6 ms·

War on free speech: Politicians and commentators label war critics “traitors”

67 points by curmudgeon22 5y ago

rurban 5y ago
> Anonymous says: > Today, some firefighters (those most-trained to deal with fires) refused to enter a burning building because they didn’t want to anger the fire and escalate the situation.
rosndo 5y ago
Tulsi Gabbard certainly does not deserve the benefit of the doubt after her trip with a Syrian Social Nationalist party delegation to meet Assad in Syria.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  Is Syria at war with the U.S.A.? Who's the treason against here?
  - csee 5y ago
    Assad (backed by Putin who is barrel bombing civilians in Syria) is in a war against US backed forces, so yes, via proxy.
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      So? Who decided for you that Syria is your enemy?
      - csee 5y ago
        You asked if Syria was at war with the US and I responded that they are at war by proxy. Also, I don't like the framing of "Syria is the enemy". Assad's regime is the enemy of the US-backed group who are also Syrians.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - rosndo 5y ago
    It demonstrates a long-term alignment with Russian foreign policy interests. I’m not saying that her hanging out with Assad is treasonous in itself, although it certainly says a lot about her character. Her choosing to hang out with Assad certainly adds color to her later statements, which can certainly be reasonably described as treasonous.
wwweston 5y ago
Turley fails to make crucial distinctions of degree here. It's one thing for people to criticize your speech and problems with it, which is the most common case. And that's just known as more speech. It's another for people to withdraw private associations or memberships, but unless you're gonna say that people can't stop talking to their racist uncle if they don't like it or that a church can't excommunicate vocal atheists, well, you believe that's fine too. Things start to get important when we're talking about questions of economic livelihood. But then again, if you believe in boycotts or any form of voting with your dollars, then drawing a straightforward line against retaliation here is hard. The civil line that's most important is whether speech is criminalized. Whether someone can end up paying legal penalties merely for something they've said. Even THAT line is sometimes walked up to with slander/libel (though those are civil not criminal as far as I know) or incitement. But as far as I can tell, we're not particularly closer to it in the last month. There's just more pointing out that people like Gabbard and Cawthorne and a whole lot of others are on the wrong side. Turley's job is supposed to be making crucial distinctions of degree. Are most lawyers just really this bad at it, or is he avoiding making distinctions that people examining the issue in good faith would make for more subtle rhetorical purposes?
- gruez 5y ago
  >It's another for people to withdraw private associations or memberships, but unless you're gonna say that people can't stop talking to their racist uncle if they don't like it or that a church can't excommunicate vocal atheists, well, you believe that's fine too. The article mentions people getting excluded from events due to their perceived associations with communism/soviet union. What's your position on that? Do you find McCarthyism-minus-government-intervention acceptable? The wikipedia article for McCarthyism mentions "extra-judiciary procedures, such as informal blacklists by employers and public institutions"[1]. >Turley's job is supposed to be making crucial distinctions of degree. Are most lawyers just really this bad at it, or is he avoiding making distinctions that people examining the issue in good faith would make for more subtle rhetorical purposes? For someone accusing Turley of failing to make "crucial distinctions of degree", it's ironic that you also fail to recognize that the concept of "free speech" extends far beyond what's explicitly guaranteed by the first amendment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Blacklists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Blacklists
IceMetalPunk 5y ago
weeblewobble 5y ago
Can someone explain to me why writing an article condemning people for using a word to describe other people is not also part of the war on free speech? This whole debate has a real snake-eating-its-tail aspect to it that I find completely exhausting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hcta 5y ago
  it does seem legitimate to ask whether mere speech may be more potentially harmful in modern times, when any person's speech can have much greater reach than ever before and with much shorter latency. Maybe our norms do need to be adjusted for this. But my standard answer would be that verbally "condemning" someone doesn't create any legal consequences for their speech or concretely materially harm them, so it doesn't reduce their freedom of speech.
8bitsrule 5y ago
"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." ⇐ Jean-Jacques Rousseau "The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralising effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which have never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect, though at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their power." ⇐ John Stuart Mill
mark_l_watson 5y ago
This article is like a breath of fresh air for me. Silencing critics is about as anti-American values as it gets, in my opinion. It can be rough supporting free speech by those who we might disagree with, but life is not always easy. I am especially disappointed by Mitt Romney - I thought that he was a decent guy but his recent comments are untrue and misleading. A little off topic: I would love to see an accurate list of how much money each Congress person gets from defense industry lobbyists and I would like to also see how defense lobbying affects the news media. After spending half a working lifetime in the defense industry, I can both support my country while at the same time think clearly about the financial motivations for war and conflict.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  Silencing critics is to free speech what not buying bad products is to free markets. Some people are right. Some are wrong. Some are in-between. Some are wrong, but in an interesting way. Some believe the marketplace of ideas needs a few more swastikas... Unless you have unlimited bandwidth (in which case you should have a random algorithm talk to you), everyone wants more or the speech they like (including interesting-wrong), and less of the stupid speech.
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  I'm hoping you're just as strongly against those "anit-CRT" bills being passed saying that American's history with slavery can't be taught in schools and the rest.
