I am not targeting any group, race or religion or whatever, just an observation why does it seem that freedom of speech appears to invoke an image of a defence to be an asshole?
I get it, free to speak your mind and all and sometimes hard truths need to be said that but is the concept so out of whack that people have less empathy for others that they don’t agree with that they antagonise another to the point of disrespecting the right to dignity?
It seems like humanity is hard wired for conflict and if it isn’t actively trying to kill itself it seems to find an outlet for violence some way somehow. Maybe it is social conditioning or just some primal urge that makes humans human.
I don’t even know where else I could ask it, and it seems kind of stupid to think about so… have at thee
Because insuring free speech includes everyone and the most strident assholes believe themselves to have the right to speak first and as loudly as possible.
It doesn’t mean we don’t discount their bullshit and laugh at them, it just means they are the loudest and quickest.Just to be clear, if they do somehow bring up a valid point, it is not dismissed out of hand like the obvious bullshit is.
It doesn’t seem enough anymore. I used to be a free speech absolutist: following the soap box analogy, I don’t have to listen to whatever filth you’re spewing, I can point and laugh, I might no longer be interested in being friendly. That’s all logically complete: say what you want but no one has to listen, and you’re not free of the consequences.
However online communities have taken this to a whole new level, and free speech can become actively harmful to others and to society. Now we get to the other common analogy “but you can’t yell FIRE in a crowded theater”. Just like that example, you have no right to a platform that endangers others. Unfortunately the danger is more indirect, so it’s not an exact analogy, and it’s not clear where to draw the line
The problem you’re talking about is real, but I don’t think restricting free speech is the answer.
Well said.
GenX lefty here.
I grew up with freedom of speech (the overall ideal, not the US legal concept) being a non-negotiable, axiomatic thing.
Every bit of social progress the world has seen, came about by loudly and obnoxiously challenging accepted norms, and refusing to sit down and shut up. Civil rights, worker’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights and a whole bunch more - all of them only advanced by brave people getting up on their hind legs and speaking up for them, even though it was considered an affront to common decency, even an abomination.
For a bunch of overprivileged idiots to try and pull the ladder up behind them because their comfort is offended… really fucking bothers me.
I promise, I absolutely guaranfuckingtee that every person alive today will one day be on the wrong side of history; there are norms in society that our descendants (should humanity survive long enough for us to have any) will be utterly disgusted with all of us; and we would be just as disgusted by them. The shiny GenZ hope-of-the-world darlings of today will be the contempible boomers of 60 years from now, that’s just how history works. You can’t stop that from happening; the best you can do is increase social flexibility and mobility so they don’t remain totally rooted in the norms of their youth.
The absolute unmitigated gall of people today to imagine that no, unlike all that came before them, they have the right of it, that their accepted norms must be coddled and protected from any that might dare challenge them, that social change can stop right here… fuck no, fuck that, fuck them, fuck the entire concept.
You don’t disable progress, you mustn’t hobble change. And speech that offends us is the only way you get change, pretty much by definition.
Once you silence offensive speech (of whatever form), you’re locking in the status quo, and ironically that’s the most conservative thing you can ever do. Even if you believe that you and your team will never censor genuine activism, once you enable shutting-people-up as an option, you hand an absolutely terrifying weapon to the assholes that take power next time you lose the election.
Now I will grudgingly concede that the landscape has changed, that the coming of the information age has shifted the way everything works, that the mechanisms and underlying rules are changing, and that the principles of absolute freedom of speech that made sense in my youth no longer get you the same results. The internet is a big scary machine, and its ability to create filter bubbles and viral trends and cliques and misinformation and just general ugh… is pretty damn terrifying. Just look at the damn antivaxers, climate change deniers, the rampant and increasing transphobia, the fascist assholes getting their hooks in everywhere - clearly the marketplace of ideas is a mob town now, and we can’t just expect it to run itself.
How do we fix it? I don’t fucking know. Both sides seem to lead some pretty terrible places - is there a middle path somewhere? How do we trust anyone to steer it?
I agree on a lot of points, although it seems I have a more pacifist outlook while you have a more active outlook which if I am honest does more for progress.
I see freedom of speech - in the general sense - as a means to be able to express yourself and your opinions and I feel that if people could express that without outright spreading a feeling of hatred and rage then I feel pretty much anything goes within reason. As even innocuous well meaning ideas can lead to dangerous outcomes.
