4 ms·

Neither of the two parties is very much in favor of free speech. The left has cancel culture and policing pronouns while the right has blocking books with gay c

Neither of the two parties is very much in favor of free speech. The left has cancel culture and policing pronouns while the right has blocking books with gay characters and age verification laws.

archagon 1y ago
“Cancel culture” is not government policy (and never was).
- YetAnotherNick 1y ago
  Except it was. It was the government who ordered Twitter to ban or shadowban people like Prof. Jay Bhattacharya.
  - archagon 1y ago
    The government had no capacity to “order” Twitter to do this, in stark contrast to this law.
    - reliabilityguy 1y ago
      And yet they did, and twitter did comply.
  - yakz 1y ago
    The government didn't do that. "The primary weakness in the record of past restrictions is the lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation." https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
- const_cast 1y ago
  Cancel Culture is actually just the free market, the invisible hand, at work. What is a boycott but cancel culture? The idea of the free market is that good behaviors and products emerge because consumers "vote" with their wallet. If a company has bad values I don't support then I don't shop there. Enough people do that and the company collapses. So, what remains is an economy where every company acts virtuously. Theoretically. Then enters propaganda and the GOP. They tell you this invisible hand is bad, and companies should be able to do anything. At a glance this appears to be free speech, but it's not - it's the exact opposite. You see, they can say anything they want, but we can't. We may not criticize them. Our opinions are not valid, they're "Cancel Culture".
  - eesmith 1y ago
    I point out to self-described "classic liberals" that what they call "cancel culture" was instead described by John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" as an essential component of liberty: "We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement."
    - zajio1am 1y ago
      This is ignoring difference between individual distancing from such person and cancel culture campaigns, whose characteristic pattern is transitivity (boycotting third persons just because they do not participate themselves in boycott). Amplifying effect of such transitivity creates a social coercion in the form that Mill warned against in chapter 1. That is why he mentioned "though not to parade the avoidance" - to not induce society-wide coordination leading to social coercion. Mill distinguishes between natural penalties (which are just results of others distancing from the person) and artificial punishment: "It makes a vast difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncomfortable." I think it is clear that actions like urging an employer to fire such person are more on level "make his life uncomfortable" than "we may express our distaste and we distance".
      - eesmith 1y ago
        The "displeases us" you quoted is for "the part of a person's life which concerns only himself". For example, "No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk." For actions "which concerns others" Mill writes: "The evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment, and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in his."
- istjohn 1y ago
  No, but it is endemic to American colleges and universities which are government or government-funded institutions. Furthermore, spend a little time on BlueSky and you will find huge support for the hate speech laws found in other countries. Finally, the distinction between government regulation of speech and private regulation of speech is key in the court of law, but it is almost irrelevant from the point of view of a philosophy that values open inquiry, debate, and dissent as indispensible to human dignity and progress.
BHSPitMonkey 1y ago
There are two common definitions of the phrase "free speech" that I think you are conflating: 1. The Constitutional right to free speech under the first amendment (i.e. specifically that the government may not use its authority to limit or punish its peoples' expression of ideas) 2. The vague notion that others should not be able to criticize you for something you've said or written In this thread we are more concerned with the former. No one on the left is trying to enact laws to punish anyone's impolite use of pronouns. At worst, maybe someone has asked you to be considerate in some non-official setting (which has little to do with the first amendment).
JoshTriplett 1y ago
There is a massive difference between other people reacting to your speech and choosing not to associate with you or propagate what you say, and the government banning your speech and prosecuting you for it. You can exercise your freedom of speech, and other people can exercise their freedom of association to want nothing to do with you.
eesmith 1y ago
I've noticed that cancel culture and policing pronouns is far stronger on the right. What Democrat has been canceled as much as Liz Cheney by Republicans? Certainly not the sex pest Andrew Cuomo, heartily supported by the Democratic Party leadership. What Democratic president has issued an executive order anywhere equivalent to Trump's order requiring pronouns match the gender "at conception", and the anti-scientific claim that gender is a male-female binary? The right also wants to block books which have nothing to do with gay characters, including “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, “Maus”, “The Handmaid's Tale“, “Of Mice and Men“ and “Brave New World”.
hooverd 1y ago
The left was kinda annoying about it but nobody was going to throw you in jail for misgendering someone or whatever.

