fears losing one's livelihood, one is not free to speak. That's obvious. For a long time, it was the left who championed this. Noam Chomsky, an archetype of the left, has always been one of the biggest free-speech advocates in the US, and takes a far more expansive view than "free speech only means the government can't put you in prison". He advocated for Walt Rostow, a technocrat whom he had condemned in print as a war criminal, to be allowed to teach at MIT. But he's a libertarian socialist, and the left has taken an authoritarian turn. The social-media driven ideological lust for driving wrong-speakers out of their jobs (and inflicting anything else the mob can muster) is clearly a recent development in America, and you have to go back at least to McCarthyism to find anything comparable.
- xzel 6y ago
  To preface I'm going to be loose with the actual decision of Citizens United: Ironically, since the Supreme Court ruled restrictions on spending money was a violation of the first amendment, one could argue that losing your paycheck, and your ability to spend money you would have otherwise had, is a form of losing their speech. I'm not sure I believe any of that but I think it is an interesting idea.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  You can't have the freedom of speech when there is a chance for retaliation.
Reelin 6y ago
I completely agree with the sentiment of what you expressed. However, I have to nitpick for accuracy. Despite becoming a cliche, "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was never actually the standard in the US. Currently it's "imminent lawless action". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action)
- neonate 6y ago
  I just mean that culturally it's the classic example that people would always bring up to illustrate the limits of free speech. The legal standard is a different question of course. But that's part of the issue here. Free speech isn't just a narrow legal question. It's a cultural value, and it's under assault in a way we've never seen in our lifetimes. The fact that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was never actually the legal standard (which is interesting by the way!) supports this point.
raxxorrax 6y ago
True, it also means to leave people to their opinion. The reduction to government is certainly short sighted at least. People reiterating it to justify banning people have to live with the fact that they too might get excluded. We have certainly dogmatic speech rules around racism and sexism while most people don't really perpetuate it, but can still be penalized if some schmuck thinks you have crossed a line of imagined decency. Companies are really bad at policing speech, of course it would be restrictive. People demanding more of it should just be ignored because they haven't thought it through.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > racism and sexism while most people don't really perpetuate it 4 years ago, 63M people voted for an explicitly racist and sexist candidate in the US Presidential Elections. Yeah, they do "really perpetuate it".
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    I would argue that this is the fault of the 2-party system rather than of said 63M people. The choice was between Clinton and Trump, there was not really a sane option. Maybe if Sanders was a candidate..
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      > The choice was between Clinton and Trump, there was not really a sane option. Yeah, that's not true. If you believe the last 4 years would have been the same or worse under Clinton, I don't know what to tell you - you're suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome and are utterly disconnected from reality.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        Am I though? It was her husband that bombed Serbia (as far as I know trump did not start any full scale war unlike the previous 3 presidents - see libya, iraq, afghanistan, yugoslavia, etc), her husband that did the whole encryption export bullshit (and she was in the gov in both cases), she herself supported the TPP. Maybe with her there would be slightly less concentration camps at the border with mexico and net neutrality would remain a thing but I can't really think of many more things that she would do better. Regardless, it is not whether about "the last 4 years would have been the same or worse under Clinton" but rather whether "the last 4 years would have been significantly better with clinton". If I was given the option between horse poop and elephant poop I would choose neither. EDIT: Maybe she would have defended syria during the Turkish invasion but I seriously doubt it.
zimpenfish 6y ago
> free speech meant the freedom to speak your mind As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else. Also "speaking your mind" has never been (and never should be) consequence free. There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently. > The idea that people would routinely get fired for voicing their opinions [...] would have seemed shockingly unfree. I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men. > That's where society used to draw the limit. Because society used to be a lot more lopsided in terms of diversity, power balance, etc. Now the balance has shifted and some of the people who previously had all the power do not like it one bit.
- neonate 6y ago
  > As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else. There's some truth to that, but the solution is obviously to extend the same freedom to everyone, not dive into authoritarianism. > There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently It is not at all the majority who are "applying consequences". It is a small vanguard of extremists, most of whom conspicuously belong to the classes they criticize.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently And this was a good thing. Before that the majority applied said consequences via witch trials. > I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men. Said people did not have the freedom of speech. It would be great if we changed that so that it applies to everyone.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I think I'm learning to scan-read articles, opinion pieces, HN comments and the moment a reference to "white men" and "people who had/have all the power" crops up I know it's going to be some critical theory nonsense. White men have zero power in today's society. They get discriminated against all the time, often by other "white men" (=caucasians+indians+chinese+etc) who have adopted some weird religion in which they're meant to atone for the sins of their ancestors and worship black people because of their skin colour. You aren't the majority, by the way. It may feel like that because people with your views are by far the most aggressive at shutting other people down or firing them for not agreeing with your beliefs, but that's not the actual same thing as being in the majority. There is going to be blowback against this kind of modern day Bolshevism.
kls 6y ago
I agree with you to a degree, but would argue there has always been a distinction about what is allowable as civil speech in the workplace, e.g if I cuss out a co-employee I would expect to be fired, even though I was just freely expressing myself. What I find disturbing is the firing of individuals for what they say outside of the workplace e.g on social media, and then due to internet outcry the person is fired. This is far too close to your workplace being able to decide what you are allowed to think, for me to be comfortable with, and it is becoming a norm.

snowwrestler 6y ago

Companies can fire employees who they believe are being disruptive to a productive workplace. This is not a recent development in America. Also, firing someone stops them from receiving a paycheck, not from speaking.

