4 ms·

How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately us

by rhaksw 4y ago

How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. Here's former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser in a podcast at 1:49:10 [1], transcript [2]: > Times writes back and says, we can't publish this ad because we – because you criticize Nixon and it's 1972, and it's in the middle of an election campaign, and if you criticize Nixon, unless you have his permission, it counts against the ad – the expenditure limitation of his opponent. I said, I have to get his permission in order to criticize him, what are you, crazy. It's the same issue that Cambodian bombing ad... > So, we file a lawsuit, we win that lawsuit, and we strike the law down for the second time. This goes on over and over again, and I'm saying to myself, this is a law that is supposed to get in the way of nasty rich folks, and the only two times it's been used so far is against these three aging radicals and the ACLU on totally legitimate, core First Amendment speech, how can that be, and that's how we get into this issue, and why we see it so clearly as a free speech issue. It goes on and on and on and on, and they kept coming back, doing it again, and again and again and again in 16 different versions. Earlier in that podcast episode he makes a good case for campaign finance being like the right to travel around 1:36:10 [3]. Have a listen, you might learn something. The embedded player on this page [4] lets you skip around the episode without subscribing to Soundcloud. [1] https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser#t=1:49:10 https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/f... [2] https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-transcript-former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-transcript-for... [3] https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser#t=1:36:10 https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/f... [4] https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-former-aclu-ex...

joshuamorton 4y ago
> How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. It is not, however, an argument against any particular position on speech. A capricious supreme court could revert to the speech precedent the US had for the first 150 years of it's existence, which we both presumably agree is flawed. Laws can be written and misapplied. Neither of those things being possible suggests that, as a value, free speech maximalism is superior to free speech...almost maximalism. It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  > This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. They don't come with a cover sheet saying so. You need to figure it out for yourself. > Laws can be written and misapplied. All the more reason to study them and give careful consideration to how they have been misapplied in the past. We're in agreement there. You're a different commenter than above, so I'm not sure if your main point is to agree with them, disagree with me, or both, and on what exactly. > It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe. I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment. The point of free speech is to protect minority voices. It was championed in the '60s when the left needed it, and it rose from the ashes in the early 1900s after Comstock tried to surreptitiously-but-not-so-surreptitiously squash it. The censor never calls himself a censor.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    > I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment The modern American jurisprudence on speech is fairly recent, as I alluded to above. There's tons of cases through the 18th and 19th century where the supreme court upheld blasphemy and obscenity convictions, allowed the federal government to censor speech, favor Christian religion and churches over others, and even consider libel a Crime. As late as 1951 (Dennis v. US) the Supreme Court ruled that members of the US Communist Party could be imprisoned because socialist organizing was a threat. And it took 20 more years for Brandenburg to cement the modern jurisprudence, 200 years after the American experiment began, and only 50 years ago. > No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. No, my point is what is socially acceptable goes beyond simply what is legal. And this is always and has always been true. Many laws can be used for tyranny. If you want to avoid the potential for tyrannical laws, you can't have any laws, and that doesn't work either. Like again, this whole thing comes down to the fact that Western European countries (and the US!) have had more restrictive definitions of free speech for far longer than Brandenburg has been the law of the land, and they aren't tyrannical.

by rhaksw 4y ago

joshuamorton 4y ago

> How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. It is not, however, an argument against any particular position on speech. A capricious supreme court could revert to the speech precedent the US had for the first 150 years of it's existence, which we both presumably agree is flawed. Laws can be written and misapplied. Neither of those things being possible suggests that, as a value, free speech maximalism is superior to free speech...almost maximalism. It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe.

rhaksw 4y ago
> This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. They don't come with a cover sheet saying so. You need to figure it out for yourself. > Laws can be written and misapplied. All the more reason to study them and give careful consideration to how they have been misapplied in the past. We're in agreement there. You're a different commenter than above, so I'm not sure if your main point is to agree with them, disagree with me, or both, and on what exactly. > It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe. I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment. The point of free speech is to protect minority voices. It was championed in the '60s when the left needed it, and it rose from the ashes in the early 1900s after Comstock tried to surreptitiously-but-not-so-surreptitiously squash it. The censor never calls himself a censor.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  > I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment The modern American jurisprudence on speech is fairly recent, as I alluded to above. There's tons of cases through the 18th and 19th century where the supreme court upheld blasphemy and obscenity convictions, allowed the federal government to censor speech, favor Christian religion and churches over others, and even consider libel a Crime. As late as 1951 (Dennis v. US) the Supreme Court ruled that members of the US Communist Party could be imprisoned because socialist organizing was a threat. And it took 20 more years for Brandenburg to cement the modern jurisprudence, 200 years after the American experiment began, and only 50 years ago. > No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. No, my point is what is socially acceptable goes beyond simply what is legal. And this is always and has always been true. Many laws can be used for tyranny. If you want to avoid the potential for tyrannical laws, you can't have any laws, and that doesn't work either. Like again, this whole thing comes down to the fact that Western European countries (and the US!) have had more restrictive definitions of free speech for far longer than Brandenburg has been the law of the land, and they aren't tyrannical.