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> used to enforce current political orthodoxy. Which is a nice way of saying that this is the beginnings of a new authoritarian and totalitarian age. It shoul

> used to enforce current political orthodoxy. Which is a nice way of saying that this is the beginnings of a new authoritarian and totalitarian age. It should be very worrying to everyone to see speech be legally punished in the West. Slippery slopes do exist and this is one.

Barrin92 5y ago
this is probably a good point to quote the article "The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country." Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries. To have a rational discussion about this when it comes to countries that don't happen to be the US, like in this case, it would probably be good to not act as if these laws were somehow conjured up out of nothing. The United Kingdom, probably having a claim to be one of the world's longest lasting liberal democracies, has laws concerning speech that in many cases go well beyond laws on continental Europe, so any discussion about speech in the Western (and even specifically Anglo) tradition probably should be had on that ground, rather than just vague pointing about slippery slopes.
- StandardFuture 5y ago
  > but have in fact existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries Yes, and that is backwards, uncivilized, and philosophically unsophisticated. It is quite literally beneath where we should be as a modern human civilization. We defeat people saying things we disagree with with reason and not with fines. There are many reasons why people fled many countries in the West to America in 1800s-1900s. One of them was to escape crony and corrupt authoritarianism in Europe and elsewhere at the time.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    So everyone who holds any restrictive position on speech, incompatible with your own is uncivilized and philosophically unsophisticated, as in the rest of the world? Civilizations thousands of years old are... uncivilized? See this is the supreme irony. You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith. Ironically enough, no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values as the American one. You can question everything, just not your own values on speech. It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points.
    - StandardFuture 5y ago
      > Ironically enough, no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values than the American one. This speech seems rather ... hateful. Shall we fine you? Officers! This man is screaming hateful speech in the public arena! Or maybe you disagree with that being hate speech? In an uncivilized society, if I have the power then it doesn't really matter. You still get fined or worse. > You can question everything, just not your own values on speech No, you can still question that in a free society if you so choose. But you may not necessarily be able to in an unfree one. > You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith. This is entirely disingenuous. Supporting a philosophical position is not without reason, as you well know, and is not automatically dogmatic. > It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points. Perhaps, you can better explain your dogmatic devotion to your belief that freedom of speech is not an important tenant of modern civility and sophistication?
      - adriand 5y ago
        It doesn’t seem hateful whatsoever, and everyone knows it, including you. So I don’t think you’ve made your point very effectively here. I think the well-known distinction between “freedom to” and “freedom from” is relevant here. In the wake of Nazism, Germany also banned hate speech. You could argue that Germany made it less free to be a Nazi. You could also argue that Germany made it easier to be free from Nazism. You may disagree with the choice they made but I don’t think many would reasonably argue that Germany is not a free society. > tenant of modern civility Minor quibble: it’s tenet, not tenant.
        deleted 5y ago
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        deleted 5y ago
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        alentist 5y ago
        > everyone knows it "Everyone knows" what? This? > no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values as the American one I can't imagine how sheltered from and ignorant of the rest of the world one must be to make such a ludicrous claim.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN. They make threads predictable, which is tedious, and usually turn them nasty as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it's unfortunately much worse than that. You've been breaking the site guidelines frequently and badly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27567601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27567601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428736 That is way over the line. I've banned this account.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries It's common sense that without a history in the West of regulating free speech, there wouldn't have been a first amendment in the US. You don't have to know what the regulations were. So you are not just generalizing Americans as ignorant of history, but also as unable to use basic logic.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    That is the most American response I could have read. It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.”
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.” Not at all. I claimed any person with common sense can assume that the US "founding fathers" were reacting to something. And I didn't claim that Americans are or aren't devoid of common sense. You can read it either way.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    It's common sense that many American institutions are a reactions to old European institutions, and you don't need to know that history if you don't care, but if you want to have a discussion about speech in Canada (which is still part of the Commonwealth and the topic of this thread), you better have an actual idea of the way those countries function rather than applying your standards to them. If you want to claim you have an idea whether the American reaction and discarding of old norms was actually a good idea nor not, you need to have an actual understanding about what the ideas you were discarding were actually for. Otherwise you're actually ignorant, and arrogant and that is a bad long term combination.
- Causality1 5y ago
  Yes, and the UK arrested a man for teaching a dog the Nazi salute. A dog. In fact they arrest over 2400 people a year for saying mean things on the internet. I find that deeply chilling.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  It's almost as if America was a radical attempt at a new kind of government, where its founders tried to avoid many of the pitfalls they had observed in Europe. The "United Kingdom" ("England" when we broke up with it) had (and still has) a method of governance that was flawed. That's why we didn't copy it. Any country that still has an intact monarchy, however ornamental, has no business lecturing others on the ideal forms of government.
int_19h 5y ago
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." This was written in 1944, intended as the preface of the "Animal Farm". It was not published until 1972.
medium_burrito 5y ago
For another pillar of this scary new age, look at the absolute willingness of big tech to censor anything that goes against the message of those in power.