That doesn’t mean people should expect the status quo, but sometimes I look at chimps and their “gang wars” and think we aren’t that much different sometimes.
For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
We are primed to respond most strongly with hatred and rage… perhaps some deep primitive instinct and that gets taken advantage of.
Humans nature seems to be a violent one and if I look at history it is unfortunately violence that seems to be the most effective means to get through our thick human psyche to advance. Ancient Egypt, Alexander’s Legacy, Rome’s rise and fall, The Crusades, French Revolution, British Empire, American Independence, The World Wars.
We are forever doomed to repeat history it seems until history can no longer repeat
It is like humanity must experience great suffering and that suffering must reach a tipping point before we as a collective species change
What the next big tipping point will be that forces a change, if we last that long, I don’t know as well
Freedom of speech does mean that.
It means you have the absolute right to say anything you want to say. It also means you can say something without being a hypocrite, as you are free to speak on a particluar topic you have knowledge on or have not committed whatever you are condemning.
Many people misunderstand the term freedom of speech with regards US federal law. That law is a specific protection from the federal government for citizens, businesses, and other organizations. It is specifically to protect them from retaliation by the federal government.
It is important to note that the law does not protect citizens, businesses, or organiztions from each other. Such protections would be from local laws regarding defamation or libel.
I think those people are worried about losing their freedom of speech because people often tell them to shut the fuck up.
They are afraid of “cancel culture” because when they see someone being punished for being loud and obnoxious, they get concerned that THEY might get in trouble for being loud and obnoxious. They don’t want to stop being that way, so they feel the need to fight for their right to be an asshole.
Well, if you’re saying things everyone agrees with, you probably won’t have problems, and it won’t even come up whether you have the right to speak. Freedom of speech only comes up as a concept when it is in conflict with other interests.
Many legal issues are defined by their extremes. That doesn’t mean they only encompass extremes. Just that it’s the extremes that delineated the actual boundaries.
It’s a combination of ignorance and entitlement. They think free speech means freedom from consequence and entitlement to a platform and/or audience. That’s why they get mad and claim it’s censorship when they’re banned for breaking rules etc.
Also they only care about their freedom of speech, despite their claims to the contrary.
Rowan Atkinson describe it perfectly for me. https://youtu.be/xUezfuy8Qpc
This only works for that particular law (insults) and I agree. However it breaks down at misinformation and allowing more of it enables attacks on the very foundation of those freedoms. And very often insults and misinformation go hand in hand in people with extremist stances.
I understand where you’re coming from but I’m talking about the general parts of his speech. What he is saying is true regarding how are you going to have freedom of speech when everyone had a subjective view of things and get offended by one thing while finding other normal?
This is the problem with the main issue and I especially find it problematic to limit freedom of speech because there is almost no way to stop it becoming something to censore and/or ban people.
Misinformation is something else like defamation. Someone lying about a person or defaming someone can be proven and the guilty party would be punished. That’s already implemented into the law systems off almost all the countries. On the other hand there will always be extremists in the world doesn’t matter if you limit or ban them. Look at the fascist movements of the WW2 era and how they are still continuing today or the religious extremist bullshit going in the world. But justifying limiting freedom of speech because extremists are using it is like banning people from buying Toyota trucks because ISIS is using them or banning people from flying 9/11 happened.
Denying the holocaust is only possible because of freedom of speech and look what it’s doing.
So we should ban people from flying and buying Toyota trucks got it…
I feel like this mostly happens online, and relates to “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”
In addition, the phenomenon of social media has made everyone decide that what they have to say is just as important as a Nobel Prize Winner or president because all of our tweets and posts look the same. Everyone gets a virtual podium. To relatively insignificant people, the notion that they can shout back at a famous person or expert and appear to be on equal footing is too enticing to resist. A great example is someone who never spent a single day in med school trying to tell our nation’s health experts that they were wrong about COVID for instance. The number of people with absolutely zero qualifications that thought their argument was worth making was depressing. Most would never do that in public and if they did, would simply be escorted out of the room and forgotten.
Thank you for your insight
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”. ― H.L. Mencken
Because freedom of speech doesn’t mean I have to listen to you or let ignorance slide as a valid take. It only protects you from the government and not my calling out nonsense
It’s very simple. It’s because people falsely mistake freedom of speech for freedom from consequence.
In other words, you have the right to be an asshole, but if you do it too much, others can invoke their right be assholes right back to you.
