I’m a fully trained (though not practicing as I have ultimately chosen a different and only slightly related career path) continental European lawyer, and I remember how surprised I was when I first heard the idea - it might have even been here or on a similar forum - of hiring and firing of employees being covered by the employer’s freedom of association. Over here, this would be an extremely unusual and marginal position. Personally, I have trouble associating (no pun intended) this particular freedom with inherently unequal relationships, such as the relationship between an employer and an employee.
That’s what I’m saying too- your de jure right to free speech includes being a total asshole. The government cannot and should not censor you.
But if you’re exercising said right in an assholic way, then private citizens and organizations are also free to deal with you (or not) how they will.
Let’s use a hypothetical. You’re totally free to stand on a street corner wearing swastikas, wearing a Hitler mustache and screaming “Heil Hitler” while giving the Nazi salute. The government can’t stop you. But that doesn’t mean that shopowners need to let you in their shops, or that people have to be nice to you in any way, save not beating you senseless.
Similarly, free speech encompasses the ability to say things that are patently wrong. Like say… our favorite idiots, anti-vaxxers. They have the freedom to state their “beliefs”, as factually wrong and ignorant as they may be. Society and people don’t have to value that nonsense in the least bit- it’s wrong and stupid and should be loudly denounced, and people that disseminate that stuff should be ostracized and ridiculed for the stupidity of their beliefs.
In other words, they’re welcome to say what they want, and we’re welcome to say what we want/do what we want in reaction to it. And the government shouldn’t interfere. The reason for this is because if you let the government abridge the right to free speech, you’d have places like certain counties across the country with high proportions of anti-vaxxers that might have actually prohibited speaking out against it. Or any number of other things that might be polarizing.
Instead the government stays out, and people fight it out through the free exchange of ideas, etc… and hopefully stupidity like anti-vaccination will lose in the long run.
The part of it that distresses me is that too many people these days are flat out stupid, and have been warped by stupid conspiracy theories and have such distrust about scientific and technological issues that they’ll listen to idiots like the “Food Babe” who spout nonsense, and be distrustful of people and organizations who aren’t saying what they want to hear.
For free speech to be “truly” meaningful, or to be “true” free speech, there has to be a certain amount of immunity to social consequences, not just legal consequences. Otherwise it is not meaningful from a practical perspective.
If a gay person is *legally *allowed to “come out of the closet,” but knows that doing so will cost him his family, job, friends, social circle and reputation, then as a practical matter he does not have free speech (in the sense of free speech = being able to express his gay identity.) It would be a mockery to say, “Well, you’re *legally *allowed to come out as gay, so you have free speech!” when doing so would cost him everything else he holds dear.
This isn’t to say that all speech should be tolerated - false info should be punished, as is libel and slander - but it is meaningless to say that speech is “free” if it only entails mere legal protection. That’s only “free speech” in the most utter bare-bones sense. It is not truly robust free speech. It would be akin to how pro-lifers say that Roe v Wade allows women the legal right to an abortion in theory, but in practice do everything they can to make abortion so practically inaccessible that the woman might as well not have the right to abortion.
Hmm, good point. That is a bad example. But a social group ostracizing you because they found out you’re a nazi still works perfectly fine.
Then there is not and never has been “true” free speech, and the concept is, as you define it, virtually indefensible.
Yes, and this is how it has been for most of America’s history. So the ideal you’re appealing to has literally never existed. Not once. Because it can’t. If a friend of mine would hate me for coming out as gay, what am I supposed to do about that? If that applies to all of my friends, what could I possibly do to change that? Somehow force them to be friends with me? When it comes to employment or housing or public venues, there’s a case to be made for antidiscrimination legislation (which the right has frequently referred to as “limiting free speech”), but you cannot police a social circle or a family like that. The most you can do is to try to change their minds, or change society.