  - moltke 5y ago
    You know full well that's not what people are upset about CRT for. We're told from every direction (pastors, educators, advertisments, people like you) that White people are the worst thing to happen to the earth and they're the reason for most of the problems in the US. It's insane, it's unacceptable, and it has to stop.
    - ailef 5y ago
      "The worst thing to happen to the earth" is a "just" a bit over the top. But why wouldn't white people be "the reason for most of the problems in the US". It seems tautologically true, since majority of population in the US is white.
juanani 5y ago
KarlKemp 5y ago
Republicans complaining that the word treason is sometimes used in a sense different from the one in the constitution is rich... It sorta went mainstream with their last guy. And, arguably, this instance is far closer to the tradition meaning of the word than, say, Barack Obama when he was labeled as such: treason is supporting a foreign enemy in war. Gabbard et al clearly have connections to and sympathy for Putin and people close to him. There's quite a bit of money changing hands, as well. The only formal element missing is that the US is not officially at war with Russia.
- yucky 5y ago
  >The only formal element missing is that the US is not officially at war with Russia. Yes and my dog would be a bird, if he wasn't a dog. Words have meanings. Criticizing the US war machine doesn't make one a traitor. Good to see the Neocons have found themselves a new home though..
  - rosndo 5y ago
    > Criticizing the US war machine doesn't make one a traitor. Criticizing the US war machine on behalf of a foreign government might. Gabbard has a very sketchy track record, she traveled to Syria to meet with Assad as a part of a SSNP delegation. What is SSNP you might wonder? It’s sort of a Syrian Nazi party (no, really. Their logo is a Swastika!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Part...
    - yucky 5y ago
      >Criticizing the US war machine on behalf of a foreign government might. It wouldn't, but that is a significant accusation you're making. Do you have actual proof, or is this just Red Scare 2.0?
      - rosndo 5y ago
        It’s not an accusation, I’m just pointing out that there is in fact a very real scenario where making such statements would be treasonous. But again, Gabbard has a history of incredibly sketchy behaviour. I don’t think any criticism of her can be compared with the red scare. She traveled to Syria to meet with the head of a regime the US is actively waging a proxy war against. But it doesn’t end there, it’s the people she went there with. Had she traveled with any other group, you might be able to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she is not a traitor, but she hangs out with Assad and the middle-eastern Nazi party. I suspect treason might be more defensible. Perhaps you could call hanging out with Assad treasonous, the US has been waging an indirect war against him for years.
mythrwy 5y ago
Ya, well, as a war critic, I label them as traitors. Nothing will take the West down harder then wastefully spending money it doesn't have and making enemies around the world by culvert and overt military actions. And nothing is less Democratic then powerful agencies that aren't properly overseen by elected representation.
dragonwriter 5y ago
There is something weird going on with the language where apologists for the aggressor who is imposing the war and without whose continued active action there would be no war are being described as “war critics”; it's kind of like defenders of conservative gender stereotypes being described as “gender critical”.
- gruez 5y ago
  Who are these "war critics" you speak of? I presume you're talking about the people who oppose russia's invasion, but that seems like normal usage to me. For instance, if we were in 2003 and someone mentioned "war critic", I would interpret that as someone who was against the US invasion of Iraq, not someone who was supporting the war.
  - lupire 5y ago
    > Who are these "war critics" you speak of? >> apologists for the aggressor who is imposing the war > I presume you're talking about the people who oppose russia's invasion, No, the opposite.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Who are these "war critics" you speak of? I presume you're talking about the people who oppose russia's invasion No, the article here is about “war critics” who oppose the opposition to the invasion. That’s why I said it is a weird use of language.
    - gruez 5y ago
      That also seems easy to reconcile. The "war" in that context could mean the current ongoing conflict between russia and ukraine (ie, "you oppose the russian invasion"), or US military intervention in the russian-ukranian war, which would formally put US at "war" with russia.
- soxxer 5y ago
Imnimo 5y ago
Calling people traitors is free speech. If you don't like it, grow a pair.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  It absolutely is not protected free speech to spread lies about someone. Unless a person is actually a traitor, we should punish anyone that throws around that deleterious label, otherwise we allow such people to get away with being lying bullies.
  - Imnimo 5y ago
    https://www.talkovlaw.com/defamation-defense-rhetorical-hyperbole-first-amendment/ https://www.talkovlaw.com/defamation-defense-rhetorical-hype... Perhaps you'd like to hold everyone who has ever called a politician a thief or a crook liable for defamation, unless that politician has actually been convicted of such a crime?
t0bia_s 5y ago
What makes our free democracy more valuable if we implement practices of enemy that we are fight against? Nobody answer my question yet if I ask this about topic of censorship. In my country DNS provider blocked 12 so called disinformation websites after invasion. No law, no definition of disinformation etc. Gonverment actually accept it. Now ministry of health create list of sites that offer "dangerous medical products". When we start to block "dangerous thinking"?
Viliam1234 5y ago
> This movement began by targeting Russian artists and athletes who were told that they will be cancelled or blacklisted if they do not expressly denounce the Russian invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin. Do people realize they are giving these artists and athletes a choice between cancellation and prison? If that is what you indeed want to do, it would be more fair to simply cancel them, without pretending that you generously gave them a choice which they refused. Alternatively, how about you make an anti-war statement before their performance? Then you deliver the message, without putting their lives in danger.

