4 ms·

> We value speech differently. Yes, we do. Even ideas that most of us find distasteful should be spoken freely. Yes, this means that we can't jail fringe nut

• tomflack 14y ago
  My country had women's suffrage before yours. My country had a great transformation from a primarily racist white society to one where all have equal rights. I too can openly criticize my government and people aren't disappeared off the streets. I won't be saying which country I'm talking about as it is irrelevant. Everything in social justice the United States has achieved my country also has, with our different free speech values. I don't presume to say one is better or worse, but I do consider it totally arrogant the attitude Americans display when talking down about other country's free speech values. Which are different. Not necessarily worse.
  • csense 14y ago
    > different. Not necessarily worse. > I too can openly criticize my government and people aren't disappeared off the streets In the UK, you can't. That's the main point of the article. Criticism of government results in criminal penalties in the UK. That's the whole point of what the article says. That's the definition of "not being able to exercise free speech." (Okay, you won't be "disappeared off the streets." You'll be given a fair trial before an impartial court, convicted, and sent to jail. But the relevant idea is having a criminal penalty for criticism of government, not the precise form of the penalty.)
    • anigbrowl 14y ago
      That's not supported by the content of the article. You can certainly criticize the government in the UK, but what you can't do is inflame public sentiment without consequences. I somewhat prefer the US approach, but there's some value in the UK approach too. The public interest and the government's interest are most certainly not considered to be the same thing by the judiciary.
    • FourEdenSix 14y ago
      >In the UK, you can't. That's the main point of the article. Criticising the government isn't what landed these people in jail, it's that the British public found their posts offensive. Look at the examples given in the article again; burning poppies on remembrance sunday, tasteless comments about murdered children, and a tactless joke about bombing an airport. You've read into the article a problem that doesn't exist.
      • csense 14y ago
        > the British public found their posts offensive For any given piece of speech, it's not hard to find someone who's offended by it. So that's a terrible standard for free speech rules, unless you want to have a country of silence. > You've read into the article a problem that doesn't exist You may have a point. Let's examine the examples: 1. The airport bombing comment is probably the easiest to call unprotected speech. Even on first reading of the article, I thought "That sounds like an actual threat...Let's see what else they have." 2. The comment about the soldiers could also be considered a physical threat, but it's more of a stretch; "I hope X dies and goes to hell" isn't nearly as strong as "I'm going to kill X". 3. I can't find the specific wording of the comment regarding the murdered children. 4. That leaves us with the poppy-burning; but it seems like this would be a clear case of protected speech in the US. That's a grand total of one correctly classified instances of unprotected speech (1), one incorrectly classified instance of protected speech (4), and two for which the correct classification is unknown or shaky (2-3). That is, if you take "correct" to be "protected speech according to US law," which is the only classification of protected-vs-unprotected speech I'm familiar enough with to do this analysis. The data indicate that the UK might have a systematic problem correctly classifying instances of protected speech, but you're right; that certainly isn't a clear-cut conclusion from the article.
• jacquesm 14y ago
  > Women should have the right to vote. The color of your skin shouldn't decide your destiny in life. Slavery did need to end. Plenty of countries were ahead on all three of those regardless of the right to 'free speech'. There are lots of good things about the United States, there are lots of bad things too. Free Speech is good, but it did not automatically lead to the abolishment of slavery, a lack of discrimination and the women vote. It definitely helped but the courage of those standing up for their rights was orders of magnitude more important. It also does not translate into being able to say whatever you want. And in spite of free speech the United States still has a long way to go when it comes to citizens rights, due process, cross border criminality and last but not least the rights of LGBT people. The United States is not at the pinnacle of civilization yet and there are tons of countries that rank higher on various parameters than the United States does.
  • csense 14y ago
    > it did not automatically lead to the abolishment of slavery, a lack of discrimination and the women vote That's not the point. The point is that, in 100 years, some of the things that you, me and most of our friends think today might turn out to have been terrible, shortsighted, bigoted groupthink mistakes that resulted in the oppression of millions of people. We aren't doing it on purpose, of course. We try to be as vigilant as we can about that sort of error by constantly considering different ideas and questioning our own assumptions, prejudices, and cultural habits. It's hard to do that if it's illegal to talk about different ideas, or say that we might be headed in the wrong direction. And if it turns out that, despite our best efforts, we can't see the truth which will eventually emerge -- then we shouldn't compound the evils caused by our wrongheaded beliefs by using the power of the state to silence our critics.
    • jacquesm 14y ago
      > That's not the point. Well, then maybe you should not have used those as examples to bolster your argument. As it is they don't hold water. > The point is that, in 100 years, some of the things that you, me and most of our friends think today might turn out to have been terrible, shortsighted, bigoted groupthink mistakes that resulted in the oppression of millions of people. So, please name some examples where free speech in the United States right now gives it the moral high ground on some subject, higher ground than that reached in countries without free speech by your definition, but otherwise functional democracies (i.e. a very large number of countries). > We aren't doing it on purpose, of course. Right now, in your country there are lots of groups actively promoting hatred behind the fig-leaf of free speech, and there are a lot of issues that are not being resolved with people purposely obstructing others in spite of free speech. The correlation between 'free speech' meaningful progress on any of these fronts is not visible to me as an outsider. > It's hard to do that if it's illegal to talk about different ideas, or say that we might be headed in the wrong direction. There are a large number of countries that do not have American style 'free speech' where talking about different ideas or saying that you're headed in the wrong direction is not illegal. > And if it turns out that, despite our best efforts, we can't see the truth which will eventually emerge -- then we shouldn't compound the evils caused by our wrongheaded beliefs by using the power of the state to silence our critics. There are more options than Iran, North Korea and The United States. Many of those options are perfectly workable and produce societies that are morally speaking the equivalent or the superior of the United States. Feel free to lecture the rest of us on how well Free Speech works when you have your house in order, until then it is just one more factor in a very large number of factors. It is a positive factor, but when you fail on so many other fronts that its effect fades into insignificance you might as well not have it.
• petercooper 14y ago
  And we can criticize our government openly. As an American, I can say that the war in Afghanistan needs to end, the war in Iraq never should have begun, Obamacare is stupid, President Obama is stupid, taxes are too high, my Senator's incompetent...(I don't actually believe all of these things; they're just random examples of criticisms of government.) This is perhaps the most important part of free speech, and according to the article, the UK lacks these protections. You can say every (equivalent) one of those things in the UK. What the UK has is restrictions upon threatening or inflammatory speech, so saying a particular person should be killed or die, that a politician should be raped, or that we should commit atrocities to reach an end. If one were to send a threat to the President, one would discover where the US line is similarly drawn. Criticism is fine. Threats or aggressive malice are not. And most Brits, thankfully, believe this. All reasonable curbs on a continent where people were ripping each other to shreds in their millions within the past 100 years.