I’m not saying NO consequences.
I’m just saying at some point (IMO of course) on the scale of increasing social consequences, you’ve (as a collective society) have gone too far. Or again, so far that free speech is only free in a technical sense of the word.
But your approach would limit freedom of expression. How is that better?
For whatever it’s worth, De Tocqueville agrees with you:
That said, I think the system is big enough, diverse enough, complex enough that there are outlets available for all types of speech, and important ideas have the possibility of bubbling to the top. It may take longer than if there were no social cost to exploring those ideas, but I don’t think it’s a fatal flaw in democracy and free speech.
Expression not equal actions.
Please don’t get fixated on my bad vibes part of my post.
Man that’s one long winded dude 
The bolded part brings up another interesting IMO point.
Do “social costs”, either good or bad I suppose, help or hinder progression of a society?
I’m sympathetic to the idea that certain rights are hardly rights if you don’t get to use them. This is a common criticism of libertarianism by liberals, and it comes into play for public accommodations and employment and the like.
But you do end up in a spiral of limiting expression if you try to limit people’s reaction to expression. Hindering free speech to protect free speech makes less sense than hindering business rights to protect civil rights. In the latter, we have societally decided that that civil rights are more important. In the former, there is no real principled distinction to be made.
No doubt. Depending on the mechanism of limiting.
But if you “limit” peoples reactions to “bad speech” to other SPEECH by the peoples then no expression has been limited.
And keep in mind I am not saying there should be some “official” mechanism for doing this. I am saying that as members of society that values free speech we need to realize the difference between “not inviting that asshole to my birthday party” and “buy your gasoline somewhere else asshole” (when you are the only gas station for 50 miles).
So you want it to be another public accommodation issue.
I wonder how much overlap there is between people who support boycotts against people for constitutionally protected speech, and those who oppose boycotts against people for committing felonies.
Can you clarify what you mean by a “boycott”? I’m fairly sure I support what I consider boycotts for any reason whatsoever, but I might be using the word differently than you do.
By boycott I mean to choose to avoid patronizing a business because of its practices, actions, or stances.
I agree with this post very much, but lets change the facts a bit. What if you, as the owner of the gas station publicly supported the Communist Party, and I knew that every time I bought gasoline there, a part of my money went to support it.
As a consumer, I support your right to free speech, but I can’t fathom the idea of my money supporting the Communist Party, so I drive the extra 50 miles to get gas.
It’s similar to the whole Chik-Fil-A boycott a couple of years ago. On one hand, I want to say that it is ridiculous; if you like the food, then eat it, respect that people have differences of opinion and move on. But if you have a sincerely held belief in support of SSM, why give your money to those who will give it to groups fighting SSM?
Then we had a counter demonstration where folks who opposed SSM showed up in droves to eat at Chik-Fil-A. Doesn’t all of that seem crazy to use a chicken restaurant as a proxy for a battle on a social issue?
Should we say that the idea of free speech transcends all of that and we should support free speech to the max, even if it means we support groups that are opposed to our ideas?
But you would likely admit that even that has its limits. If a guy has a billboard in front of his restaurant that says “I hate all niggers, even my customers” should blacks still eat there as a tribute to the owner’s right to free speech? (Assuming they otherwise liked the food and service)
It is a dicey area because free speech could disappear for the reasons De Tocqueville stated. I think that we should err on the side of not holding differing political views against someone. It seems to be happening already that people are afraid to say what they believe for fear of retribution from the community. That is bad because it prevents full exploration of ideas.
We could and should concede that racism is dead and not a viable political topic, but look how that worked in the middle ages when certain topics were off limits. The way to combat racist ideas and other bad ideas is by continually defeating them with argument and not making the discussion taboo. Otherwise, we will have a list of things that nobody ever mentions for fear of being a social outcast. Society then can never reexamine ideas that might have been wrongfully cemented as fact.
Not “boycott”, “boycott against people”. The phrase was intended to differentiate between the types of interpersonal interactions where we have freedom of association (a racist can choose not to socialise with someone because they are black) and the ones where we don’t (a racist cannot legally choose not to employ someone because they are black).
It is the latter that concerns me. There are people who are way too eager to ruin somebody’s livelihood for reasons that might not be as clear cut as racism but are still pretty shitty. A woman should not have to be a nun to be a teacher, in case some fuckwit finds out she wore a bikini once and decides she needs to go. A man should not have to pretend to support this sort of zero tolerance bullshit out of fear that he’ll be fired for his heterodoxy.
I use the word the same way you do.
I’m uncomfortable with boycotts. It makes me unhappy to think that someone’s business should suffer because of them expressing their beliefs. It mixes up the two areas in a way I don’t like. It makes business-owners keep silent – or at least makes them much more reluctant to sound off.
Meanwhile…I can’t think of any conceivable remedy for this. Banning a boycott would be banning free speech, and would also lead to the absurdity of mandatory business custom, obviously a non-starter.