67 points by curmudgeon22 5y ago

> Anonymous says: > Today, some firefighters (those most-trained to deal with fires) refused to enter a burning building because they didn’t want to anger the fire and escalate the situation.

rosndo 5y ago

Tulsi Gabbard certainly does not deserve the benefit of the doubt after her trip with a Syrian Social Nationalist party delegation to meet Assad in Syria.

SamReidHughes 5y ago
Is Syria at war with the U.S.A.? Who's the treason against here?
- csee 5y ago
  Assad (backed by Putin who is barrel bombing civilians in Syria) is in a war against US backed forces, so yes, via proxy.
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    So? Who decided for you that Syria is your enemy?
    - csee 5y ago
      You asked if Syria was at war with the US and I responded that they are at war by proxy. Also, I don't like the framing of "Syria is the enemy". Assad's regime is the enemy of the US-backed group who are also Syrians.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- rosndo 5y ago
  It demonstrates a long-term alignment with Russian foreign policy interests. I’m not saying that her hanging out with Assad is treasonous in itself, although it certainly says a lot about her character. Her choosing to hang out with Assad certainly adds color to her later statements, which can certainly be reasonably described as treasonous.

wwweston 5y ago

Turley fails to make crucial distinctions of degree here. It's one thing for people to criticize your speech and problems with it, which is the most common case. And that's just known as more speech. It's another for people to withdraw private associations or memberships, but unless you're gonna say that people can't stop talking to their racist uncle if they don't like it or that a church can't excommunicate vocal atheists, well, you believe that's fine too. Things start to get important when we're talking about questions of economic livelihood. But then again, if you believe in boycotts or any form of voting with your dollars, then drawing a straightforward line against retaliation here is hard. The civil line that's most important is whether speech is criminalized. Whether someone can end up paying legal penalties merely for something they've said. Even THAT line is sometimes walked up to with slander/libel (though those are civil not criminal as far as I know) or incitement. But as far as I can tell, we're not particularly closer to it in the last month. There's just more pointing out that people like Gabbard and Cawthorne and a whole lot of others are on the wrong side. Turley's job is supposed to be making crucial distinctions of degree. Are most lawyers just really this bad at it, or is he avoiding making distinctions that people examining the issue in good faith would make for more subtle rhetorical purposes?

