And, to be clear, all of these signatories are people for whom the real-world consequences of being “victims” of this “censorious” world we’re in are exceedingly minimal. They all have platforms and power that almost none of us here on the board have access to. The thing that they’re concerned about first and foremost is losing that platform. What they forget is that they are not owed that platform, nor that power. It’s a (here the word comes) privilege that they have. If freedom of speech means being able to retain the editorship of a newspaper, or being able to retain the busy schedule of speaking engagements you’re used to, then freedom of speech is only for the few, not the many.
Again, what you’re missing is that there are factors that ARE new. We are in an era where everybody and their dog are voicing their opinions for the world to see from the rooftops, on a medium that is basically forever. Then a viewpoint that was completely uncontroversial not all that long ago becomes impermissible today, and people are going through and digging this stuff up with the express intent to get them fired. Doesn’t matter if it was a long time ago. Doesn’t matter if they were minors. Doesn’t matter if they’ve since changed their mind. Doesn’t matter if they apologize.
I don’t understand, is that a good thing? Or is that just something that should be shrugged off?
It isn’t. Because I’m one of the “smart ones” that never publicly make political statements on the clock or off, even though that wasn’t always the case. See, you don’t have to put me in prison. I have a family to feed so the threat of a loss off livelihood is enough. And there are people like me everywhere. Guess what, the end result is the exact same whether the first amendment existed or not. I’m not saying anything. Forced compliance.
Tell me, do you think forced compliance is sustainable in the long term?
Do you believe that only these people would sign the letter if asked? They were asked if they wanted to to be a signatory. And they were asked because they were people of influence. I’d sign it in a heartbeat if asked.
Yes, but when you take any disagreement as shrill/ shrieking, then you will always be able to call yourself the victim.
I applaud you for your situation, but none of this is good. You should be able to tell a Trumper that he can’t call your employee a "N_ _ _ _ _ " and have them not leave a nasty review full of lies. You should be able to tell customers that they have to wear masks and not have them cancel on you.
That’s the whole point of this discussion; it shouldn’t be like that.
Who says all these things don’t matter?
Seriously, who?
It’s an observation. I am explaining to you how the real world works. I pass no judgment on it.
Lets say you are a Trump supporter, and you pull up to my shop, and I’ve got “Trump sucks” and worse signs all over my windows. Are you going to come in and look for a meeting of minds, or are you going to go somewhere else?
If you think the former, do you have any idea on how to go about creating that society?
I do the same, as I just said in what you responded to with supposed confusion. So what’s your point? No one said anything at all about prison, I’m not sure why you chose to bring that up.
Are you saying things here? Are you being persecuted for your opinions? I don’t think so.
If you make public statements of opinion, the entire reason for that is to try to change public opinion to yours.
No one is forcing you to do anything, they are just not allowing you to control how the rest of the world reacts to what you choose to share with the public.
To call it “forced compliance”, to consider the idea of being criticized by your peers to be the same as having the government oppress your ability to express them at all is the height of reveling in victim hood.
I’m in the same boat, as I described. If I publicly stated what I believe, I would lose the majority of my clients. But I don’t whine about it can call it forced compliance.
I disagree with you entirely that being aware that there are consequences of speech is “forced compliance”, while prohibiting anyone from making a judgement or statement in response to your publicly stated opinion is far more of forcing compliance, and far harder to either implement or sustain, long term or short, without having an extremely oppressive government control over speech.
The people in the letter are all people who make a living off of making statements in public. It’s a privilege that can be revoked if they use it irresponsibly.
Okay, and what remedy do you propose?
We could end racism, that good with you?
They were asked because they all have platforms and power that almost none of us here on the board have access to.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the ‘not wanting to be criticized’ from. What the letter—whether justly or not—bemoans is a weakening of open debate, and a loss of toleration of differences; it’s explicit in not wanting to stifle debate:
We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.
What’s indeed considered problematic is the culture of persecution for exposing the wrong views:
Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
This doesn’t read, to me, as ‘I want to be able to state my opinion without being criticized’. To the contrary—criticism and ‘caustic counter-speech’ is explicitly encouraged.
Again, I think this focuses on entirely the wrong issue. Nobody’s going home to mommy crying because somebody disagreed with them. But if it’s as the letter alleges—if people are fired, shunned, have their livelihood threatened unless they express only the correct opinions—then that’s precisely the opposite of an open society.