So…using the only tool I have here, I choose to boycott boycotts. (I know that sounds like a punch-line, but it’s actually a serious stance. Boycotts may be a popular and very successful tool to give economic leverage to speech, but they aren’t my preferred form of speech.)
I disagree with you, both if you are talking as a matter of law and if you are talking as a matter of society.
In both cases, people are being judged for their actions. Personally, I am not offended by a teacher wearing a bikini or posing nude or being in a porno or whatever example you are drawing from. And personally I am offended by racists (assuming this is drawn from the topic of the thread). So I will be, in general, opposed to the firing of the teacher and not opposed to the firing of the man with the unknown job. I think generally employers have to be able to build workforces that suit them, within the legal bounds of the law. If someone is a giant jerkface, no one should have to hire them.
So my position is that I will argue for the teacher, argue against the man, win some, and lose some, because I consider some actions fine and other actions very much not fine. It strikes me as utterly unworkable to suggest that I do not have the right to decide for myself which actions are fine or good and which are not, or to suggest that business not be permitted to react to a large enough (defined by the business) group finding its hiring/retention/policies/practices/actions bad enough to go elsewhere.
People vote with their feet; I won’t support the disenfranchisement of not being allowed to do so.
I’m comfortable with boycotts (though I rarely participate) because that is simply the function of a market. People get to buy, or not buy, your products as they choose. The consumer’s only leverage is that choice. Businesses, by virtue of their fame, often get a big megaphone. To suggest that they be allowed to use that and the aggregate of the consumers not be permitted to react would be an incredible imbalance.
But I think there is a more moderate stance you are ignoring. It’s not so much “should boycotts (and similar actions) be prohibited” as it is “should a person consider the larger free-speech issues when determining whether or not to socially or economically reject another person/business as a result of their speech”.
There is a trade-off here, and I think it’s good to acknowledge it. If we all refused to shop at stores where the owners voted the wrong way, or to work for or with people whose views were opposite ours, or even attend community organizations (religious or otherwise) if that meant associating with people whose views we found at all offensive, it would be terrible. Everyone would either live in an echo chamber or live life unable to express themselves, lest they lose half their social group.
DeTocqueville’s point, and I think it’s a good one, is that we are social creatures, this is a society. The myth of the rugged individual plays a role here–our national myth celebrates extremism in ethics and dreads having that extremism questioned–if it’s good to, say, reject all products that involved harming an animal, isn’t it even better to reject associating with people/giving money to people who do? Isn’t that sticking by your principles, putting them ahead of some weak, flabby need to conform? Isn’t, in that case, hanging out with meat eaters practically a sign that you are a poseur after all?
On the other hand, I’m not going to eat at the Hitler-themed restaurant. I think it just comes down to recognizing that social/economic expulsion needs to be a nuclear option, not a first resort. It needs to be recognized that when, even as a private individual, I refuse to associate with someone because of their speech, it does damage t the concept of a free society.
That said, sometimes the nuclear option is appropriate. Social controls are part of what allow us to live together. I think, as I said above, that society is large enough and diverse enough that there is no risk that private actions will actually kill speech that needs to be heard–they might slow it’s progression, but society is so vast, and there are so many avenues where speech can be expressed, that I think vital ideas will able to find an audience and incubate there.
In regards to OU, I think the nuclear option is appropriate–I’m not going to associate with anyone who thinks the sentiments in that chant are true.
What is so special about being the owner of a business that you should have some kind of societal right to continue to make money even if you express ideas or implement business practices that are immoral, abhorrent, and harm people?
A person in our society going around expressing racist ideas has the legal right to do so, but the rest of us also have the legal right to shun him, lest his very expression make our society worse for groups and individuals.
In our current society, our businesses—especially large ones—are too protected from notions of morality and culpability.
Freedom of association is inconsistent with a free society? You may wish to rethink this.
This seems an awful lot like “If you value tolerance, then you must tolerate my intolerance.”
I think that the super-extreme cases of expression that are “immoral, abhorrent, and harm people” are pretty easy. But there a lot of people (myself included) who feel very, very strongly about issues like abortion, vegetarianism, climate change, the existence of god, and the designated hitter rule. People genuinely feel that people who take the opposite view on these (and many other topics) are not just wrong headed, but actively immoral. Unrestrained, the ideal socially and economically shunning those who you strongly disagree with has problematic consequences. Yes, we have and should have and will have the right to do so. But choosing to act on that right–shunning people because they express beliefs that you oppose, even strongly oppose–is a Big Deal and effectively limits people’s ability to express ideas, and the avenues by which new ideas can enter the conversation.
I have no idea how one could construct a clear principle for when speech crosses a line to where social and economic shunning is appropriate, or to determine what degree of social and economic shunning is appropriate. But I do think people need to acknowledge that there is a potential problem here–that the person who militantly cuts people from their facebook feed if they fail one of 20 litmus tests, has an app to keep track of boycotts, quits their job over their boss’s voting record, etc. etc. isn’t somehow a pillar of righteousness–that sort of behavior does have a negative side effect.