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I really dislike this idea of it being a 'central American' value simply because that hasn't been the case since the founding of America. There have always been

I really dislike this idea of it being a 'central American' value simply because that hasn't been the case since the founding of America. There have always been people who have full access to free speech and the rest of people have 'Free Speech*'. Hundreds of years of minorities being punished for saying the wrong thing or being in the wrong place while the strong and wealthy get away with whatever they want. Even now that's the case where if you're wealthy you have more speech than others. You can call people all sorts of vile things and sic your fanbase on them, you can mouth off to police and if you want to you can sue people into the ground. The rest of us can get thrown in jail for vaguely insulting a man in blue's honor. How quickly people forget that our political apparatus had a woman harassed and jailed for laughing at Jeff Sessons.

gojomo 4y ago
Free speech has absolutely been a central value, since the time of founding, as evidenced by its prominent spot in the 'Bill of Rights'. It hasn't always been fully respected, but for the most part the trends have been good. Only in a few narrow places & times might someone be "thrown in jail for vaguely insulting a man in blue's honor", and those are typically undone when the full process runs. The anecdote you share, with the important details filed-off, is that a woman was prosecuted not for merely "laughing at Jeff Sessions" but the more specific charge of disruptive behavior during a government hearing. Opinions differ as to whether he behavior rose to the level of prosecutable disruption, but an actual criminal jury of 12 citizens was somehow convinced to unanimously rule her behavior merited conviction. But then when the full legal process ran, an appelate judge called the conviction 'absurd', throwing out the jury's conviction. Ultimately, that demonstrates that like in other countries, officials in the US can misuse their powers-in-the-moment to attempt some amount of speech punishment, sure. But further that in the US, you can appeal to 'free speech' as a defense, and thus escape punishment for things that might keep you punished in the UK & other somewhat-liberal democracies with lesser speech protections.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  The entire legal system is designed to punish people from the moment of arrest through conviction. Just because a rational judge realized that the case was absurd does not make the hoops she had to go through any less arduous. For example officer writing you a bogus speeding ticket that you can successfully challenge in court still requires time and effort to challenge, moreso than the officer did issuing it and that's very frequently done to poorer individuals. Which again, you ignore that we had (and in many places still have) an amount of people which simply did not have the same free speech rights that you say America was founded upon.
  - gojomo 4y ago
    > The entire legal system is designed to punish people from the moment of arrest through conviction. This is indeed true, and a problem, and if you have ideas for how it can be improved, I'd be all ears. But, I've not found any country/region/system that doesn't have some level of this problem. The US's system, of required public formalities for certain charges to proceed, & certain guarantees of time limits, & avenues for release/acquittal, is pretty strong compared to anywhere else. (In the Netherlands, a software developer has been in custody for a couple months now without any specific charges/case being revealed to him or the public.) And, it's kind of inherent to any system for there to be some margins-of-abusive-discretion that are hard to eliminate, and time-limited steps-in-a-judicial-process where unavoidable "punishment" comes even from a process that hasn't decided yet. So mentioning the mere existence of such unevenness doesn't really say anything, either way, about the relative value the US culture, or legal system, puts on free speech. What does shed light on the value the US puts on free speech is whether such irreducible annoyances are larger or smaller, with respect to speech, than other countries and other eras. And at every step of US history, even dark days like say Wilson's persecution of WW1 draft-resisters, or Hoover's mid-20thC persecution of civil rights movements, the US had more space for speech, more defenses for those accused of speech-related offenses, and larger cultural/social support (in both legal/political action and the commercial 'blocking-and-tackling' of actually publishing & disseminating speech without outsider veto) than almost anywhere else. That's where people should be able to see the real, high, & enduring value the US has always put on free speech, if not neurotically obsessed on only negative examples, & scattered hypocrisies, blinding them to relative-magnitudes. If Americans have not consistently enjoyed equal free speech – but even in such inequality, almost all Americans had far more free speech than they'd have had anywhere else – then that's more a knock on the US' value of equality, while confirming its leading value of free speech.
cortesoft 4y ago
You say that people have been punished and jailed for simply saying the wrong thing… do you have any actual examples? The one example you gave, the woman who laughed at Jeff Sessions, had the conviction overturned and the charges dropped. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/08/562823691/charges-dropped-against-woman-who-laughed-during-sessions-hearing https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/08/562823691...
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  You don't have to be convicted to be punished. They knew that these charges wouldn't fly, but harassing someone, arresting them and forcing them to show up in court is still a massive burden on an individual and a drain of their money. The mistake is assuming that the punishment begins upon conviction when going through the legal system is often punishment enough and a big chilling effect on free speech.

