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
“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
Leave it to him to say it better than I ever could.
Yeah - I never even bother trying to explain some point I know he’s already addressed, since anything I might come up with is going to be inferior anyway.
Very poigant post
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.
People constantly thinking they can say what they want until they encounter that person that’s willing to get arrested for assault when the wrong thing is said to them. That’s freedom
Or arrested for saying free stuff that calls for harm of other people. Your freedom ends where someone elses freedom starts vice versa. If you harm someone you are no longer protected
Because assholes commonly don’t understand “free speech” doesn’t also mean “free of consequences.” They don’t think they should have consequences. They don’t actually care about free speech.
Yep. It’s because assholes who cry about “free speech” tend to not understand this - https://xkcd.com/1357
That’s part of the problem with online speech: you spew your rhetoric out to the world, with no direct consequences. We need to develop an online equivalent to throwing tomatoes.
Actually, I don’t know what to think of gullible people. In the village, there’s only so much danger, plus people can take them aside and tell them not to be dumb. But what of the idiots sitting home on Facebook in an echo chamber of madness, getting angrier and angrier?
None of the free speech crowd actually understand what the first amendment means. So they claim that boycotting an artist for saying some racist shit is denying them their freedom of speech. These turds need to take a civics class.
I am not an American, but reading your Constitution… with respect, I feel like your Founding Fathers would have many issues with how your Country is currently run, from what I have seen and read in the media
I mean… I have many issues. But I’m just one lowly pleb
But we’re all lowly plebe. That’s sorta the point of the constitution. The people pushing the idea that money or your job makes you more important are full of crap. The only thing it implies is that all of us should be well-informed, but equality is the whole reason for the constitution
I agree, kinda of sad that pieces of fake paper and ego is a more valuable commodity for those are lost to it than seeing others as a human being
The foundation of the world’s economy
People only invoke the feelings of the founders when they either don’t have a stronger argument or are trying to appeal to conservatives. It’s basically religious interpretation at this point - mostly used to manipulate people who don’t know better.
Okay an example if I must provide one
I feel according to brief look at American constitution in spirit if the Founding Fathers that governement should be neutral in religious matters and people have the freedom of religious choice without being discriminated against while still in the spirit of freedom and comradie not resort some sort of cannibal death cult.
The people have the freedom of choice, however the government must not be swayed and run by one motivating group or factor in the spirit of the writing how the British wished to exert their power and influence to control the then original 13 states
I also feel that again in spirit of what they wrote something like abortions shouldn’t be banned unless there was some catastrophic failure rate where government must intervene to prevent people from commiting suicide by doing so.
I am going to get flak by writing it but I believe that abortion can be made a case when it is ill advised at a certain point or if the if the parents decide that a birth is too dangerous, to be able to abort at a late stage.
By my limited understanding is that if doctors want to choose not to abort then are then in their right to do so if it is not life threatening. The government should not interfere but instead make it clear that individual practioners are under no obligation to help you if they strongly believe they don’t believe in it and within reasonable circumstance and that those that do wish to go with it should be given the option to instead of shutting them down.
But ultimately it should be the individuals choice to choose even if it is a bad choice and the unfortunate burden of guilt should be shouldered on an individual. I feel that is the freedom that was intended
It’s actually an off shoot of a logical fallacy called “argumentum ad antiquitatem” which is just an appeal to tradition or the past as being correct because it’s old basically. Same thing trying to map the founding fathers thoughts and feelings on modern norms and mores
If you think one of those is free speech then you’re wrong. Our government does not jail anyone for what they say.
Also, “Freedom of Speech” is likely the last (or only) defense they have. When they say indefensible shit, it’s often the only shield they have. Because if you can’t justify your speech or back it up with anything substantive, it’s essentially the only thing you can rely on.
It’s basically the “God told me” argument that religious people use. It can’t be argued against, because nobody can refute it. But it also means that when you hear someone using it as their first and last line of defense, that they actually have zero defense for it aside from that.
And yeah, it’s often misunderstood. People scream about free speech when getting cancelled for being racist, but that’s not an actual defense because they’re not being arrested for saying it. It isn’t the government imposing restrictions on your speech.
