18 ms·

It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authori

by causi 3y ago

It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authority anymore; it's just team red and team blue. One might be wrong-er than the other but neither think people they hate should be able to open their mouths in anything but agreement.

ch4s3 3y ago
I realized a long time ago that if no one was allowed to say thing I find distasteful the world would be a very quiet place. And I must imagine that there exist people who given the opportunity would be far more censorious than I might be at my worst. As such it seems beneficial to in general to mutually disarm with respect to censorship rather than create a world of pressing silence.
bequanna 3y ago
Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? If so, they are by far the minority in that camp. Only one side is afraid of open debate and pure freedom of speech. Why could that be?
- causi 3y ago
  Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? Yes. Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech. Restrictions on non-sexual drag performances are restrictions of freedom of speech. Bans on calling for boycotts of Israeli goods and services are restrictions of the freedom of speech.
  - bequanna 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - causi 3y ago
      I don't doubt many of the performers are deriving sexual satisfaction from the performance, but as long as the performance itself is not sexual it isn't harming children. Don't get me wrong, I think "Drag Queen Story Hour" is the gender equivalent of blackface, but a man dressing up like a mockery of womanhood and reading stories doesn't violate anybody else's rights, therefore we have no right to use violence to stop it.
      - sangnoir 3y ago
        Women can be drag queens too! For me, drag adjacent to Cabaret and Burlesque. I'm not a fan of any of those, but I appreciate that they are art forms that people should be free to express themselves in.
  - Karunamon 3y ago
    The restrictions on teachers you speak of are in their functions as employees of the state while performing their duties on the job on the employer's time. Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. That goes double when we are talking about public employees whose conduct is directly the function of law.
    - causi 3y ago
      That's a fair point.
    - iscream26 3y ago
      > Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. In other words: you're allowed to restrict the speech of other people as long as you own private property. Turns out that freedom of speech in a liberal "democracy" is not all it's cracked up to be.
      - Karunamon 3y ago
        You skipped the rather pertinent bit where these restrictions apply only to people who chose of their own volition to take them on. You are, of course, free to not take on the burden of employment from a particular organization if you find their demands on your conduct while they are compensating you for your time to be unacceptable. This relationship is purely transactional. And, sorry, the idea that this is actually a bona fide problem is facile.
        iscream26 3y ago
        That line of reasoning would make sense if the have-nots in a liberal society didn't need to work just to survive. But that is not the case, is it? Liberal society loves to characterise itself as a rigid, well-structured system in which individuals choose to make idealised rational decisions to work towards their own interests. As opposed to emotional reasoning, which is conveniently implied to be the diametrical opposite of rational thought. And I call it "convenient" because as a result can easily paint protests and strikes, as "irrational" and "despicable" actions perpetrated by "unreasonable" individuals. However, as soon as one considers the fact that the disparity of power between people with private property and people without makes it so that the people without private property cannot afford to make decisions on a "rational vacuum". We quickly find ourselves reverting back to "what are you going to do about it? You don't work, you don't eat."
  - didntcheck 3y ago
    > Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech Do you consider a curriculum to be a restriction on freedom of speech? I ask as a genuine question - being from the UK the norm for me is having a national curriculum and standard testing (albeit it executed by private-but-certified exam boards). It seems like common sense to me that obviously teachers have restrictions on what they can say in a classroom. Any employee does within their workplace and job duties, but teaching is one profession where I'd clearly expect a much higher level of restriction (along with the police, who represent the state, and doctors, who have duties of professionalism and to give medical advice only in line with the regulator, and various other regulated roles)
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  Kind of - crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left. For the most part, everybody seems to agree than "obscenity" should be an exception to freedom of speech, although there's quite a bit of disagreement on what constitutes it.