The complaint is about the culture within which it’s more reasonable to call for somebody’s removal so as to not be tainted by their views, rather than engage them and those views directly.
Again—that’s not the complaint. You’re making this sound like just so much whining about wanting to be insulated from contrary opinions, when it’s just the opposite—when, in fact, contrary opinions are explicitly invited, and open debate encouraged. But lobbying for somebody’s removal isn’t open debate.
Quite. But my point is, despite that racism was never OK. So there’s an additional layer beyond just what society judges to be OK.
But by concentrating on the boundaries—which make up the tiniest percentage of issues—we’re losing sight of where the meat of the debate lies. Everything gets pushed to those boundaries, and the middle ground drops out. There’s only us and them, and if you’re not one of us, you’re one of them.
This skirts dangerously close to guilt-by-association thinking. Hitler was a vegetarian; his lobbying for vegetarianism wouldn’t due to his evil taint vegetarianism, as well. Agreeing with Hitler on vegetarianism doesn’t mean agreeing with Hitler tout court—that’s also part of the issue: rejection is total, and encompasses the whole of the rejected individual. Once we’ve disclaimed somebody, the thought of having common ground with them becomes abhorrent. That’s I think a dangerous mistake to make.
Well, I don’t really want to ‘impose’ anything on anyone; but other than that, the same way you’d lobby for any other change you want to see in society: tell people about it, and act accordingly. If enough people think it fun, perhaps they’ll join.
Besides, the repeated refrain of ‘what do you propose to do about it?’ is itself sorta fallacious: you’re not only allowed to raise an issue if you can provide a solution. I can say ‘global warming is bad’ without being obliged to present a strategy for how to deal with it.
I’m not completely on board with this, because it invites what Popper (in ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’) called ‘the paradox of tolerance’: the society that’s tolerant to everything alike will eventually fall to the intolerant. It’s the same principle as that your freedom ends where mine begins. Just as one isn’t free to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, one isn’t free to deny another’s freedom.
Other than that, though, I’m completely on board with the essential freedom of opposing views on finds repugnant, and disagrees with—and I’m reasonable certain that the intent of the letter is to uphold exactly this kind of freedom. What is being attacked is the unfreedom fostered by requiring allegiance to some particular party line to be allowed an expression of opinion.
There are very limited circumstances where I would offer a defense of child prostitution (as a desperate way to secure other basic needs of the child), so you are mistaken in that regard.
~Max
Nope, I don’t believe that at all. I was simply agreeing with k9bfriender that "these hypocrites especially. They are the ones who want to have it both ways. "
Of course, there are other people who might agree with this letter, from all walks of life. I think, though, that confusing/muddling the loss of a privileged platform of influence with the loss of free speech indicates a lack of understanding about the real nature of free speech.
If someone who read some of your comments on here was really offended by one of your opinions, what should that person do? Should they logically lay out the reasons they disagree and why your opinions are offensive and wrong? What about if they searched for your identity, found out the name of your business, and emailed a bunch of examples to all your clients? Would both of those actions just fall under consequences of free speech? or would the person who did the latter be trying to suppress your opinions? Would it be okay if people had done similar things in the past?
By denying the validity of this letter, which gives explicit examples of quasi-totalitarianism which is going on now, you are. At least indirectly. We can view the signatories as whiners that just want to be able to say whatever they want without consequences, but if you can cancel these people, you can cancel anybody. And that includes some Joe Shmoe that said some formerly uncontroversial thing 10 years ago
That would be a boycott. I am not opposed to boycotts because boycotts aren’t necessarily tied to speech. I boycotted Taco Bell for years because took my favorite item off the menu. I would say 90% of all the businesses in the vicinity I have not stepped foot in and it has nothing to do with speech.
What I’m saying is the first amendment protects you from going to prison for speaking. But speech has a low threshold for most people when it comes to risk taking. You don’t have to threaten prison to have a massive chilling effect on speech. Taking food off my family’s table will do just fine.
Yeah, I am saying things here. Ashtura is not my real name btw.
I am not talking about mere criticism from your peers. Nobody is, and neither is the letter.
So what do you propose in terms of moving society in the direction you’d prefer?
It bemoans the way that others are reacting to the opinions that they express to the public. Sure, they phrased is differently, and claimed that that is not what they were complaining about, but ultimately, that is exactly what they are complaining about, that the public is criticizing them for their opinions.
