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I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted,

I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? What people are finally noticing now is that non-government entities can also have negative impacts on free speech. They're not noticing because it just started -- e.g. lots of folks lost their jobs for vocally opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000's -- but because they're on the receiving end for once. This could be a good thing in the end, by leading us to a more complete model of civil discourse, but it's going to be painful for a while before that even has a chance to happen.

infiniteL0Op 5y ago
Ask Thai citizens if they can imagine that. Or Russians. In democracies, society has moved a bit into a direction where many harmless things said will trigger an upset in some very uptight people. It's enforced socially rather than by the government. Back when you could not say things openly against governments, at least you could speak your mind on anything else. Today, you can say whatever you want against the government, they are so far detached they don't care. Free speech is a stupid political term, it has never truly existed an never will.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  Freedom of speech is a principle that transcends political policies. In theory, it is a clear and unambiguous concept; in practice, governments ruin it with nearly arbitrary rules that run counter to that fundamental principle.
  - incompatible 5y ago
    There are plenty of exceptions to freedom of speech in countries I'm familiar with. Things like advocacy of terrorism, hate speech, threats, disturbing the peace, obscenity in public, blasphemy, pornography of certain kinds, providing financial advice without a license, leaking secrets, copyright. Edit: fraud, incitement. Who knows how many others?
adolph 5y ago
> Can you even imagine that today? No need to imagine, the law never left. https://www.lawfareblog.com/seditious-conspiracy-real-domestic-terrorism-statute https://www.lawfareblog.com/seditious-conspiracy-real-domest... https://www.google.com/search?q=sedition+usa&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=sedition+usa&tbm=nws
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Notably, handing out pamphlets arguing against a war isn't especially likely to qualify for this law.
ratww 5y ago
> Can you even imagine that today? Not in the countries I guess we both live, but in some authoritarian places, definitely, unfortunately. Your point still fully stands though!
- amalcon 5y ago
  This is a great point, and I should've made it clear that I was only referring to democratic countries that profess to value free speech.
  - etherael 5y ago
    I can easily imagine such laws in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They already exist in Australia. The consensual mass hallucination regarding those places is that they are democratic countries that profess to value free speech. But of course, it is purely a hallucination.
    - incompatible 5y ago
      Is there a law in Australia the forbids criticizing the government? I haven't noticed any shortage of criticism lately.
      - etherael 5y ago
        incompatible 5y ago
        Arrested for "incitement", admittedly a vague concept that the government can do a lot with, like "disturbing the peace". But you find that kind of thing in any country, Australia is nothing special.
        etherael 5y ago
        It's worse than most places that aren't China tier if you simply observe what happened there over the past two years, but it's true that basically the entire world with very few exceptions to lesser or greater extent really draped themselves in shame over the same period. Australia was just by far the worst of a bad bunch. https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2021/11/09/dan-andrews-takes-australia-further-into-a-fascist-hole/ https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2021/11/09/dan-andrews...
sitkack 5y ago
https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/phil_donahue_on_his_2003_firing https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/phil_donahue_on_his_2...
otterley 5y ago
I think most jurists would agree that the Sedition Act is dead for all practical purposes. Most modern First Amendment jurisprudence only started being written after the Vietnam War, commencing with Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 44 (1969), and the Sedition Act would be unlikely to survive scrutiny today.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  The reality though is, SCOTUS can decide to trash precedent at-will once a case is in front of them. If you put political hacks into the SCOTUS and they decide the Sedition Act is legal then its suddenly back on the table. This is the danger of an overly political SCOTUS.
temp8964 5y ago
> lots of folks lost their jobs for vocally opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000's I am not aware of this history. Is there any data or document? What kind of jobs, private? governmental? academic?
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Everyone crying about people being cancelled sure didn't have a lot of words to defend the Dixie Chicks when they were against the Iraq war.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    I, too, agree that progressives are moral busybodies like Bush-era evangelicals.
    - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      Check out any state abortion laws lately? How about something called "teaching actual history?" And the best one "we didn't want to teach kids about gender differences, so now teachers are going to ignore gender entirely" in Florida. But please, do go on about the "Bush-era evangelicals." I'm sure they've totally calmed down since then.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        You're confusing opposition to the left's overreach with evangelical resurgence. > Check out any state abortion laws lately? This mistakenly assumes that opposition to abortion is necessarily evangelical in nature. By requiring the availability of elective second trimester abortions, Roe mandates an abortion regime that extends significantly beyond what most people can stomach. Most Americans think elective abortions should be prohibited after the first trimester: https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abortion-religion-health-2c569aa7934233af8e00bef4520a8fa8 https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abort.... But highly secular countries like France, Denmark, and Finland also restrict abortions after the first trimester. Most of the developed world draws the line for elective abortions at "when the fetus has a face" and not viability like Roe does. So you will continue to see things like Mississippi's abortion law (which imposes a 15-week ban with exceptions for health of the mother and baby) regardless of the strength of the evangelical movement. > How about something called "teaching actual history?" And the best one "we didn't want to teach kids about gender differences, so now teachers are going to ignore gender entirely" in Florida. It's not only or even mostly evangelicals that are worked up about the effort to normalize folks like Robin Di Angelo and Ibram Kendi in schools, or to teach young children about sexuality. On these issues, the left thinks it’s relitigating issues it previously won, but in reality they’re taking up again issues the far left lost in the 1970s: racial preferences, racial separatism, breaking down social notions of gender, etc.
tomcam 5y ago
> I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? Only in banana republics like the USA. The patriot act went quite far in that direction
deanCommie 5y ago
I think the comparison you drew is interesting. Restrictions to free speech used to be in place to protect the Most Powerful - the Kings (still do - in places where there are kings), The Party, even The Government (in places where democracy is but a sham) In Western democratic nations, new restrictions to free speech are being considered to protect the Most Marginalized - the most weakest, most discriminated against, lowest represented members of society. It is ludicrous to look at this movement and compare them like-for-like. There is no backsliding here, there is no slippery slope here. There is a very distinct difference between who is protected and who is exploited.
- FerociousTimes 5y ago
  I still sense you advocating for coercive equity policies in your comment; i.e. redistribution of power from the slightly more fortunate to the slightly less fortunate but on a whim and flimsy excuses and without due process, because let's pretend for a moment that people at the very top; the one percenters would be affected by this cancel culture nonsense, it's always middle class people and every once in a while, a member of the upper middle class get devoured by the SJW monster and that's it. This whole crusade is just a charade.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    You sense incorrectly. I have no qualm with democratic institutions of power. (For some reason I have to explain to people on HN that a username with 'commie' in it does not mean I'm a communist) As long as they're actually democratic. My qualm is with oligarchies and plutocracies. A capitalist system should allow for the wealthy and it is inevitable that wealth can be used to acquire power. But political systems need to be firewalled from this MUCH more than they are in society today. The thread is about free speech, and my comment was solely focused on speech. I'm not a free speech absolutist in way that you or Paul Graham might be, because I don't believe words and speech is like physical violence. A bullet is egalitarian. It doesn't care who fires the gun or who it's hitting, it will still do the same damage whether it's fired by a billionaire at a homeless person, or the other way around. Words are not. Words need a medium. The medium's control is asymmetrical. But regardless of what we think about asymmetrical implications of free speech, ultimately my point was that those who's free speech we are talking about protecting shifted 180 over the last century. Pretending that is irrelevant is naive. Is there a difference between a Russian Soldier killing a Ukrainian Soldier outside of Mariupol this week, and a Ukrainian soldier killing a Russian one? Of course there is. And so there is a difference between restricting the speech of a person to criticize the government, vs restricting the speech of a government to criticize a person. P.S. Using "SJW" as a pejorative falls in the same category as using "woke" in that way. Mike Godwin himself (of Godwin's law) has the right take on it: https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163 https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163
rawTruthHurts 5y ago
> Can you even imagine that today? Try to give in UK an opinion regarding the State of Israel not matching the Pro-Israel lobyy diktat and you will find yourself in trouble. Ask Jackie Walker.

