> Many thanks to FIRE for representing me in this case.
I used to donate to the ACLU, but they have completely lost their way.
I'd encourage more people who care about preserving free speech and expression to give money to FIRE. They are the new ACLU and need financial resources to do what the ACLU used to do.
> Looks like there's been a flip in the definitions of liberal and conservative, at least wrt free-speech
I mean, yeah? There is definitely a side more concerned with suppressing speech they consider reprehensible than the other and those roles have definitely switched in the last like 30 years.
Glenn Greenwald writes (rants) about this often. The same phenomenon is observable in polls of institutional loyalty ("how much do you trust the FBI/CIA/NSA?") with results starkly inverted from twenty years ago. In fact, this is so central to Greenwald's general thesis that the image of this graph was his Twitter cover photo for a long time. Liberals have become cheerleaders for the same security state they warned against for years. The FBI has not changed tactics; they're still entrapping autistic people as "terrorists," but now they've switched their focus from Muslims to Republicans, they've silenced their liberal critics, who are happy to trust the police state so long as it furthers their agenda.
The funny thing to me, is that the data objectively shows this, and Greenwald has good reason to rant about it: he has been one of the most vocal liberal critics of the security state for two decades, yet now finds himself alone, suddenly surrounded by conservatives while angry liberals call him a right wing grifter who's lost his way. But in fact it's the opposite; Greenwald has been steadfast in his principled opposition, whereas his previously stalwart allies have abandoned him in favor of reactionary politics that fits their confirmation bias.
tl;dr : the ACLU used to be a free speech absolutist organization to the point of self-sabotage. (eg: Jewish ACLU lawyers defending Neo-Nazis). In that sense, it went from a libertarian organization to a progressive activist organization that now supports cases that suppress civil liberties as long as the cause supports their (faux activist?) progressive agenda.
It's only self sabotage if you define self narrowly. They chose that case because it so strongly demonstrated the true principle they were defending.
From a practical standpoint, the Nazi group they were defending didn't amount to anything, and they never even held their march after going to all the work of taking the case to the Supreme Court.
Not at all. It was just a strategic choice. It’s hard to say what they would have done had it been something like the actual Nazi party though with thousands of brownshirts etc.
The ACLU was never a "libertarian organization." It is an accident of language that in modern American politics "libertarians" and "civil libertarians" sound more similar than they actually are.
The specific incident was the Charlottesville protests and consequent murders by white supremacists. They had stepped in to defend Jason Kessler's argument against moving the protest (where the city wanted to move the protest because they correctly identified the violence that would occur) and made a ton of PR gaffes during this time. As a result the ACLU ended up losing a ton of support both externally and internally because they had played a part in an event that was obviously going to turn violent.
This definition of compelled speech is inherently politicizing an apolitical thing. I find it super strange to refer to using someone's gender as compelled speech. Sometimes I mistake a man for a woman, especially long-haired men from behind, and if the man corrects me and asks me to refer to him as a man, I don't throw a fit that my civil liberties are being violated. Certainly if I kept insisting on calling my male student she/her pronouns in kindergarten because he happened to have long hair and I got in trouble for it, this isn't compelling my speech any more than if I got in trouble for refusing to use "John" if a co-worker says "Hey don't call me Jonathan please, I go by John". I don't see why we should hold trans or nonbinary people to a standard we don't hold everyone else: if I call someone P and they correct me and ask me to call them Q, I don't think it's compelled speech.
If you go around your workplace intentionally calling your manager a 'woman' or a 'female' in spite of him being a cisgender man you will probably be fired quicker than you think. But by all means you can try and see how long you'll last.
See how easy it is to fall into assuming I care? This is not "compelled speech" in the sense of the Constitution, anyway, your disingenuous attempts to paint it as such notwithstanding.
I mean, it's also super inappropriate to run around calling a random guy with long hair she/her. It's obviously super inappropriate to call a female co-worker a man if she lifts weights, y'know? It's always been a firable offense. I don't see the difference here except to say we want to treat trans people special, or something, and I just think that's just bringing politics into it.
I have similar feelings about the EFF after a few years ago they blatantly misrepresented a bill and used a bunch of anti Trump propaganda to do it.
Basically all of the EFF lawyers are in real tight with the Library of Congress, which happens to have some oversight issues (as in they have almost none) that bipartisan efforts in Congress are trying to correct. I forget the exact details but basically there was an appointed position with no accountability to anyone that Congress was at least trying to make replaceable by the Executive branch.
The EFF ran all kinds of FUD through their mailing lists to try to keep the position unaccountable to anyone, which in my opinion is behavior running in direct oppoisition to the second letter in their acronym.