Neither of the two parties is very much in favor of free speech. The left has cancel culture and policing pronouns while the right has blocking books with gay characters and age verification laws.

archagon 1y ago

“Cancel culture” is not government policy (and never was).

YetAnotherNick 1y ago
Except it was. It was the government who ordered Twitter to ban or shadowban people like Prof. Jay Bhattacharya.
- archagon 1y ago
  The government had no capacity to “order” Twitter to do this, in stark contrast to this law.
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    And yet they did, and twitter did comply.
- yakz 1y ago
  The government didn't do that. "The primary weakness in the record of past restrictions is the lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation." https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
const_cast 1y ago
Cancel Culture is actually just the free market, the invisible hand, at work. What is a boycott but cancel culture? The idea of the free market is that good behaviors and products emerge because consumers "vote" with their wallet. If a company has bad values I don't support then I don't shop there. Enough people do that and the company collapses. So, what remains is an economy where every company acts virtuously. Theoretically. Then enters propaganda and the GOP. They tell you this invisible hand is bad, and companies should be able to do anything. At a glance this appears to be free speech, but it's not - it's the exact opposite. You see, they can say anything they want, but we can't. We may not criticize them. Our opinions are not valid, they're "Cancel Culture".
- eesmith 1y ago
  I point out to self-described "classic liberals" that what they call "cancel culture" was instead described by John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" as an essential component of liberty: "We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement."
  - zajio1am 1y ago
    This is ignoring difference between individual distancing from such person and cancel culture campaigns, whose characteristic pattern is transitivity (boycotting third persons just because they do not participate themselves in boycott). Amplifying effect of such transitivity creates a social coercion in the form that Mill warned against in chapter 1. That is why he mentioned "though not to parade the avoidance" - to not induce society-wide coordination leading to social coercion. Mill distinguishes between natural penalties (which are just results of others distancing from the person) and artificial punishment: "It makes a vast difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncomfortable." I think it is clear that actions like urging an employer to fire such person are more on level "make his life uncomfortable" than "we may express our distaste and we distance".
    - eesmith 1y ago
      The "displeases us" you quoted is for "the part of a person's life which concerns only himself". For example, "No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk." For actions "which concerns others" Mill writes: "The evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment, and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in his."
istjohn 1y ago
No, but it is endemic to American colleges and universities which are government or government-funded institutions. Furthermore, spend a little time on BlueSky and you will find huge support for the hate speech laws found in other countries. Finally, the distinction between government regulation of speech and private regulation of speech is key in the court of law, but it is almost irrelevant from the point of view of a philosophy that values open inquiry, debate, and dissent as indispensible to human dignity and progress.

BHSPitMonkey 1y ago

There are two common definitions of the phrase "free speech" that I think you are conflating: 1. The Constitutional right to free speech under the first amendment (i.e. specifically that the government may not use its authority to limit or punish its peoples' expression of ideas) 2. The vague notion that others should not be able to criticize you for something you've said or written In this thread we are more concerned with the former. No one on the left is trying to enact laws to punish anyone's impolite use of pronouns. At worst, maybe someone has asked you to be considerate in some non-official setting (which has little to do with the first amendment).

JoshTriplett 1y ago

There is a massive difference between other people reacting to your speech and choosing not to associate with you or propagate what you say, and the government banning your speech and prosecuting you for it. You can exercise your freedom of speech, and other people can exercise their freedom of association to want nothing to do with you.

eesmith 1y ago

I've noticed that cancel culture and policing pronouns is far stronger on the right. What Democrat has been canceled as much as Liz Cheney by Republicans? Certainly not the sex pest Andrew Cuomo, heartily supported by the Democratic Party leadership. What Democratic president has issued an executive order anywhere equivalent to Trump's order requiring pronouns match the gender "at conception", and the anti-scientific claim that gender is a male-female binary? The right also wants to block books which have nothing to do with gay characters, including “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, “Maus”, “The Handmaid's Tale“, “Of Mice and Men“ and “Brave New World”.

hooverd 1y ago

The left was kinda annoying about it but nobody was going to throw you in jail for misgendering someone or whatever.