gruez 5y ago
>It's another for people to withdraw private associations or memberships, but unless you're gonna say that people can't stop talking to their racist uncle if they don't like it or that a church can't excommunicate vocal atheists, well, you believe that's fine too. The article mentions people getting excluded from events due to their perceived associations with communism/soviet union. What's your position on that? Do you find McCarthyism-minus-government-intervention acceptable? The wikipedia article for McCarthyism mentions "extra-judiciary procedures, such as informal blacklists by employers and public institutions"[1]. >Turley's job is supposed to be making crucial distinctions of degree. Are most lawyers just really this bad at it, or is he avoiding making distinctions that people examining the issue in good faith would make for more subtle rhetorical purposes? For someone accusing Turley of failing to make "crucial distinctions of degree", it's ironic that you also fail to recognize that the concept of "free speech" extends far beyond what's explicitly guaranteed by the first amendment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Blacklists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Blacklists

IceMetalPunk 5y ago

weeblewobble 5y ago

Can someone explain to me why writing an article condemning people for using a word to describe other people is not also part of the war on free speech? This whole debate has a real snake-eating-its-tail aspect to it that I find completely exhausting.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hcta 5y ago
it does seem legitimate to ask whether mere speech may be more potentially harmful in modern times, when any person's speech can have much greater reach than ever before and with much shorter latency. Maybe our norms do need to be adjusted for this. But my standard answer would be that verbally "condemning" someone doesn't create any legal consequences for their speech or concretely materially harm them, so it doesn't reduce their freedom of speech.

8bitsrule 5y ago

"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." ⇐ Jean-Jacques Rousseau "The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralising effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which have never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect, though at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their power." ⇐ John Stuart Mill

mark_l_watson 5y ago

This article is like a breath of fresh air for me. Silencing critics is about as anti-American values as it gets, in my opinion. It can be rough supporting free speech by those who we might disagree with, but life is not always easy. I am especially disappointed by Mitt Romney - I thought that he was a decent guy but his recent comments are untrue and misleading. A little off topic: I would love to see an accurate list of how much money each Congress person gets from defense industry lobbyists and I would like to also see how defense lobbying affects the news media. After spending half a working lifetime in the defense industry, I can both support my country while at the same time think clearly about the financial motivations for war and conflict.

KarlKemp 5y ago
Silencing critics is to free speech what not buying bad products is to free markets. Some people are right. Some are wrong. Some are in-between. Some are wrong, but in an interesting way. Some believe the marketplace of ideas needs a few more swastikas... Unless you have unlimited bandwidth (in which case you should have a random algorithm talk to you), everyone wants more or the speech they like (including interesting-wrong), and less of the stupid speech.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
I'm hoping you're just as strongly against those "anit-CRT" bills being passed saying that American's history with slavery can't be taught in schools and the rest.
- moltke 5y ago
  You know full well that's not what people are upset about CRT for. We're told from every direction (pastors, educators, advertisments, people like you) that White people are the worst thing to happen to the earth and they're the reason for most of the problems in the US. It's insane, it's unacceptable, and it has to stop.
  - ailef 5y ago
    "The worst thing to happen to the earth" is a "just" a bit over the top. But why wouldn't white people be "the reason for most of the problems in the US". It seems tautologically true, since majority of population in the US is white.

juanani 5y ago

KarlKemp 5y ago

Republicans complaining that the word treason is sometimes used in a sense different from the one in the constitution is rich... It sorta went mainstream with their last guy. And, arguably, this instance is far closer to the tradition meaning of the word than, say, Barack Obama when he was labeled as such: treason is supporting a foreign enemy in war. Gabbard et al clearly have connections to and sympathy for Putin and people close to him. There's quite a bit of money changing hands, as well. The only formal element missing is that the US is not officially at war with Russia.