Best joke I heard is: if everyone’s pissed at what you said, and your only defense is “technically, it wasn’t illegal for me to have said that!”, it was probably a pretty bad argument.
Exactly. If your only defense is “the government can’t stop me from doing it” then you’re probably an asshole for doing it.
This. I love it when I engage in discussion with a person and when I don’t blindly agree with everything they say, they scream that I’m violating their first amendment.
Technically it is, but thats more about difference between free speech and 1a.
Because freedom of speech only needs to be invoked for distasteful speech. And what’s distasteful is subjective.
I’m pretty far left in my politics, and growing up in a very far right area of the country, I’m aware that the principal behind free speech is very important. The social pressure to fit in was bad enough on its own; I could only imagine how bad it would have been if they had ability to shut people up by force.
Everyone gets their rocks off dunking on rightoids being shitheels and hiding behind their freedom to be a shitheel. They rarely pause to think how it might be turned on them. Because newsflash, shitheelery is really fucking popular because humans are terrible. If your ideal form of governance and the distribution of rights therein depends on people being as “good” as you are, you’re going to have a bad time.
Underrated comment.
I understand your conclusion, but in my experience not many people are advocating for reducing their 1st amendment rights. The majority of my experience with people claiming free speech is when it doesn’t apply. Like it does not protect anyone from being laughed at, ostracized, does not force people to buy goods or services from someone who says wild shit, and no one is required to give them a platform.
You are technically correct. I just also happen to believe in and advocate for the concept of free speech beyond what is strictly its role in government. You are absolutely allowed to do all those things as an individual. It’s part of your free speech rights. I think the world might be a little better in the long run if we valued the concept beyond its application to state sanctioned violence, though.
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.
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.
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
Popular speech doesn’t require defense.
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.
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.
A person convinced against their will, Is of the same opinion still.
The people still hold these opinions you find unpalatable, they are just prevented from saying them.
So we should ban people from flying and buying Toyota trucks got it…
The simple answer is they’re attempting to insulate themselves from consequence or challenge.
Free speech doesn’t work like that (it only protects you from gov’t retaliation, not other private citizens), but it doesn’t stop them from trying because as some of the responses here exemplify, people will fall for it and let them continue saying whatever, regardless of whether it’s true or harmful to the vulnerable.
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.
Because people don’t grasp what “free speech” means, at least in the US context.
Freedom of speech (expression) protects one against government interference with expression. The US government can’t stop you from saying bigoted, racist, or sexist things because you have the freedom to express yourself.
But.
Freedom of speech doesn’t require anyone to offer you a platform to share your views, nor does it mandate an audience. If your views are unpopular, freedom of speech doesn’t prevent others from denying you business or employment generally either; the ol’ “consequences of your actions” principle.
Bad actors want the right, a mandated platform, and no consequences for being shitty. They get upset when they find out that they’re entitled to neither a platform nor protection from consequence.
There’s usually no need to invoke “freedom of speech” when the things you’re saying are popular and nobody is offended by it.
But there is also no need to invoke “freedom of speech” if the things you’re saying are unpopular and many people are offended by it… unless the government is trying to stop you from expressing those things. If people are asking the bouncer to chuck somebody out of the bar, that person might as well invoke the third amendment against quartering soldiers in their house because that’s exactly as irrelevant to the situation as the first.
Firstly, you’re assuming an American legal jurisdiction, which is a bad assumption in a global Fediverse.
Secondly, being “legalistic” at all is unwarranted. “Freedom of speech” has broader meaning than just what some specific constitution or some specific set of laws says. If someone is arguing that there should be free speech on an instance then saying that “free speech only applies to government restrictions” is just as relevant as your argument about quartering soldiers or whatever. That is, it’s not relevant. Instances can have “free speech” if they want to regardless of if they’re governmental, which means we can argue in favor or against them having free speech if we so desire.
There comes a point when something becomes a common utility, and should be treated as such. Like electricity for example. Question becomes, where do you draw the line?