And yeah, it’s tragic that people were homophobic. But that’s how it is. And, interestingly enough, when it comes to the social consequences for speech, we’ve gotten a lot better in recent years! Now, instead of people seeing massive consequences for, say, coming out as gay, people are seeing minor consequences for things like “calling someone a faggot on a livestream”. That’s an improvement! 
Whoaaaaa slow the fuck down there! That’s literally the most anti-free-speech thing anyone has said in this entire thread! Legal punishment (I have to assume that’s what you mean, if you compare it to libel and slander) for false information is a clear infringement on free speech, no matter how happy I’d be to see Fox News eat shit and die.
Yep!
The real problem these days isn’t with the people spewing false stuff, it’s the inability of a big chunk of the general public to actually discern what’s true, what’s fake, and what’s hideously distorted.
Something’s gone way awry if the recommendations of scientists and experts are looked at askance for the mere sin of *being *an expert in something, like they automatically have a hidden agenda they’re pushing. The other big problem is that the internet gives any old idiot like that “Food Babe” cretin an open forum and some degree of credibility, so long as their website/blog looks polished and slick. People are more willing to listen to some boob on instagram about how to work out/eat instead of honest-to-god nutritionists and medical professionals, because the insta-boob shows a picture of how hot they are, and how they lost weight, etc…
But they’re allowed to say all that stuff, no matter how biased, factually wrong or sketchy it may seem. We just need people to change what they look at skeptically.
I didn’t say it was stated anywhere, which is why I already apologized for making that assumption.
However, it is a difficult thing to contrast different countries and their different priorities, and how the laws actually work out to achieve those ends.
I think that criticism of the govt should be sacrosanct. That one is non-negotiable. The government should never be allowed to censor someone calling for a change to that govt, short of actually making a call to action for revolt.
Criticism of your fellow citizens, I see as a semi-necessary evil in order to keep the govt away from speech entirely, but, as it is already making some practical restrictions on free speech, it’s not really a slippery slope to saying that you cannot use your speech to publicly disparage other ethnicity, or other people for being of that demographic group
It is a different balancing act, and one that I, personally, would like to stay on this side of, but I don’t really see it as the descent into authoritarianism that apparently you do.
I suppose that would depend on what you mean by support. Like I said, I did not see much support for their actual law, but I did see support for their right to have such laws. It is possible that you are adding that second number to the first which exaggerates your point and casts a greater shadow of fear.
I disagree with this slippery slope fallacy.
Yelling fire in a crowded theater leads to mass panic and stampedes.
The UK had an incident within living memory where shouting other things lead to a much greater mass panic and stampedes. I can understand from their perspective that they do not see the same value in allowing Nazi propaganda as we do.
Once again, slippery slope. Your argument does not follow.
These laws were passed because the citizens of the country wanted these laws passed. That does not meant aht other laws will be passed that the citizens of the country do not want to be passed.
Safer, than what?
It is amazing to me that you even think that.
Some of us believe that there can be a balance between “free speech”, and using speech responsibly, and then there are those who feel that any encouragement to use speech responsibly is a one way trip to authoritarian dictatorship.
Someone calls your sister a whore. Do you go out to drinks with him?
Someone calls your sister a whore, do you invite them to your social club?
You are asking for regulation of society. You are asking that society not be free to express its reaction to hateful speech. You demand that you can call my sister a whore, and that I must still be your friend, I cannot even criticise you, or ask you to stop calling my sister a whore. You are against free speech, much much much more than someone who criticizes someone for hate speech.
There is a difference between affiliation and expression of that affiliation. If an employee happened to vote for Trump, I would not fire them. If they come in everyday, and make a scene about their support for Trump, then I see no reason why I should have to hold onto a disruptive employee.
Same as religion. I cannot fire someone for being a christian, nor would I want to. I may and will fire someone if their christian beliefs mean that they will not “tolerate” working with a homosexual employee.
As a fully trained continental european lawyer, may I ask how I would handle it if someone is expressing their support of their political ideals to the detriment of my business and employees?