They encourage criticism, sure, just not criticism that may have any consequence.
they aren’t going to mommy, they are writing an open letter. They are playing the refs, the public, and trying to get sympathy for their martyrdom. IF it is as the letter alleges, but we have already determined that one of the claims was extremely disingenuous and left out quite a bit of context. Fine for a pit thread, poor for a debate.
And it’s not “only the correct opinions” there are a whole lot of “correct” opinions. It is abhorrent opinions that people get upset about.
If I have an opinion that you are not really human, do not deserve rights, and in fact, if we suffer you to live at all, should be relegated to the most undignified life we can managed to put you through, is that just not having a “correct” opinion?
But that’s the thing. I could kind of get behind the letter if it were a letter to employers. “Hey, if you hear some shit about one of your employees, give them the benefit of the doubt before canning them.” And if that was what the letter said, then this is an example of exactly that.
But, the letter is telling society to stop calling out opinions that it finds noxious. Even in a case where no consequence comes of the public voicing its opinion is elevated as an example of what is wrong in the discourse.
There are two reasons to “lobby” for someone’s removal. The first is as I said. If I see someone marching with Nazi’s, and then I see them working at McDonalds, then I don’t want to give them money. I may even say something to that effect to someone in charge, but I am not demanding their removal, just exercising my own rights to spend my money where I want to spend my money.
The other reason is when they are a public figure. In this case, they have power, they have voice, and they can put their opinion out in front of far more than you can. That is when actually calling for a removal, rather than a debate, makes sense. There is no debate with that kind of power disparity. Is Sean Hannity going to give me a chance to have a back and forth with him, uneditied, for the world to see? No? Then since he’s not looking for open debate, my only remedy is to ask that his voice be removed.
If he finds a platform that welcomes him, great. But, just because Fox News welcomes Hannity’s opinion doesn’t mean that if someone expressed something similar on NPR, that there wouldn’t be “howls” for their removal.
I’m not sure how we judge past societies. The past is a foreign country, they did things differently there. I agree that racism was always wrong, and was always harmful not only to the oppressed, but to the oppressor.
But, society didn’t feel that way for a long, long, long time. Only the last few decades of thousands of years of history do we have anything like egalitarianism.
How else does anything at all get judged if not by society? In a couple hundred years, eating meat may be unethical, and we may say that it was always unethical. That doesn’t mean that society right now doesn’t think that it’s ethical. That doesn’t mean that if you start shouting “Meat is Murder!” you won’t be shouted (laughed) down.
I wasn’t concentrating on the boundary, it was one part of a very long post (looks like we’re not limited to 3500 characters anymore). But boundary conditions are important to consider when you are trying to invoke social change.
There are a bunch of people on this board I have minor disagreements with, there is no one correct opinion. It is not nearly as black and white as you make it out to be.
OTOH, there are people that have opinions that I do believe are incorrect and abhorrent, and they are against me because they are against the existence or humane treatment of myself or other fellow human beings that I care about. They make it us vs them.
No, I do not see that at all. I am not saying that I would give up cheeseburgers because a Nazi is cooking one, I am saying that I don’t want to eat a cheeseburger cooked by a Nazi. I especially don’t want a cheeseburger if purchasing that cheeseburger goes to help to fund that Nazi. Everything else in your statement there makes the assertion that I would give up cheeseburgers because a Nazi cooked one, which is the exact opposite of what I explicitly said.
Okay, great. Would you write an open letter that complains that people aren’t following your Aztec example? That would actually be better than the one we are discussing, as we’ll get to in the next paragraph.
But that’s just it. Without a solution, it’s just a complaint. The letter didn’t propose any solutions. It just leaves it as an exercise to the reader to solve their problem for them. If they talked about how the Aztecs settled their disputes without anyone’s feelings being hurt or livelihoods threatened, then at least they’d be providing an example of how they wished people would express their opinions. Instead, they just complained about how people express their opinions.
This is not the place for a Global Warming discussion, but I can certainly say that I have many recommendations and strategies for combating it. Even a simple “reduce carbon emissions” is a more substantive solution than the nonsolution that they put out.
But that’s just it. By shouting down abhorrent opinions is how society tells what opinions it finds intolerable. It doesn’t infringe on the freedom of the one who holds an abhorrent position, but it also prevents falling to the intolerant. The complaint I see in the letter isn’t that Hitler is shouting from the rooftops, it is that people are shouting back.
