We’ve had this discussion. We’ve had it here, over and over again. He mystery is how the answer to this question, which is dead obvious to so many, continues to elude you no matter how many times it’s repeated.
Man, remember when the SPLC was taken seriously by anyone to the right of Slate? I mean, I don’t, but I’m sure someone does. This is a very apt comparison. The ACLU is a legitimate nonpartisan organization, in the way very, very few political organizations get to be these days. Removing that distinction is a terrible idea.
"Shut the fuck up. You’re not allowed to speak. Your ideas are dangerous and stupid and wrong, and if you open your stupid mouth about them again, we will ban you or arrest you or murder you.
Now, about challenging those traditions, what did you want to say? Choose your words carefully. :)"
The reason free speech is fundamental, as Steven Pinker points out:
In talking about free speech (or anything else) we’re talking. We’re not settling our disagreement by arm-wrestling or a beauty contest or a pistol duel. Unless you’re willing to discredit yourself by declaring, in the words of Nat Hentoff, “free speech for me but not for thee,” then as soon as you show up to a debate to argue against free speech, you’ve lost it.
(Emphasis mine.)
The whole article is really worth reading (or, if you’re not the reading type, here’s an excellent reading of it), but this really is a key point. The moment you turn up to debate whether or not free speech should exist, you are already applying free speech. Perhaps if you don’t support freedom of speech, you should take your own advice, and shut the fuck up.
Because “hate speech” is a subjective, unclear measure that any despot worth their salt can abuse and which is misused by people today. James Damore’s memo - hate speech? I’ve heard it said that it was, even though it was basically accurate on the science and phrased as inoffensively as possible. How about basically any PragerU video on gender - hate speech? The Bell Curve - hate speech? I mean, I don’t think so, but it was enough to get Charles Murray deplatformed and assaulted, so clearly it’s not a consensus position.
When you start placing restrictions on what people can say or think, you open the door to further ones. Remember, part of the importance of the right to freedom of speech is not just “freedom of speech is important”. That’s part of it. The other crucial part of most things we consider rights is that historically, we have a very shitty track record of figuring out when it is or is not a good idea to abridge that right, and what the consequences might be. That we constantly are tempted, “Oh, what if we just limited the right in way X”, and almost every time we give into that temptation, we fuck everything up.
Bullshit.
Let’s say that the current administration, weakened free speech protections. Order this list for me - the top of the list gets censored first, the bottom last.
Nazis and White Supremacists
Black Lives Matter protesters
The rich
The poor
Racists
Minorities
How did that go in the past? When we weren’t too particular about free speech protections for everyone, who got to eat shit sandwiches? It wasn’t whitey, I’ll tell you that much.
Okay. Which groups? And, on a meta-level, how do you determine that?
How about literally anywhere other than one of the last non-partisan pro-social groups in the country?
Wait, so in a fair fight, the ideas of racism, chauvinism, and homophobia win against the ideas of equality? Think for a moment about what you’re saying.
I think this is a good and healthy conversation to have. What is the line between advocacy of violence and free speech? Are there cases that can reasonably be described as borderline, and if so, should the ACLU defend these cases? Does this calculus change at any time if American neo-Nazis and white supremacists continue to gain legitimacy and influence? I don’t have all the answers, but these are reasonable questions to ask, IMO.
The thing is, it is NOT true that defending free speech is incompatible with eliminating discrimination. Yes, defending free speech means that sometimes you will be defending the right of bigots to speak. But how do you defend the free speech rights of BLM and ACT-UP without also defending the free speech rights of bigots?
We’ve got to defend the free speech rights of everyone. Any “free speech for me, but not for thee” arrangement, besides being just plain wrong, is more likely to result in bigots having free speech and minorities being shut out, than the other way around.
I think the SCOTUS addressed this as clearly as possible in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
That’s the legal line, but should that exact place be the ACLU’s line? Should the ACLU spend time and resources to defend speech that can reasonably be characterized as advocacy for violence, but is legal by this standard (like, say, “we should put policy in place to eliminate the Jewish race from the Earth”)? I don’t think the ACLU’s standards (and not unlimited resources) necessarily have to exactly match SCOTUS rulings.
The ACLU should advocate for what they think the legal policy should be. If you think it should be different from what it is, tell us what you think it should be and why.
I don’t know what it should be, and I think discussions like this are helpful in figuring it out.
I agree as well. Quite a few gun owners think that giving even an inch on any gun-related issue means that we are then on an irrevocable path to seizing uncontroversial firearms owned by law-abiding people… and that oppressed people may be the first to have their guns taken away.