So, if I call your sister a whore, you have to thank me?
Then that is something to ask the homophobes about. You are right, that it used to take tremendous courage, and still takes quite a bit, in order to come out, due to the consequences that they will face.
But your argument is that someone “coming out” as a Nazi should face lesser consequences than someone coming out as gay.
Say your friend comes out as gay. You call them a f*****. Do they have to be your friend anymore?
That is a terrible analogy. Roe V Wade allows women the legal right to abortion, but I have no problem with them protesting about it all they want, so long as they maintain the proper distance from clinics and patients. What they do that we object to is to use the govt to infringe upon that right by making restrictions and requirements that are not actually necessary, but simply makes it harder to obtain the medical procedure that is desired.
If your friend gets an abortion to which she has the legal right to access, you are legally allowed to call them a whore, that’s legal. But they don’t have to be your friend anymore. to expect otherwise is just pure ridiculousness.
I think you aren’t understand the law. There is no slippery slope. The UK law that those prosecutions were brought under (again a recent law in the last decade or so) makes it a crime to make “offensive” communications on electronic media. The slope has already been slid down, the UK government has already made the call that it doesn’t think free speech is a good thing, and basically abolished it. The fact they are currently choosing to prosecute racist arseholes with the law doesn’t change that. There isn’t subsection that says only racist arseholes will be prosectued under this law, when the racist arseholes are in charge they will prosecute speech they find “offensive”, not with some future hypothetical law, with this exact law.
Than other countries that don’t have the explicit well-defined protection of free speech the US constitution provides. We have a president who has explicitly stated they want to infringe on free speech, and who has (until recently) controlled both houses of the legislature and appointed two supreme court justices. But the right of free speech remains, and is (for now) safe.
By “encouragement” you mean the state encouraging people to use speech responsibly by sending people to prison for speech they deem offensive, yeah that’s a one way ticket to somewhere, and its not a free and just society.
But actually the point I am making, is that its NOT the same people who are pushing the world in an authoritarian direction who are making and supporting these laws. That is why its so amazingly short sighted. It tends to be the people who ARE opposed to Putin, Trump, the alt-right, et al, that are supporting these laws.
The logic is: “Oh shit authoritarianism is on the rise. Lets make a law that says the government can send people to prison for saying something they find offensive. No way an authoritarian government could ever use that against us!”
As usual this kind of discussion is frustrating because most American posters seem to start with the premises of:
Free speech means the right to say anything to anyone
The US has free speech, other countries do not
In reality no country gives the right to say anything anytime and the US is no exception.
Upthread someone talked about standing on a street corner in a Nazi outfit shouting racist words… How about standing outside an elementary school shouting sexual swear words… Should that be protected speech?
And indeed the US in some respects it is more restrictive; where does the US come in the world rankings of freedom of the press?
Having said all that, I agree with many of the actual complaints; of recent terrible changes to the law in the UK and attempts to block some people from speaking in the US. I’m just objecting to the typical framing.
You just said there is no slippery slope, and then described a slippery slope.
It is in the hands of those supreme court justices, actually.
Consider that the man who has appointed those Justices, and may have a chance to appoint more said,
I am actually more than a little concerned about that sort of thing. Being able to criticize the government is a far more important right than being able to tell your fellow citizen how much you hate them.
It is not the left that is the problem here. The left says, “Hey, please don’t pick on underprivileged minorities”, and the authoritarian right says, “Don’t you dare criticize those in power, or they will use their power to squash you.”
You are fretting and gnashing your teeth about the former, while rolling out the red carpet for the latter.
Sure, sure, that’s exactly what I meant. :rolleyes:
There are several different threads going on here, both in what is prohibited, and who is “prohibiting”, and you seem to have difficulty separating them.
We have what the State prohibits, which can fall into 4 categories. Public safety, libel and slander, hate speech, and criticism of the government.