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason.
On one hand, as a heterosexual, white, culturally Christian and conventionally attractive man raised in a middle class neighborhood, I've never been the victim of hateful speech. I cannot fully relate to those who have been. My family, friends, and coworkers are all from similarly conventional backgrounds. I am thus privileged, in a certain way.
On the other hand, I cannot help but think that too many people have become soft these days. I am not old enough to remember a time before the late 90s, nor do I glorify a forgotten "Golden Age". But, when I occasionally watch old movies, documentaries, and TV shows, it is clear that people used to have a much thicker skin. This is not to say that I believe that free speech shouldn't have reasonable constraints. I am not denying the emotional impact that words can have on people, or the potential unhealthiness of excess emotional fortitude. But it is to say that it would be misguided and, in my humble opinion, a disservice to future generations to envelop them in a sanitized cocoon of sterile experiences, where they cannot be uncomfortable. Because the real world is full of colorful characters, and surprises, generally speaking. Like an immune system that grows weaker when it goes too long without exposure to viruses and bacteria, I believe that a person's character can and in a certain measure must be allowed to be steeled and sharpened by the unexpected, the random, and, perhaps, the uncomfortable.
It seems everyone nowadays wants to be coddled and there’s just this overwhelming sense of entitlement in the air.
The real world isn’t perfect; in fact, it’s quite chaotic, just how it’s supposed to be. A lot of folks seem to only want to look at the world from a utopian lens. The elephant in the room is, your utopia isn’t my utopia. Put differently, our differences create the very imperfections that actually make our world interesting and keep society functioning as it should.
Seems like you think you’re exempt from being a victim of hate because of your demographics, and likewise that others of certain demographics, whatever they may be, are implicitly victims of it.
There are white, heterosexual, etc (the list of ways people say they privileged is ever expanding lol) men who have been on the receiving end of hateful speech because they are white, heterosexual, etc. and there are black or gay men who have never been personally attacked based on that identity.
But yeah, shielding yourself from speech or anything else you may find uncomfortable may make you feel better in the moment, but hurts you in the long term
I think there is an inevitable difference between someone who is part of the majority experiencing hate speech and someone who is not. I’m white, I don’t even know what a racial term for a white person would be, but if someone called me something offensive it would probably make me feel bad but then I would get on with my day. I haven’t lived with constant background racism. No one has ever abused me simply for being white.
I honestly don’t believe it’s possible to be racist against the majority in the same way as against the minority.
This is a very western idea. I've spent significant amounts of time in other countries and there's no such sensitivity for "the outsider" like there is in European countries or the wider Anglosphere.
It's also a very recent phenomenon, and the most recent wave seems to be pushed by elites in society that don't seem to realize the average working class citizen has more contact with minorities than they ever will.
Is it okay to go to a black majority country in Africa and be racist because you are a minority? That logic doesn't fly.. why would we accept that here either?
Of course the effects are different for people who are able to escape the situation unharmed and go on with their lives.
But not every white person who encounters racism is able to escape unharmed. Some have been physically hurt or even killed in racist attacks. Some are harassed at school or work or in their neighborhoods and can't afford to escape.
Their situation isn't different from other victims of racism (except perhaps that they receive less support), even if you haven't experienced it and don't believe it's possible.
It's generally true though, and that's the important point you're not conceding.
If you're a Uyghur Muslim in China, racism against you is going to be far more harmful than the reverse -- in the typical case. That's just fact and stems from the demographic numbers differences.
Ditto with White people in the West but perhaps less stark since Whites tend to be a smaller majority.
I agree, but that isn't what mathieuh wrote. I'd say racism against white people is less common and generally less impactful, but it isn't impossible or inevitably different.
> since Whites tend to be a smaller majority
You're underestimating the diversity of the United States. There are many places in the US where white non-Hispanic Christians are a minority. In fact, white non-Hispanic (but including Jewish and Muslim) people are only 60% of the population of the US.
Yeah the harm is going to vary by location and situation within the US. But while the issue is partly demographics, it also goes beyond that. It's also about the social constructs operating in a culture. A White minority in Singapore doesn't face much racism and the racism they do face isn't damaging because they have a wealthy, powerful community or embassy to fall back on. But if you're a Bangladeshi worker with no rights the situation is totally different almost 100% of the time with no exceptions.
This is what people are trying to point out when they talk about Whiteness. They're talking about the construct that it's good and default to be White (or Han if you live in China or Japanese if you live in Japan) and this construct can even hold true in places with a White minority (e.g., how White people get treated in Singapore, or colorism culture in non-White countries).