infiniteL0Op 5y ago

Ask Thai citizens if they can imagine that. Or Russians. In democracies, society has moved a bit into a direction where many harmless things said will trigger an upset in some very uptight people. It's enforced socially rather than by the government. Back when you could not say things openly against governments, at least you could speak your mind on anything else. Today, you can say whatever you want against the government, they are so far detached they don't care. Free speech is a stupid political term, it has never truly existed an never will.

voakbasda 5y ago
Freedom of speech is a principle that transcends political policies. In theory, it is a clear and unambiguous concept; in practice, governments ruin it with nearly arbitrary rules that run counter to that fundamental principle.
- incompatible 5y ago
  There are plenty of exceptions to freedom of speech in countries I'm familiar with. Things like advocacy of terrorism, hate speech, threats, disturbing the peace, obscenity in public, blasphemy, pornography of certain kinds, providing financial advice without a license, leaking secrets, copyright. Edit: fraud, incitement. Who knows how many others?

adolph 5y ago

> Can you even imagine that today? No need to imagine, the law never left. https://www.lawfareblog.com/seditious-conspiracy-real-domestic-terrorism-statute https://www.lawfareblog.com/seditious-conspiracy-real-domest... https://www.google.com/search?q=sedition+usa&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=sedition+usa&tbm=nws

UncleMeat 5y ago
Notably, handing out pamphlets arguing against a war isn't especially likely to qualify for this law.

ratww 5y ago

> Can you even imagine that today? Not in the countries I guess we both live, but in some authoritarian places, definitely, unfortunately. Your point still fully stands though!

amalcon 5y ago
This is a great point, and I should've made it clear that I was only referring to democratic countries that profess to value free speech.
- etherael 5y ago
  I can easily imagine such laws in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They already exist in Australia. The consensual mass hallucination regarding those places is that they are democratic countries that profess to value free speech. But of course, it is purely a hallucination.
  - incompatible 5y ago
    Is there a law in Australia the forbids criticizing the government? I haven't noticed any shortage of criticism lately.
    - etherael 5y ago
      - incompatible 5y ago
        Arrested for "incitement", admittedly a vague concept that the government can do a lot with, like "disturbing the peace". But you find that kind of thing in any country, Australia is nothing special.
        etherael 5y ago
        It's worse than most places that aren't China tier if you simply observe what happened there over the past two years, but it's true that basically the entire world with very few exceptions to lesser or greater extent really draped themselves in shame over the same period. Australia was just by far the worst of a bad bunch. https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2021/11/09/dan-andrews-takes-australia-further-into-a-fascist-hole/ https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2021/11/09/dan-andrews...

sitkack 5y ago

https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/phil_donahue_on_his_2003_firing https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/21/phil_donahue_on_his_2...

otterley 5y ago

I think most jurists would agree that the Sedition Act is dead for all practical purposes. Most modern First Amendment jurisprudence only started being written after the Vietnam War, commencing with Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 44 (1969), and the Sedition Act would be unlikely to survive scrutiny today.

voidfunc 5y ago
The reality though is, SCOTUS can decide to trash precedent at-will once a case is in front of them. If you put political hacks into the SCOTUS and they decide the Sedition Act is legal then its suddenly back on the table. This is the danger of an overly political SCOTUS.

temp8964 5y ago

> lots of folks lost their jobs for vocally opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000's I am not aware of this history. Is there any data or document? What kind of jobs, private? governmental? academic?