In the same way, quite a few people in this thread are staking their claim not necessarily on the principle that all speech contributes to the public dialog (thought I’m sure none of them disagree with that statement), but instead pin their argument on the idea that if any speech is infringed upon, then the downtrodden will inevitably be next to be silenced.
For as many times as I see the term “slippery slope” mentioned in general discourse, I would bet that more than 70% of the time it is used in the sense of “a real phenomenon that forces us not to be reasonable on one issue because it will surely lead to disaster later on unreasonable issues,” as opposed to my understanding of the term, “a fallacious argument meant to scare the hell out of the opposition instead of debating in good faith.” How this phrase became so closely associated with the former rather than the latter is very sad.
In any case, I think it’s good to question dogma every now and then. I’d chalk myself up as not being sure what the right answer is, but shame on those who are offended by the question even being raised. So much for hearing all viewpoints and letting reason decide.
I would dearly love to hear at least one of those twits explain, in detail, exactly where “racial justice” is defined in the Constitution.
That headline could be called hate speech without the ACLU.
Dear idiot:
What do you think “No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” means in context?
Thank you,
America
^^^^ This. Right here. THIS. Thank you, Budget Player Cadet
If anything, we have conclusive proof because President Clinton defeated intolerance back in November!
What “fair fight”? The fight’s never been fair. Racists, chauvinists and homophobes have always been the ones with the power of purse, polity and pulpit.
The ACLU staffers don’t agree with this. According to them, we shouldn’t be having a conversation - one side needs to be silenced.
You are defending racists, and contributing to the marginalization of the oppressed. Stop doing that - it’s hate speech.
No, they aren’t. Shut up.
Regards,
Shodan
While I don’t agree with these staffers’ apparent stance on the ACLU’s positions, this objection is absurd. Of course there are “racial justice guarantees in the Constitution and elsewhere”, even though the Constitution itself doesn’t contain a definition of the term “racial justice”.
The 15th Amendment asserting the right to vote regardless of race, for example, is a form of guaranteeing racial justice. So is the 13th Amendment which eradicated the practice of race-based slavery. And as Ravenman notes, the Equal Protection Clause also fulfills that function, among others.
Agree that the OP’s cite game sucked. The OP linked to an article in The Week which itself linked to an October 4 article in the New York Times which appears to be the only current source for the content of the abovementioned “open letter”:
I’m puzzled by the designation “open letter” applied to a document that doesn’t seem to be publicly available anywhere. And I would like to see the full text of that letter before I try to analyze or debate its authors’ thinking in detail.
Yes, it is.
But their very speech is an act of discrimination. How is that compatible? You’ve failed at one by doing the other.
The way other countries seem to manage.
No, we really don’t.
Do we defend the “free speech rights” of theatre fire-shouters? What about libellers?
That doesn’t seem to be the German experience vis-a-vis Nazism, or the South African experience re: racist speech (although the racist bigots are not the majority).
Just sounds like American exceptionalism, to me.
** sigh **
Let me see if I can break this down in a different way.
Let’s just suppose, as a hypothetical, that the opportunity to oppress is more appealing to humans than the opportunity to live in peace as equals.
If it’s true, you can’t fix it.
Every attempt to level the playing field will inevitably result in an exploitable power structure (of regulatory enforcement or whatever) within which people will rise to positions of power, and, once there, they will use that power to oppress and exploit people. By definition. Not “that might happen” or “there’s a real risk of that kind of thing happening”, but as inevitably as entropy increases over time. Inviolably so.
If it’s true, there cannot be a revolution, peaceful or violent or in any other form. All you can ever get is a rotation, the dumping out of the elite du jour in favor of some other faction which will then possess power and, once again by definition, will use it to exploit and oppress people wherever the opportunity presents itself.
If it’s true, pointing out to people that lot of folks with power use that power to exploit and oppress is not going to be much of a tool for making people check their privilege and realize themselves as abusers of their status and situation. That’s ever so much more true if you convince those same people that it is in their own best interests to exploit and oppress people, that people oppress simply because they can, that there is no meaningful distinction between the intentions of the individual and the “interests” of the class or status or race or sex or other social-structural group to which they belong. Or to which they can be categorically assigned.
If you wish progressive social change, you have to be an optimist about the possibilities. You have to harbor the belief that although our systems, our culture, our social structures have set us at each other’s throats as adversaries, it doesn’t have to be that way, that adversarial cutthroat competition is not intrinsically a more fundamental part of human nature than voluntary cooperation and a desire to live in peace. You have to believe that an open honest sharing dialog between people can result in a cessation of the shitty things we do to each other. You have to trust the communications process.
And that’s an ultimatum.
I’m a lefty and agree completely with the OP.