Barrin92 5y ago

this is probably a good point to quote the article "The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country." Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries. To have a rational discussion about this when it comes to countries that don't happen to be the US, like in this case, it would probably be good to not act as if these laws were somehow conjured up out of nothing. The United Kingdom, probably having a claim to be one of the world's longest lasting liberal democracies, has laws concerning speech that in many cases go well beyond laws on continental Europe, so any discussion about speech in the Western (and even specifically Anglo) tradition probably should be had on that ground, rather than just vague pointing about slippery slopes.

StandardFuture 5y ago
> but have in fact existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries Yes, and that is backwards, uncivilized, and philosophically unsophisticated. It is quite literally beneath where we should be as a modern human civilization. We defeat people saying things we disagree with with reason and not with fines. There are many reasons why people fled many countries in the West to America in 1800s-1900s. One of them was to escape crony and corrupt authoritarianism in Europe and elsewhere at the time.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  So everyone who holds any restrictive position on speech, incompatible with your own is uncivilized and philosophically unsophisticated, as in the rest of the world? Civilizations thousands of years old are... uncivilized? See this is the supreme irony. You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith. Ironically enough, no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values as the American one. You can question everything, just not your own values on speech. It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points.
  - StandardFuture 5y ago
    > Ironically enough, no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values than the American one. This speech seems rather ... hateful. Shall we fine you? Officers! This man is screaming hateful speech in the public arena! Or maybe you disagree with that being hate speech? In an uncivilized society, if I have the power then it doesn't really matter. You still get fined or worse. > You can question everything, just not your own values on speech No, you can still question that in a free society if you so choose. But you may not necessarily be able to in an unfree one. > You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith. This is entirely disingenuous. Supporting a philosophical position is not without reason, as you well know, and is not automatically dogmatic. > It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points. Perhaps, you can better explain your dogmatic devotion to your belief that freedom of speech is not an important tenant of modern civility and sophistication?
    - adriand 5y ago
      It doesn’t seem hateful whatsoever, and everyone knows it, including you. So I don’t think you’ve made your point very effectively here. I think the well-known distinction between “freedom to” and “freedom from” is relevant here. In the wake of Nazism, Germany also banned hate speech. You could argue that Germany made it less free to be a Nazi. You could also argue that Germany made it easier to be free from Nazism. You may disagree with the choice they made but I don’t think many would reasonably argue that Germany is not a free society. > tenant of modern civility Minor quibble: it’s tenet, not tenant.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - alentist 5y ago
        > everyone knows it "Everyone knows" what? This? > no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values as the American one I can't imagine how sheltered from and ignorant of the rest of the world one must be to make such a ludicrous claim.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN. They make threads predictable, which is tedious, and usually turn them nasty as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it's unfortunately much worse than that. You've been breaking the site guidelines frequently and badly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27567601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27567601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428736 That is way over the line. I've banned this account.
perl4ever 5y ago
>Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries It's common sense that without a history in the West of regulating free speech, there wouldn't have been a first amendment in the US. You don't have to know what the regulations were. So you are not just generalizing Americans as ignorant of history, but also as unable to use basic logic.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  That is the most American response I could have read. It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.”
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.” Not at all. I claimed any person with common sense can assume that the US "founding fathers" were reacting to something. And I didn't claim that Americans are or aren't devoid of common sense. You can read it either way.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  It's common sense that many American institutions are a reactions to old European institutions, and you don't need to know that history if you don't care, but if you want to have a discussion about speech in Canada (which is still part of the Commonwealth and the topic of this thread), you better have an actual idea of the way those countries function rather than applying your standards to them. If you want to claim you have an idea whether the American reaction and discarding of old norms was actually a good idea nor not, you need to have an actual understanding about what the ideas you were discarding were actually for. Otherwise you're actually ignorant, and arrogant and that is a bad long term combination.
Causality1 5y ago
Yes, and the UK arrested a man for teaching a dog the Nazi salute. A dog. In fact they arrest over 2400 people a year for saying mean things on the internet. I find that deeply chilling.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ergot_vacation 5y ago
It's almost as if America was a radical attempt at a new kind of government, where its founders tried to avoid many of the pitfalls they had observed in Europe. The "United Kingdom" ("England" when we broke up with it) had (and still has) a method of governance that was flawed. That's why we didn't copy it. Any country that still has an intact monarchy, however ornamental, has no business lecturing others on the ideal forms of government.

int_19h 5y ago

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." This was written in 1944, intended as the preface of the "Animal Farm". It was not published until 1972.

medium_burrito 5y ago

For another pillar of this scary new age, look at the absolute willingness of big tech to censor anything that goes against the message of those in power.