It invokes any number of people from all around the spectrum to be an arse.
If you’re trying to be neutral or just don’t much care for some particular political issue (what’s political or not is an interesting question in itself, but nowadays anything is), you see just as much toxicity from all the ends of the spectrum.
I still can’t believe all the fights that were ensuing regarding wearing masks. But once something becomes a symbol…
I’d even argue the “left” is faster to call names and dump baseless accusations on anyone quite at random, to be honest.
I mean, just watch the downvotes on this comment from the “if you’re not with us, you’re a nazi” crowd.
I won’t be getting into it more in public. It’s just hard for me to leave posts like this alone.
Not an American, so the whole America politica is not my thing
My personal opinion or stance if I had to take one is one has the freedom to express themselves, but to also take into to try respect another’s beliefs and reasoning
So in this case, you have the right to express your opinions, you have made some assumptions, but still showed some level of restraint. Therefore I am, personally, going to respect your right to expression - seems sanctimonious for me to write that case but yeah… I do not know I am trying not to get into any ideology facets just trying to explore a question that has been bubbling in my mind.
( if you want my take on masks and you are free to disagree, is that during covid masks would lessen viral aerosol load… so not foolproof but I find dealing with a 10000 viral load easier to deal with than 100000000 viral load)
If you’re trying to be neutral or just don’t much care for some particular political issue
There is no such thing, if you’re “neutral” you’re merely defending the status quo. The right defends the status quo, the left opposes it.
Read this quote by one of the greatest heroes of the world, Martin Luther King:
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice […]
I guess that’s not wrong, but I can passionately care about some other matter where the status quo is borked, and I can choose to fight that, and not some other random thing you care about. That doesn’t make me an ass or something other.
It’s a really interesting thing how the so-called “left” and “right” have chosen to fight over a handful of random things, and just as randomly chose to support one or the other side of the argument.
Almost as if, I dunno, these things weren’t even all that divisive in the first place, but it just might be in someone’s interest for people to fight over and not notice potentially worse things that are going on.
and just as randomly chose to support one or the other side of the argument.
Randomly? This has never happened even once in the entire history of the human race.
But I see it where you’re coming from, neoliberal propaganda convinces its viewers that politics is something out of touch for the masses, it’s their way of taking your out of the fight because you educate yourself, you’d become their enemy.
Sometimes it does feel pretty random to be honest. There are lots of cases where a political issue has become reversed as to which side is supposed to support it (support for unions in the US, as an example that comes to mind).
It’s also way too often the case that one side starts support for some issue, and the other side begins to vehemently oppose it, frankly for no good reason than just because they can’t be seen agreeing in public. This is really the main reason why I stopped giving a fuck about politics, as it’s really almost all about just who’s a top dog and not much else.
Without public support there can’t be any big changes, you’re the reason why the conservatives stays in power. You’re a conservative by proxy.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware there’s a conservative party in our parliament, much less in power. My bad I guess? Or are you just proving my point about accusing someone of something random without knowing anything?
There either is or someone else did your job for you. Thank them!
The good part about democracy is that not everybody is clueless like you.
Bleh, it seems ideology is unavoidable😂, seems that can be applied to the world over actually if it examined where countries try not to rock the boat too much to ensure their best interests are not disrupted too much
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Tldr:
I am have let myself be too soft as I have not invoked my freedom of expression and fair conditions and let them bypass responsibility and get away with imposing their way of business.
End tldr
You know reading these comments made me look at my Country’s constitution… South Africa
Makes me think that people in general don’t fully read them, myself included.
It is interesting because in a way some of the things written here can in practice get someone put in jail because of the stigma of the past - primarily racism
I was raised in the demographic as white but my mother is, and this the term they use here, coloured ( fair complexion) i am sure an internet search can confirm.
Also realised that when my last job told me I wouldn’t advance in the work because of the colour of my skin ( and I was too stupid and eager for a job I accepted) they were legally covering their ass as there is provision for it if it is formally accepted. That my rights were ebbed away with fine print ( example, they made me sign something inocculous 3 months into employment and fine out down the line that I missed out on receiving bonus by a month because of the signed document)
But even through all that and the contracts they made me sign i still had the right to strike or to unionized… of course they make sure that you can’t do that because they prey on that need and suppress your right to diginity
Really off topic apologies, brain wonders off and puts pieces into play that fell off the bandwagon😂
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