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> To be clear the "freedom from" I'm referring to here is the freedom for innocent bystanders - children in this case - not to see lazy racial stereotypes surre

• claudiawerner 6y ago
  >You do realize your comment perverts the very meaning of the word "freedom" to mean the opposite of its actual meaning, right? It's not a perversion at all; in fact, this sense of freedom being more than raw ability to "do whatever you want" was recognized as early as Rousseau and possibly even earlier. This also led to the creation of the concepts of positive and negative liberty. "Freedom from" is absolutely a valid form of freedom, and a core one in our society. It's why things which aren't harms (and sometimes barely even hurts) are prohibited - public nudity, playing loud music on a bus, and other forms of nuisance. The canonical example is the fact that there is no harm-based reason to ban corpse desecration. In fact, it's a law based on the offence principle. There is some space in our society for laws like that, but we need to be careful with them, of course. This case is even more benign - we have here a company refusing to sell these items. You speak of 'information and ideas', but these ideas can still manifest even on Ebay. No 'unacceptable idea' has been 'banned'. I'm not sure who you're saying is using Newspeak. As was pointed out by Marcuse in the 60s we're well past Orwell - now the contradiction is hidden in the noun itself. What we describe as 'free societies' are full of restrictions on some freedom to ensure the development and use of greater freedoms. That's a core part of liberal society.
  • lumenwrites 6y ago
    Well, it looks like soon we'll have many more freedoms like that. Freedom from saying forbidden words, freedom from thinking forbidden thoughts, freedom from all the people who write, research, or joke about controversial subjects, freedom from anything that could potentially offend or upset anyone ever, freedom from anything that doesn't comply with the dogma. Boy, I can't wait to be liberated from all the wrongthink!
  • f154hfds 6y ago
    Ideas have generally been considered protected ground and the 'positive' freedom of ideas is the basis of scientific progression (tenure for example is a freedom to be contrarian, not a shackle toward rational self mastery). The fact that these books are oriented toward children is irrelevant, it is still an attack on the 'idea' that parents/teachers can use offensive works to a productive end. I would love to be a fly on the wall in Ebay or Amazon during their discussions on these bannings, because it seems their attempts to pacify certain audiences is so hopelessly naive it's hard for me to understand their motivation. Do we want to live in a society where certain corporations decide which training wheels to put on us? The discussion isn't about their legal right, but about what their policy should be when X group comes along saying Y is offensive. I doubt these decisions were made from a cynical bottom-line perspective. No one as far as I'm aware was boycotting these places because they sold offensive children's books. The most disturbing thing to me is they did it purely because they thought it was the right thing to do. Their policy is what we're saying is wrong.
    • claudiawerner 6y ago
      >The fact that these books are oriented toward children is irrelevant, it is still an attack on the 'idea' that parents/teachers can use offensive works to a productive end. We 'attack' ideas all the time; in fact, that's what most of us are doing on HN. There's nothing wrong with such an 'attack' on an idea. In fact, if you open Ebay right now, you'll likely find works of philosophy and law debating whether parents and teachers can use offensive works to a productive end. >The discussion isn't about their legal right, but about what their policy should be when X group comes along saying Y is offensive. That's a good question, but it does not demand an answer culminating in an accusation that actually rather reasonable answers constitute an attack on the very idea of freedom. We recognize 'offense' even in law in every country on the planet, and it seems to me that so long as corporations have less power than governments, there is at least some room for reasoning from moral or practical principles that are not available (nor do we wish to be available) in law. The very fact that it's a not a legal question actually seems to tilt the scales towards reasons why a private entity should exercise moral autonomy in the market. >The most disturbing thing to me is they did it purely because they thought it was the right thing to do. Their policy is what we're saying is wrong. This isn't disturbing to me; the market is a big part of our social life, and with the law generally more restricted on dealing with moral issues, actors in the market can step in and make those decisions for themselves. There is nothing repugnant about acting on the basis of what you find wrong or right. There may be something wrong with the moral reasoning of Seuss' estate and Ebay (if it even is moral reasoning - to a consequentialist this wouldn't even matter). But the form of the decision (moral reasoning) and its content (the morality of facilitating the sale of racist caricatures, if the books really are that bad) are two different questions. I have zero problem with a stock exchange refusing to sell tobacco or even alcohol or strip club stocks. I may disagree with them - maybe I think alcohol and strip clubs are not morally wrong businesses. But I can't see any reason to disagree with their exercise of moral autonomy. Their exercise of moral autonomy is a contribution to the moral discourse, and censorship of that discourse is a bigger concern, and not merely from theoretical reasons.