That having being said, White people as individuals are empirically the least racist people. That's just empirically true according to survey data. But this is largely besides the point that was being made above.
The “thicker skin” you speak of has multiple dimensions. Yes, people absolutely used to turn the other cheek more often about social issues that we now discuss. But it’s not because those issues were merely political in nature or because people were more accepting of insult. It’s because people had no other choice. Belonging to a marginalized group today is way safer than it was in the middle of the previous century.
In the middle of the last century, people were murdered for interracial relationships, beaten and imprisoned for being gay, institutionalized for being different. Undoubtedly, people wanted to avoid these things.
>But it is to say that it would be misguided and, in my humble opinion, a disservice to future generations to envelop them in a sanitized cocoon of sterile experiences,
By your own admission, you've lived in a sanitized cocoon where you've never been the victim of hateful speech. Do you think you're weaker than others who have experience in that area? Would a generation full of people like you be a disservice?
I don't really think state censorship is the answer, but I find your point of view contradictory.
I would ask you to consider that you have absolutely been the victim of hate speech. However you have not recognized it because your view of the world is one where you have personal agency, and the speech has been interpreted as a personal criticism instead of one of a group in which you identify.
As another poster said it's incredibly ironic that you claim a person's character should be sharpened by uncomfortable and random situations while also admitting you've never been in such a situation.
It's bullshit, too. Being on the receiving end of racism is much like being on the receiving end of bullying. It's a feeling of social alienation and is definitely not character building.
You're missing the point. It's not about hurt feelings ("emotional impact"). It's about preventing the well-trodden causal pathway to ethnic cleansings. It's about steering the culture in a direction that rejects systemic racism rather than accepts it as a status quo. These are the objectives of the people you are attempting to critique.
Individuals, generations, and societies develop ideas and need to test them out for themselves. Over the second half of the twentieth century, in the shadow of a society that waged two world wars, annihilated cities with fire bombings and nuclear weapons, and staged a globally existential Cold War between "good" and "evil", the "peace and love" hypothesis felt really enticing: maybe we could all just be nice to each other and make sure everybody had what they needed and everything would be better. Gen X and Millenial kids learned it from our parents, got support from hippie and urban boomers in institutionalizing it through politics, science, and medicine and embedded that idea deeply in the children that came behind us.
Now, we're working through the experiment. We'll see how it goes. It's not a sure thing.
Per the Nazis v. Skokie case, the 1st Amendment protects the right to engage in hateful speech. There's no serious debate that this law is unconstitutional and the politicians who supported it showed that they either don't understand the 1st Amendment or just don't care about it.
Since it also needs to be said, the fact that you have a constitutional right to say hateful things does not mean you should or that you have a right not to be judged by other people if you choose to exercise this particular right. As long as people are free to express views that almost everybody regards as reprehensible, the rest of us can feel confident that our 1st Amendment rights remain secure.
- "either don't understand the 1st Amendment or just don't care about it"
And, transitively, don't understand or care about their civic duty to uphold and promote those values, as elected leaders. It's not a "no-op" to pass an unconstitutional law that's immediately struck down by courts. It's an erosion of norms. The norm that elected leaders uphold the constitutional order, which constrains their power; and don't seek to break out of it. The norm that the system of freedom we live under is an expensive and valuable thing (and that this is a universally shared value); not something cheap and haggle-able.
>The norm that elected leaders uphold the constitutional order, which constrains their power; and don't seek to break out of it.
Let's be real: When has that /ever/ been the norm?
Anyone who chooses to pursue an office in governance is there to grab power or enrich themselves. No exceptions. The only question is how brazen they are about it.
> Let's be real: When has that /ever/ been the norm?
Every one of them swears an oath to uphold the US constitution. The sad thing is that their civic knowledge is so limited that few of them understand the principles they are proclaiming to serve by.
The exception is George Washington, who refused to become dictator, willingly limited the power of the Presidency, eschewed grandiose terms like "your Excellency", and left after two terms saying that was enough.
Sortition is one of those idea that when I was a young man I thought was dumb, but the older I get the more I realize elections end up with someone stupid or corrupt anyway so we me as well get a random sample of the populace to round things out.
Sadly the two party elected system is probably one of those things that is difficult to impossible to break out of, as the parties will never vote to suicide themselves.
To paraphrase Frank Herbert, it's not that power corrupts, but rather that the corruptible seek power. This is also a problem with revolutionary movements. Who gets to be in charge if you win? Odds are someone who ends up using the revolution to get power.