yucky 5y ago
>The only formal element missing is that the US is not officially at war with Russia. Yes and my dog would be a bird, if he wasn't a dog. Words have meanings. Criticizing the US war machine doesn't make one a traitor. Good to see the Neocons have found themselves a new home though..
- rosndo 5y ago
  > Criticizing the US war machine doesn't make one a traitor. Criticizing the US war machine on behalf of a foreign government might. Gabbard has a very sketchy track record, she traveled to Syria to meet with Assad as a part of a SSNP delegation. What is SSNP you might wonder? It’s sort of a Syrian Nazi party (no, really. Their logo is a Swastika!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Part...
  - yucky 5y ago
    >Criticizing the US war machine on behalf of a foreign government might. It wouldn't, but that is a significant accusation you're making. Do you have actual proof, or is this just Red Scare 2.0?
    - rosndo 5y ago
      It’s not an accusation, I’m just pointing out that there is in fact a very real scenario where making such statements would be treasonous. But again, Gabbard has a history of incredibly sketchy behaviour. I don’t think any criticism of her can be compared with the red scare. She traveled to Syria to meet with the head of a regime the US is actively waging a proxy war against. But it doesn’t end there, it’s the people she went there with. Had she traveled with any other group, you might be able to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she is not a traitor, but she hangs out with Assad and the middle-eastern Nazi party. I suspect treason might be more defensible. Perhaps you could call hanging out with Assad treasonous, the US has been waging an indirect war against him for years.

mythrwy 5y ago

Ya, well, as a war critic, I label them as traitors. Nothing will take the West down harder then wastefully spending money it doesn't have and making enemies around the world by culvert and overt military actions. And nothing is less Democratic then powerful agencies that aren't properly overseen by elected representation.

dragonwriter 5y ago

There is something weird going on with the language where apologists for the aggressor who is imposing the war and without whose continued active action there would be no war are being described as “war critics”; it's kind of like defenders of conservative gender stereotypes being described as “gender critical”.

gruez 5y ago
Who are these "war critics" you speak of? I presume you're talking about the people who oppose russia's invasion, but that seems like normal usage to me. For instance, if we were in 2003 and someone mentioned "war critic", I would interpret that as someone who was against the US invasion of Iraq, not someone who was supporting the war.
- lupire 5y ago
  > Who are these "war critics" you speak of? >> apologists for the aggressor who is imposing the war > I presume you're talking about the people who oppose russia's invasion, No, the opposite.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Who are these "war critics" you speak of? I presume you're talking about the people who oppose russia's invasion No, the article here is about “war critics” who oppose the opposition to the invasion. That’s why I said it is a weird use of language.
  - gruez 5y ago
    That also seems easy to reconcile. The "war" in that context could mean the current ongoing conflict between russia and ukraine (ie, "you oppose the russian invasion"), or US military intervention in the russian-ukranian war, which would formally put US at "war" with russia.
soxxer 5y ago

Imnimo 5y ago

Calling people traitors is free speech. If you don't like it, grow a pair.

voakbasda 5y ago
It absolutely is not protected free speech to spread lies about someone. Unless a person is actually a traitor, we should punish anyone that throws around that deleterious label, otherwise we allow such people to get away with being lying bullies.
- Imnimo 5y ago
  https://www.talkovlaw.com/defamation-defense-rhetorical-hyperbole-first-amendment/ https://www.talkovlaw.com/defamation-defense-rhetorical-hype... Perhaps you'd like to hold everyone who has ever called a politician a thief or a crook liable for defamation, unless that politician has actually been convicted of such a crime?

t0bia_s 5y ago

What makes our free democracy more valuable if we implement practices of enemy that we are fight against? Nobody answer my question yet if I ask this about topic of censorship. In my country DNS provider blocked 12 so called disinformation websites after invasion. No law, no definition of disinformation etc. Gonverment actually accept it. Now ministry of health create list of sites that offer "dangerous medical products". When we start to block "dangerous thinking"?

Viliam1234 5y ago

> This movement began by targeting Russian artists and athletes who were told that they will be cancelled or blacklisted if they do not expressly denounce the Russian invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin. Do people realize they are giving these artists and athletes a choice between cancellation and prison? If that is what you indeed want to do, it would be more fair to simply cancel them, without pretending that you generously gave them a choice which they refused. Alternatively, how about you make an anti-war statement before their performance? Then you deliver the message, without putting their lives in danger.