  - stcroixx 3y ago
    As a kid growing up, Tipper Gore’s PMRC slapped stickers on heavy metal and rap CDs they didn’t like.
  - Brusco_RF 3y ago
    I disagree. At most you'll see parents deciding that their tax dollars should not be used to stock a school library with "obscene" books in schools. That is not an infringement on speech, those authors are free to publish and sell in any other market.
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    >crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman would like a word.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      This just shows how useless a single-dimension left/right axis is. There were plenty of socially conservative Democratic party members then (and now, but moreso then). This was also a time when the majority (>50%) of Americans disapproved of mixed-race relationships, according to Gallup. That percentage only fell below 50% in 1993, IIRC.
      - tekknik 3y ago
        Maybe we should get rid of the 2 party system?
- nobody9999 3y ago
  Book bans, the "Don't say gay" law, requiring medical professionals to spout specific claims about the "harms" of pregnancy termination and a raft of other stuff too. Do you claim those are not censorship? I'm not taking a side here. Government censorship is bad. Full stop.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    >Book bans, the "Don't say gay" law These are limited to the government itself. The "don't say gay," bill makes it illegal for teachers to teach sexual related stuff to elementary school kids. It's a form of self-governing (no pun intended) and isn't restricting the rights of citizens, which the first amendment protects. It's restricting what the government itself can do. Book bans are also limited to what the school library may carry and doesn't apply to public libraries or book stores and the like. >requiring medical professionals to spout specific claims about the "harms" of pregnancy termination and a raft of other stuff too. This is technically compelled speech rather than censorship. It's another concept I'm not overly comfortable with. To be fair, it's compelling a licensed physician to do this when performing his or her profession, which the government (and the people) has chosen to regulate. A physician wouldn't be compelled to do this outside his or her practicing medicine.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
elishah 3y ago
> It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with ... I think framing this as being about speech with which one disagrees, or finds repugnant, is a bit disingenuous. It omits consideration of the possibility of speech that is genuinely harmful. For a few examples: - My friends and I decide it'd be cool to put you in jail, so we report you as committing a serious crime that you didn't, and all give matching testimony that leads to your conviction. - Pfizer starts selling a new drug that cures cancer. Except it turns out that they completely fabricated all the studies showing its effect, and actually the pills are nothing but placebos. - A mugger with his hand in his pocket stops you at night and says, "Give me your wallet or I'll shoot you." You give him your wallet and he leaves. I hope you would agree that these situations are... not ideal, and that the law should be able to discourage them. Despite the fact that all of these are, indisputably, speech.
- megaman821 3y ago
  Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. They would press charges and have a court order to remove the non-protected speech.
  - elishah 3y ago
    > Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. Sure, I didn't mean to suggest that those things are legal. Just giving a few examples of speech that is harmful, rather than merely distasteful. > The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. Hm, I think that may be pinning quite a lot on some questionable definition of "censorship." In these examples the law would be banning some specific speech from me, Pfizer, and the mugger, and punishing us if we engaged in that banned speech anyway. Isn't that what censorship is?
    - tekknik 3y ago
      Your first two examples are fraud, not speech. Your third example is speech, but if you remove the mugger and have a friend say the same thing to you it becomes a joke.
didntcheck 3y ago
Yeah, it's worrying how many people seem to go: "I don't like this" => "Nobody else should be able to see it". I've had people be confused in conversations where I've confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed. Not to do the whole generational sneering thing, but I do find the difference is often whether someone grew up with the pre-social-media internet, where it was common sense that not all of the internet would appeal to you, and you'd need to manage your own experience, or the modern "safe" internet, where people are accustomed to having a direct line to the powers that be to come and remove stuff that upsets them
- causi 3y ago
  I've had people be confused in conversations where I've confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed. The day's not over until you've been called a communist groomer and a Nazi.