We are in agreement on the first two, correct? You cannot use your speech to threaten public safety, whether that be yelling “fire” in a theater, or directly calling for violence. I would say that that would also cover some other things like child pornography or solicitation and advertisement for illegal goods and services. Are you okay with that?
You also cannot use your speech to tell lies and harm someone’s reputation publically. Do you object that that restriction on your speech?
Do you feel that those prohibitions will cuase a slippery slope to create more prohibitions?
Now, we get into the parts that you probably do not agree with, hate speech. I see the argument that hate speech can fall under public safety, and, given the violence that has surrounded some of the rallies that have had people on for the purpose of denigrating minorities, I can see the argument. I don’t completely agree with the argument, but enough that I would, if given the choice, vote for keeping hate speech laws off the books, but if I lost that vote, I would not start crying totalitarianism. (Even though I could, as there would be no prohibition against that.)
Finally, we get into criticism of the government, which is what you are trying to warn us will become prohibited. That is a separate catagory. It does not follow that not being allowed to go out into public and call for the genocide of an ethnic group means that you will not be able to petition the government for redress. It does not mean that you will be prohibited from assembling and showing your collective dislike of govt policies. Anything along those lines, I’m right there with you, and I think that 99.99% of those you are worried about falling down a slippery slope will be as well. That is the role of the authoritarians. When you have people threatening retribution for speaking of or criticizing the govt, whether it be because of an SNL skit, or kneeling for the Anthem, that is authoritarianism, and there are many examples to choose from, should you choose to actually look. And I doubt you will find many who are anti-govt criticism who are anti-hate speech.
And then we have the completely separate topic of what is permitted by the public, and that is whatever is permitted by the public. It is not illegal for you to call my sister a whore, but if you do it in a job interview, then I’m not going to hire you. From your “concerns” about speech and the slippery slope that it is tumbling down, I should have to hire someone who has directly and intentionally insulted my family, to do otherwise is to encourage authoritarianism.
In fact, it has been a movement of the left, those you consider to be pushing us down this slippery slope, who has said that there are some things that you may not find offensive, that you may not discriminate upon, and the authoritarians call that an infringement on speech.
I generally don’t have to hire you if you offend me, but I may not take offense at your race or gender or other protected class, and use that offense as a reason not to hire you.
If you want to criticize someone’s logic, criticize that of the authoritarians, who feel that you should be able to discriminate against someone for being black or gay or female, but you should not be allowed to discriminate against someone for being a Nazi. I guess the logic is that what you say is protected, but who you are isn’t.
While I can see how laws against hate speech can give someone the impression that there is becoming a prohibition on criticism of government, that is really not the case. That is a slippery slope fallacy, once again. Germany has had anti-hate speech laws on the books since we kicked their asses due to the actions they took inspired by their hate speech.
Where is the slippery slope that they are falling down? I would say that they are far less authoritarian now than they were before Nazi propaganda was prohibited.
No, the logic is: “Hey, people are encouraging violence against minorities and other underprivileged demographics. We should not allow that. We can prevent the encouragement of violence without prohibiting criticism of the government.”
If it is an authoritarian government that has suspended elections, then it doesn’t matter what it is that the people wanted, the govt will shut down any speech it doesn’t like, “freedom of speech” or not. If it is an authoritarian government that was brought in by the democratic process, then apparently, that is what the people want.
If enough people decide that free speech isn’t important, then we could rescind the first amendment. By your logic, just the ability to modify the constitution and remove 1A is a slippery slope towards authoritarianism.
For a layman’s academic argument on this topic, I recommend Stanley Fish’s essay “There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech (and It’s a Good Thing, Too).” PDF here. It’s from the 90s PC wars, so as you read you might want to mentally translate “neoconservative” to “alt-Right” or “Intellectual Dark Web” or whatever, and switch some of the “liberals” to “SJWs.”
He covers things others have brought up here: the paradox of tolerance, the fuzzy distinction between speech and action, and the existence of commonly-accepted exceptions (“fire,” fighting words, defamation, obscenity).