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Everyone crying about people being cancelled sure didn't have a lot of words to defend the Dixie Chicks when they were against the Iraq war.
- rayiner 5y ago
  I, too, agree that progressives are moral busybodies like Bush-era evangelicals.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Check out any state abortion laws lately? How about something called "teaching actual history?" And the best one "we didn't want to teach kids about gender differences, so now teachers are going to ignore gender entirely" in Florida. But please, do go on about the "Bush-era evangelicals." I'm sure they've totally calmed down since then.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      You're confusing opposition to the left's overreach with evangelical resurgence. > Check out any state abortion laws lately? This mistakenly assumes that opposition to abortion is necessarily evangelical in nature. By requiring the availability of elective second trimester abortions, Roe mandates an abortion regime that extends significantly beyond what most people can stomach. Most Americans think elective abortions should be prohibited after the first trimester: https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abortion-religion-health-2c569aa7934233af8e00bef4520a8fa8 https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abort.... But highly secular countries like France, Denmark, and Finland also restrict abortions after the first trimester. Most of the developed world draws the line for elective abortions at "when the fetus has a face" and not viability like Roe does. So you will continue to see things like Mississippi's abortion law (which imposes a 15-week ban with exceptions for health of the mother and baby) regardless of the strength of the evangelical movement. > How about something called "teaching actual history?" And the best one "we didn't want to teach kids about gender differences, so now teachers are going to ignore gender entirely" in Florida. It's not only or even mostly evangelicals that are worked up about the effort to normalize folks like Robin Di Angelo and Ibram Kendi in schools, or to teach young children about sexuality. On these issues, the left thinks it’s relitigating issues it previously won, but in reality they’re taking up again issues the far left lost in the 1970s: racial preferences, racial separatism, breaking down social notions of gender, etc.

tomcam 5y ago

> I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? Only in banana republics like the USA. The patriot act went quite far in that direction

deanCommie 5y ago

I think the comparison you drew is interesting. Restrictions to free speech used to be in place to protect the Most Powerful - the Kings (still do - in places where there are kings), The Party, even The Government (in places where democracy is but a sham) In Western democratic nations, new restrictions to free speech are being considered to protect the Most Marginalized - the most weakest, most discriminated against, lowest represented members of society. It is ludicrous to look at this movement and compare them like-for-like. There is no backsliding here, there is no slippery slope here. There is a very distinct difference between who is protected and who is exploited.

FerociousTimes 5y ago
I still sense you advocating for coercive equity policies in your comment; i.e. redistribution of power from the slightly more fortunate to the slightly less fortunate but on a whim and flimsy excuses and without due process, because let's pretend for a moment that people at the very top; the one percenters would be affected by this cancel culture nonsense, it's always middle class people and every once in a while, a member of the upper middle class get devoured by the SJW monster and that's it. This whole crusade is just a charade.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  You sense incorrectly. I have no qualm with democratic institutions of power. (For some reason I have to explain to people on HN that a username with 'commie' in it does not mean I'm a communist) As long as they're actually democratic. My qualm is with oligarchies and plutocracies. A capitalist system should allow for the wealthy and it is inevitable that wealth can be used to acquire power. But political systems need to be firewalled from this MUCH more than they are in society today. The thread is about free speech, and my comment was solely focused on speech. I'm not a free speech absolutist in way that you or Paul Graham might be, because I don't believe words and speech is like physical violence. A bullet is egalitarian. It doesn't care who fires the gun or who it's hitting, it will still do the same damage whether it's fired by a billionaire at a homeless person, or the other way around. Words are not. Words need a medium. The medium's control is asymmetrical. But regardless of what we think about asymmetrical implications of free speech, ultimately my point was that those who's free speech we are talking about protecting shifted 180 over the last century. Pretending that is irrelevant is naive. Is there a difference between a Russian Soldier killing a Ukrainian Soldier outside of Mariupol this week, and a Ukrainian soldier killing a Russian one? Of course there is. And so there is a difference between restricting the speech of a person to criticize the government, vs restricting the speech of a government to criticize a person. P.S. Using "SJW" as a pejorative falls in the same category as using "woke" in that way. Mike Godwin himself (of Godwin's law) has the right take on it: https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163 https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163

rawTruthHurts 5y ago

> Can you even imagine that today? Try to give in UK an opinion regarding the State of Israel not matching the Pro-Israel lobyy diktat and you will find yourself in trouble. Ask Jackie Walker.