And I disagree that this is actually a thing. Given that the one claim that has been analyzed in the letter has turned out to be a very disingenuous and nearly false account of what happened, I have little faith that the others are as innocent as they claim to be either.
There is no allegiance to any party line that is required to be allowed an expression of opinion. There may be some party lines that you have to follow, if someone is providing a platform for you to express your opinion, they may have requirements for that opinion, but that isn’t the same thing that you are talking about at all. If you are a Fox News anchor, for instance, you probably will lose your position if you start taking liberal positions. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a job at CNBC.
I think this is close to the mark, but not exactly the point I would try to make. And the remedy is certainly not a directive - as if any authority could control whether individuals pass judgement upon others. Even Jesus has trouble with that one.
I mean, let’s go back to tangible examples. Let’s say you have a very strong position on the right of a man to marry another man. You find out that this dude, Joe, he doesn’t think a man should be allowed to marry a man. Turns out, Joe is an activist for overturning that wedding cake case, and he waits tables at the local diner. What do you do?
You don’t want to give your money to Joe because that’s like making a donation to his activism, which is against your core values. So you don’t eat at that diner any more, or at least you don’t give him a tip and you ask for a different waiter. OK, fine.
Let’s move it to the next level. Now you’re talking to your friends/acquaintances, who want to eat at the diner because they like the food. You won’t win that argument, what the hell, you go with them. You’ve had your meal and you ask your friends not to tip the waiter. Or maybe you just refuse to offer your part of the tip. They say, no way, he did his job and he deserves a tip, waiters need tips to live, etc. You tell them they are practically supporting the anti-gay-marriage movement. They reply, no they aren’t, they’re just tipping a waiter. Do you get mad? Straight out of Reservoir Dogs, they might say “Fuck you for not tipping the waiter”.
We’ll go further. Let’s say you have some clout. You’re surrounded by like-minded people who are really put up with these dudes who are against same-sex marriage. Someone suggests holding a public debate. No, holding a public debate acknowledges that you might be wrong, it gives too much legitimacy to the other side. You can’t afford risking the status quo by stoking more public debate. Someone suggests publicly shaming local businesses (like the diner) who employ anti-same-sex marriage advocates. Do you support this latter suggestion?
~Max
I actually didn’t need to know that, but thank you for expressing your opinion.
Okay can somebody name off these so-called “abhorrent positions”? BESIDES JK Rowling? This thing has 150 signatories! They’re ALL whinging about holding abhorrant positions without consequence??
OP mentions opposing Trump (while surrounded by Trump supporters).
~Max
I questioned the validity of one of the claims in the letter, and as the rest do not have any context, and are as vague, I do have my doubts on their validity as well. Are you saying that the letter was open and honest in their description of someone who got fired just for sharing a peer reviewed study?
I am not saying that they don’t matter, I am saying that their claims are bunk.
If society decides that these people do not deserve a place in the public sphere, then it does so because it’s not just me, it’s not just a few people, it is a large segment of society. You complain about some slippery slope, when it is actually quite the uphill battle to remove noxious voices from the public sphere.
But what if a boycott is to do with speech?
Like I said, I “boycott” Hobby Lobby and Chickfilet for the political views of their owners. Am I part of cancel culture? Am I doing something wrong?
If I walk into McDonald’s, and see someone there that was at a Nazi rally, am I wrong in taking my money elsewhere?
Are you expressing your opinion right now? Are you worried about your family starving because of what you are saying? Who is shutting you up?
No one is going to cancel you for your opinions, no one cares who you are. If you are very prominent, and lots of people know and care who you are you are going to be a bigger target, something that comes along with the perks of being very prominent. As an private individual, you would have to do something very noxious in order for anyone to care. Marching with Nazis would be one of those things, but I honestly can’t think of much else. I wouldn’t leave your McDonalds because I saw you protesting an abortion clinic, even though I wouldn’t be your friend.
So, the only people who have to worry about being “canceled” are people who make a living being in the public eye, or people with exceptionally toxic opinions.
Okay, so your speech is not being stifled, there is no chilling effect.
That’s all the letter is talking about. They were not assaulted or even threatened with assault. People criticized their actions, that’s all they did.
In some of the cases, apparently their employers agreed with the criticism of their peers, and took disciplinary action. In others, it is left very vague as to what the criticism actually was, as well as the reaction. I suspect it is left vague intentionally, as the one that we have nailed down turned out to be nothing like what was described in the letter at all.