Nickel summary: “free speech” can’t help having boundaries, and those boundaries are constantly subject to being redrawn. Appeals to a “neutral” value of free speech are naive (or, too often, a disingenuous tactic). We need to be much more thoughtful, responsible, and explicit in making arguments about the boundaries of free speech – we should treat those arguments as political, because they are political, and always have been. In doing so, we honor the power of our words and take responsibility for their effects.
To the extent that people are being explicit in talking about punishing or restricting speech, we should be happy – they are being honest. And we should debate them when we disagree with their program! But our arguments have to be more than an appeal to a vague value like “free speech.” Because none of us believe in that 100% – thank goodness.
Yes.
That kind of essay is EXACTLY why having a non-vague, well defined right to free speech protected by the constitution is such a good idea.
Of course the right of free speech, like all fundamental human rights, is complicated and has edge cases. But that doesn’t make it not a thing or mean its pointless or naive to appeal to it as a value, or that we be happy when someone says they are going to take it away.
And it also doesn’t mean that if you don’t like the result of some edge cases, that we are slipping into an orwellian fascist dictatorship of thought police.
It doesn’t mean that if someone else can accept the result of an edge case that you don’t like, that that person is against free speech.
If someone disagrees with you as to appropriate limits of free speech, that doesn’t mean that they think that it’s not a thing or mean it’s pointless or naive to appeal to it as a value, nor that they would be happy when someone says they are going to take it away.
Firing someone because they don’t represent the organization’s values is a form of speech. Would you rather Burger King he forced to keep on a drive-thru worker spouting racist slurs through the speaker?
Trump is presumably allowed to give his opinion on an organization’s policy, no?
All true, but banning offensive speech is NOT an edge case, any more than banning speech that is critical of the head of state is. If you can’t say something the state says is offensive, or upsets the head of state, then you don’t have a meaningful right to free speech.
It is not always a good thing. There are consequences with what you say: getting fired, parents grounding you, or getting sued. I am fine with some regulations like the rulings against inciting violence, shouting “fire” in a crowded place, child porn, etc. While we have many rights in the U.S., it does help to use them wisely as much as you can.
Those are two different things.
I have said that I am against banning of hate speech, but it is not the same as banning criticism of govt.
If we banned hate speech tomorrow, I would vote against it, and I would advise my representatives that I do not think that it is a great idea, mostly in how to effectively enforce it, what constitutes hate vs provocative, and such, but I’m not going to throw a riot over it.
Ban my ability to criticize govt, and I’m in the streets with whatever I can find that will burn.
In what way are they different? In that how can a consistent constitutional system protect the right of free speech from one but not the other?
The argument behind Lese Majeste laws (in places like Thailand) is “the people” have such respect for the position of monarch that they find any speech that criticizes the monarch extremely offensive, and hence a punishable by prosecution.
That is the same reasoning behind hate speech laws, there are certain things that “the people” find offensive (rightly IMO) and therefore its OK to make saying them punishable by prosecution.
If in the future what the “the people” find offensive changes (maybe the US people suddenly develop a intense respect for the office of the president and don’t want people criticizing the POTUS) then those too become punishable by prosecution.
It is not a fine line, and it isn’t even a narrow line at all, more of a thousand mile wide strip that separates criticism of the govt from hate speech toward fellow citizens.
Like I said, I do not advocate hate speech laws, though for the opposite reason, in that I do not think that they would be effective at preventing people from being hateful, they would, for the most part, just find the line of where it is acceptable, and ride that new line to demonstrate their hate, just as bigots in the US currently ride that line as close as they can up to calling for violence against those they hate, but I do not see them as being in the same catagory of redress of grievances against the govt.
For instance, if we had a black president, I could see having a situation where it is not legal to call him a n*, just as currently, it is not legal to call for harm to befall him, but where it is perfect allowable to call him a thief, a crook, or even gasp a politician.