gojomo 4y ago

Free speech has absolutely been a central value, since the time of founding, as evidenced by its prominent spot in the 'Bill of Rights'. It hasn't always been fully respected, but for the most part the trends have been good. Only in a few narrow places & times might someone be "thrown in jail for vaguely insulting a man in blue's honor", and those are typically undone when the full process runs. The anecdote you share, with the important details filed-off, is that a woman was prosecuted not for merely "laughing at Jeff Sessions" but the more specific charge of disruptive behavior during a government hearing. Opinions differ as to whether he behavior rose to the level of prosecutable disruption, but an actual criminal jury of 12 citizens was somehow convinced to unanimously rule her behavior merited conviction. But then when the full legal process ran, an appelate judge called the conviction 'absurd', throwing out the jury's conviction. Ultimately, that demonstrates that like in other countries, officials in the US can misuse their powers-in-the-moment to attempt some amount of speech punishment, sure. But further that in the US, you can appeal to 'free speech' as a defense, and thus escape punishment for things that might keep you punished in the UK & other somewhat-liberal democracies with lesser speech protections.

fzeroracer 4y ago
The entire legal system is designed to punish people from the moment of arrest through conviction. Just because a rational judge realized that the case was absurd does not make the hoops she had to go through any less arduous. For example officer writing you a bogus speeding ticket that you can successfully challenge in court still requires time and effort to challenge, moreso than the officer did issuing it and that's very frequently done to poorer individuals. Which again, you ignore that we had (and in many places still have) an amount of people which simply did not have the same free speech rights that you say America was founded upon.
- gojomo 4y ago
  > The entire legal system is designed to punish people from the moment of arrest through conviction. This is indeed true, and a problem, and if you have ideas for how it can be improved, I'd be all ears. But, I've not found any country/region/system that doesn't have some level of this problem. The US's system, of required public formalities for certain charges to proceed, & certain guarantees of time limits, & avenues for release/acquittal, is pretty strong compared to anywhere else. (In the Netherlands, a software developer has been in custody for a couple months now without any specific charges/case being revealed to him or the public.) And, it's kind of inherent to any system for there to be some margins-of-abusive-discretion that are hard to eliminate, and time-limited steps-in-a-judicial-process where unavoidable "punishment" comes even from a process that hasn't decided yet. So mentioning the mere existence of such unevenness doesn't really say anything, either way, about the relative value the US culture, or legal system, puts on free speech. What does shed light on the value the US puts on free speech is whether such irreducible annoyances are larger or smaller, with respect to speech, than other countries and other eras. And at every step of US history, even dark days like say Wilson's persecution of WW1 draft-resisters, or Hoover's mid-20thC persecution of civil rights movements, the US had more space for speech, more defenses for those accused of speech-related offenses, and larger cultural/social support (in both legal/political action and the commercial 'blocking-and-tackling' of actually publishing & disseminating speech without outsider veto) than almost anywhere else. That's where people should be able to see the real, high, & enduring value the US has always put on free speech, if not neurotically obsessed on only negative examples, & scattered hypocrisies, blinding them to relative-magnitudes. If Americans have not consistently enjoyed equal free speech – but even in such inequality, almost all Americans had far more free speech than they'd have had anywhere else – then that's more a knock on the US' value of equality, while confirming its leading value of free speech.

cortesoft 4y ago

You say that people have been punished and jailed for simply saying the wrong thing… do you have any actual examples? The one example you gave, the woman who laughed at Jeff Sessions, had the conviction overturned and the charges dropped. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/08/562823691/charges-dropped-against-woman-who-laughed-during-sessions-hearing https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/08/562823691...

fzeroracer 4y ago
You don't have to be convicted to be punished. They knew that these charges wouldn't fly, but harassing someone, arresting them and forcing them to show up in court is still a massive burden on an individual and a drain of their money. The mistake is assuming that the punishment begins upon conviction when going through the legal system is often punishment enough and a big chilling effect on free speech.