neonate 6y ago
Whacking their knees with a crowbar wouldn't stop them from speaking either, but we don't do that when someone expresses a wrong view, nor should we try to get them fired. Free speech as a cultural value requires that people actually be free to speak. If one fears losing one's livelihood, one is not free to speak. That's obvious. For a long time, it was the left who championed this. Noam Chomsky, an archetype of the left, has always been one of the biggest free-speech advocates in the US, and takes a far more expansive view than "free speech only means the government can't put you in prison". He advocated for Walt Rostow, a technocrat whom he had condemned in print as a war criminal, to be allowed to teach at MIT. But he's a libertarian socialist, and the left has taken an authoritarian turn. The social-media driven ideological lust for driving wrong-speakers out of their jobs (and inflicting anything else the mob can muster) is clearly a recent development in America, and you have to go back at least to McCarthyism to find anything comparable.
xzel 6y ago
To preface I'm going to be loose with the actual decision of Citizens United: Ironically, since the Supreme Court ruled restrictions on spending money was a violation of the first amendment, one could argue that losing your paycheck, and your ability to spend money you would have otherwise had, is a form of losing their speech. I'm not sure I believe any of that but I think it is an interesting idea.
dependenttypes 6y ago
You can't have the freedom of speech when there is a chance for retaliation.

Reelin 6y ago

I completely agree with the sentiment of what you expressed. However, I have to nitpick for accuracy. Despite becoming a cliche, "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was never actually the standard in the US. Currently it's "imminent lawless action". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action)

neonate 6y ago
I just mean that culturally it's the classic example that people would always bring up to illustrate the limits of free speech. The legal standard is a different question of course. But that's part of the issue here. Free speech isn't just a narrow legal question. It's a cultural value, and it's under assault in a way we've never seen in our lifetimes. The fact that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was never actually the legal standard (which is interesting by the way!) supports this point.

raxxorrax 6y ago

True, it also means to leave people to their opinion. The reduction to government is certainly short sighted at least. People reiterating it to justify banning people have to live with the fact that they too might get excluded. We have certainly dogmatic speech rules around racism and sexism while most people don't really perpetuate it, but can still be penalized if some schmuck thinks you have crossed a line of imagined decency. Companies are really bad at policing speech, of course it would be restrictive. People demanding more of it should just be ignored because they haven't thought it through.

zimpenfish 6y ago
> racism and sexism while most people don't really perpetuate it 4 years ago, 63M people voted for an explicitly racist and sexist candidate in the US Presidential Elections. Yeah, they do "really perpetuate it".
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  I would argue that this is the fault of the 2-party system rather than of said 63M people. The choice was between Clinton and Trump, there was not really a sane option. Maybe if Sanders was a candidate..
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > The choice was between Clinton and Trump, there was not really a sane option. Yeah, that's not true. If you believe the last 4 years would have been the same or worse under Clinton, I don't know what to tell you - you're suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome and are utterly disconnected from reality.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      Am I though? It was her husband that bombed Serbia (as far as I know trump did not start any full scale war unlike the previous 3 presidents - see libya, iraq, afghanistan, yugoslavia, etc), her husband that did the whole encryption export bullshit (and she was in the gov in both cases), she herself supported the TPP. Maybe with her there would be slightly less concentration camps at the border with mexico and net neutrality would remain a thing but I can't really think of many more things that she would do better. Regardless, it is not whether about "the last 4 years would have been the same or worse under Clinton" but rather whether "the last 4 years would have been significantly better with clinton". If I was given the option between horse poop and elephant poop I would choose neither. EDIT: Maybe she would have defended syria during the Turkish invasion but I seriously doubt it.

zimpenfish 6y ago

> free speech meant the freedom to speak your mind As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else. Also "speaking your mind" has never been (and never should be) consequence free. There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently. > The idea that people would routinely get fired for voicing their opinions [...] would have seemed shockingly unfree. I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men. > That's where society used to draw the limit. Because society used to be a lot more lopsided in terms of diversity, power balance, etc. Now the balance has shifted and some of the people who previously had all the power do not like it one bit.

neonate 6y ago
> As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else. There's some truth to that, but the solution is obviously to extend the same freedom to everyone, not dive into authoritarianism. > There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently It is not at all the majority who are "applying consequences". It is a small vanguard of extremists, most of whom conspicuously belong to the classes they criticize.
dependenttypes 6y ago
> There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently And this was a good thing. Before that the majority applied said consequences via witch trials. > I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men. Said people did not have the freedom of speech. It would be great if we changed that so that it applies to everyone.
thu2111 6y ago
I think I'm learning to scan-read articles, opinion pieces, HN comments and the moment a reference to "white men" and "people who had/have all the power" crops up I know it's going to be some critical theory nonsense. White men have zero power in today's society. They get discriminated against all the time, often by other "white men" (=caucasians+indians+chinese+etc) who have adopted some weird religion in which they're meant to atone for the sins of their ancestors and worship black people because of their skin colour. You aren't the majority, by the way. It may feel like that because people with your views are by far the most aggressive at shutting other people down or firing them for not agreeing with your beliefs, but that's not the actual same thing as being in the majority. There is going to be blowback against this kind of modern day Bolshevism.

kls 6y ago

I agree with you to a degree, but would argue there has always been a distinction about what is allowable as civil speech in the workplace, e.g if I cuss out a co-employee I would expect to be fired, even though I was just freely expressing myself. What I find disturbing is the firing of individuals for what they say outside of the workplace e.g on social media, and then due to internet outcry the person is fired. This is far too close to your workplace being able to decide what you are allowed to think, for me to be comfortable with, and it is becoming a norm.