by causi 3y ago

ch4s3 3y ago

I realized a long time ago that if no one was allowed to say thing I find distasteful the world would be a very quiet place. And I must imagine that there exist people who given the opportunity would be far more censorious than I might be at my worst. As such it seems beneficial to in general to mutually disarm with respect to censorship rather than create a world of pressing silence.

bequanna 3y ago

Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? If so, they are by far the minority in that camp. Only one side is afraid of open debate and pure freedom of speech. Why could that be?

causi 3y ago
Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? Yes. Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech. Restrictions on non-sexual drag performances are restrictions of freedom of speech. Bans on calling for boycotts of Israeli goods and services are restrictions of the freedom of speech.
- bequanna 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - causi 3y ago
    I don't doubt many of the performers are deriving sexual satisfaction from the performance, but as long as the performance itself is not sexual it isn't harming children. Don't get me wrong, I think "Drag Queen Story Hour" is the gender equivalent of blackface, but a man dressing up like a mockery of womanhood and reading stories doesn't violate anybody else's rights, therefore we have no right to use violence to stop it.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      Women can be drag queens too! For me, drag adjacent to Cabaret and Burlesque. I'm not a fan of any of those, but I appreciate that they are art forms that people should be free to express themselves in.
- Karunamon 3y ago
  The restrictions on teachers you speak of are in their functions as employees of the state while performing their duties on the job on the employer's time. Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. That goes double when we are talking about public employees whose conduct is directly the function of law.
  - causi 3y ago
    That's a fair point.
  - iscream26 3y ago
    > Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. In other words: you're allowed to restrict the speech of other people as long as you own private property. Turns out that freedom of speech in a liberal "democracy" is not all it's cracked up to be.
    - Karunamon 3y ago
      You skipped the rather pertinent bit where these restrictions apply only to people who chose of their own volition to take them on. You are, of course, free to not take on the burden of employment from a particular organization if you find their demands on your conduct while they are compensating you for your time to be unacceptable. This relationship is purely transactional. And, sorry, the idea that this is actually a bona fide problem is facile.
      - iscream26 3y ago
        That line of reasoning would make sense if the have-nots in a liberal society didn't need to work just to survive. But that is not the case, is it? Liberal society loves to characterise itself as a rigid, well-structured system in which individuals choose to make idealised rational decisions to work towards their own interests. As opposed to emotional reasoning, which is conveniently implied to be the diametrical opposite of rational thought. And I call it "convenient" because as a result can easily paint protests and strikes, as "irrational" and "despicable" actions perpetrated by "unreasonable" individuals. However, as soon as one considers the fact that the disparity of power between people with private property and people without makes it so that the people without private property cannot afford to make decisions on a "rational vacuum". We quickly find ourselves reverting back to "what are you going to do about it? You don't work, you don't eat."
- didntcheck 3y ago
  > Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech Do you consider a curriculum to be a restriction on freedom of speech? I ask as a genuine question - being from the UK the norm for me is having a national curriculum and standard testing (albeit it executed by private-but-certified exam boards). It seems like common sense to me that obviously teachers have restrictions on what they can say in a classroom. Any employee does within their workplace and job duties, but teaching is one profession where I'd clearly expect a much higher level of restriction (along with the police, who represent the state, and doctors, who have duties of professionalism and to give medical advice only in line with the regulator, and various other regulated roles)
commandlinefan 3y ago
Kind of - crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left. For the most part, everybody seems to agree than "obscenity" should be an exception to freedom of speech, although there's quite a bit of disagreement on what constitutes it.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  As a kid growing up, Tipper Gore’s PMRC slapped stickers on heavy metal and rap CDs they didn’t like.
- Brusco_RF 3y ago
  I disagree. At most you'll see parents deciding that their tax dollars should not be used to stock a school library with "obscene" books in schools. That is not an infringement on speech, those authors are free to publish and sell in any other market.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  >crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman would like a word.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    This just shows how useless a single-dimension left/right axis is. There were plenty of socially conservative Democratic party members then (and now, but moreso then). This was also a time when the majority (>50%) of Americans disapproved of mixed-race relationships, according to Gallup. That percentage only fell below 50% in 1993, IIRC.
    - tekknik 3y ago
      Maybe we should get rid of the 2 party system?
nobody9999 3y ago
Book bans, the "Don't say gay" law, requiring medical professionals to spout specific claims about the "harms" of pregnancy termination and a raft of other stuff too. Do you claim those are not censorship? I'm not taking a side here. Government censorship is bad. Full stop.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >Book bans, the "Don't say gay" law These are limited to the government itself. The "don't say gay," bill makes it illegal for teachers to teach sexual related stuff to elementary school kids. It's a form of self-governing (no pun intended) and isn't restricting the rights of citizens, which the first amendment protects. It's restricting what the government itself can do. Book bans are also limited to what the school library may carry and doesn't apply to public libraries or book stores and the like. >requiring medical professionals to spout specific claims about the "harms" of pregnancy termination and a raft of other stuff too. This is technically compelled speech rather than censorship. It's another concept I'm not overly comfortable with. To be fair, it's compelling a licensed physician to do this when performing his or her profession, which the government (and the people) has chosen to regulate. A physician wouldn't be compelled to do this outside his or her practicing medicine.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

elishah 3y ago

> It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with ... I think framing this as being about speech with which one disagrees, or finds repugnant, is a bit disingenuous. It omits consideration of the possibility of speech that is genuinely harmful. For a few examples: - My friends and I decide it'd be cool to put you in jail, so we report you as committing a serious crime that you didn't, and all give matching testimony that leads to your conviction. - Pfizer starts selling a new drug that cures cancer. Except it turns out that they completely fabricated all the studies showing its effect, and actually the pills are nothing but placebos. - A mugger with his hand in his pocket stops you at night and says, "Give me your wallet or I'll shoot you." You give him your wallet and he leaves. I hope you would agree that these situations are... not ideal, and that the law should be able to discourage them. Despite the fact that all of these are, indisputably, speech.

megaman821 3y ago
Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. They would press charges and have a court order to remove the non-protected speech.
- elishah 3y ago
  > Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. Sure, I didn't mean to suggest that those things are legal. Just giving a few examples of speech that is harmful, rather than merely distasteful. > The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. Hm, I think that may be pinning quite a lot on some questionable definition of "censorship." In these examples the law would be banning some specific speech from me, Pfizer, and the mugger, and punishing us if we engaged in that banned speech anyway. Isn't that what censorship is?
  - tekknik 3y ago
    Your first two examples are fraud, not speech. Your third example is speech, but if you remove the mugger and have a friend say the same thing to you it becomes a joke.

didntcheck 3y ago

Yeah, it's worrying how many people seem to go: "I don't like this" => "Nobody else should be able to see it". I've had people be confused in conversations where I've confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed. Not to do the whole generational sneering thing, but I do find the difference is often whether someone grew up with the pre-social-media internet, where it was common sense that not all of the internet would appeal to you, and you'd need to manage your own experience, or the modern "safe" internet, where people are accustomed to having a direct line to the powers that be to come and remove stuff that upsets them

causi 3y ago
I've had people be confused in conversations where I've confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed. The day's not over until you've been called a communist groomer and a Nazi.