It's actually pretty easy to break out of, historically two party democracies aren't very common. Just need a war or revolution. Now breaking it out of it without majorly messing up things for a lot of the populace, that's a little harder, but once things are already pretty awful for 98% of people a revolution starts being more realistic
Sortition was one of those things I also thought was dumb until I worked in Federal Government and was "graced" on a few occassions by elected and designated officials. I soon realized that any random person could mostly do just as well, if not better.
I mean really, you think nobody has ever seen something and said "That is wrong" (whether it was wrong or not is another matter) and then decided to run for public office to make things right? Whether they get corrupted afterwards is another issue.
Frankly it's ideas like this that normalize grabbing power and enriching yourself.
>the 1st Amendment protects the right to engage in hateful speech.
It's worth going further to point out that the First Amendment (and Free Speech protections in general) exists specifically to protect and guarantee speech that someone sometime somewhere might or will find objectional for any or no reason.
Non-objectional speech doesn't need Free Speech protections because there's nobody to censor non-objectional speech in the first place.
Such an absolutely basic thing and yet notable and increasing numbers of Americans don't seem to grasp this or are downright hostile to it now. Some strange mindfog going around convincing people these concepts are held dear by "Republicans" and therefore bad.
I never would have imagined a few short years ago we'd be here.
You’d think the population would be moving the opposite way when you look at the UK and see people being arrested for rude tweets. Or that one UK woman arrested because the police suspected she controlled an account which posted a mean post on kiwifarms (she didn’t, and the police had no evidence to begin with).
Most Americans probably either don't care or fundamentally disagree with the right of Nazis to say shit, but the legal system prioritizes consistency and their specific brand of morality over the public desire, that's why we have law and not chaotic lynch mobs.
But there is no "benefit" to unfettered free speech other than the fact that we have unfettered free speech; it's very straightforward. Some people won't care about it.
The benefit is we find solutions to objectionable ideas by discussing them. The alternative is a chilling effect where people are hesitant to discuss problems for fear of getting into trouble for even coming close to saying the illegal thing.
The benefit is to deprive the government of the power to decide which speech is allowed, which will likely depend on which party is in power, and how the cultural winds are blowing. Which might be in your preferred flavor today, but not tomorrow. If you're a progressive, do you really want to risk curtailing speech on the possibility that religious conservatives will get a chance to wield that power? We've seen what that's like in the past.
> they either don't understand the 1st Amendment or just don't care about it
I figure they know it is unconstitutional and will be overturned by the courts, but they will still get brownie points from their supporters for trying.
> Since it also needs to be said, the fact that you have a constitutional right to say hateful things does not mean you should or that you have a right not to be judged by other people if you choose to exercise this particular right.
This is the interesting part of the debate. It is commonly stated that freedom of speech doesn’t equal freedom from consequences, and it’s hard to imagine a law that could guarantee anyone freedom from the consequences of their speech, but is there a point where the consequences become disproportionate?
The first amendment only limits government, but there are private entities which have government-like powers in some circumstances. For example, the church. Historically if you said something the church didn’t like, you might risk shunning, or worse. People have lost livelihoods and been shut out of civic society for using speech in opposition to religious authority. Is that a legitimate and proportionate consequence of speech?
The church in America is in decline, but religiosity has found new homes amongst political mobs, who can wield their powers against free speech. They can put pressure on the private companies that act as the government of the internet. All while acting in a private, non-governmental capacity, so it’s not censorship, it’s just consequences, right?
Should we seek to limit the consequences that churches can impose?
> It is commonly stated that freedom of speech doesn’t equal freedom from consequences,
Like many commonly stated things, this is completely wrong. Freedom from consequences is the only possible thing that "freedom of speech" could mean. Essentially every living person has some way of communicating and so if freedom of speech weren't freedom from consequences, then every living person has freedom of speech definitionally. "Freedom of speech" wouldn't mean anything then. Persons living under the most oppressive regime would, by this flawed definition, have perfect freedom of speech.
The common but wrong idea stems from fundamentally confusing "freedom of speech" and "the first amendment to the United States Constitution". What it's attempting to say is that the 1A doesn't guarantee that purely private actors can't find a way to penalize you for your speech. However, what it gets wrong is that such penalties would still be an abrogation of freedom of speech, but a kind of freedom of speech which isn't protected by 1A. Just because that kind of freedom of speech [against private actors] isn't guaranteed by 1A, doesn't mean it's not valuable. Many of us believe this kind of freedom of speech is also valuable.
I used to donate to the ACLU, but they have completely lost their way.
I'd encourage more people who care about preserving free speech and expression to give money to FIRE. They are the new ACLU and need financial resources to do what the ACLU used to do.
https://www.thefire.org/