Free speech in chains
Free speech has always been a hard sell. It goes against the human grain to a certain extent. People often feel a powerful desire to silence those whom they define as opponents, bullies, liars, or anyone else whose speech they think is offensive or dangerous to them.
Free speech requires that people stifle that impulse in the name of a principle that seems abstract: everyone benefits because it may be the speech suppressor who’s suppressed next time. The marketplace of ideas will be the judge, with the battle fought openly by allowing the speech to occur in the interests of liberty.
I’m of the opinion that, as our lives have become safer and more protected in terms of vanquishing disease, vastly lengthened lifespans, huge increases in conveniences, enormously faster communication, and a host of other improvements, many of us have become more intent on trying to eliminate many things perceived as still dangerous. As we’ve become safer, we’ve demanded even more safety, and expanded the definitions of “safe.”
Recent generations have grown up with the idea that their feelings will be protected even from hurtful speech. Where the children of yesteryear recited the nursery rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” and parents and educators emphasized resilience, in recent decades that attitude has mostly been replaced by the idea of protection from anything and everything upsetting.
That’s one of the reasons that dedication to free speech has been waning in the general population, particularly among younger people. In addition, the left in the US and many other western countries used to support allowing speech that might be offensive back when they were weak and the policy of free speech mainly protected them. But now that they’re feeling so much stronger, they can afford to try to suppress – though social media and cancel culture, as well as law – people on the right, and even those on the left who are insufficiently pure in their leftism. The radical left doesn’t care about protecting people’s feelings; they care about power and about shutting the opposition down. But they use and exploit the desire to spare feelings by appealing to it in pursuit of their goal.
And, as Mark Steyn writes, the left never, never ever rests [hat tip: AesopFan]:
The “free world” barely pretends to favor free speech these days…
For most people under thirty – forty? fifty? – freedom of expression takes a back seat on ever more issues. On climate, Islam, race, immigration, LGBTQWERTY and of course ChiCom-19, there is one correct position and it is entirely legitimate therefore to quash any dissenting views.
In such a world it is no surprise to find that Justin Trudeau’s ministry is preparing to restore “Section 13” of the Canadian Human Rights Code. The repeal of that vile law represents one of my few victories in the political realm. As the saying goes, there are no permanent victories in politics, and I would have a tougher time winning that battle today: The principled lefties (Margaret Wente) who offered support have themselves been canceled, and the queasier ones (Neil Macdonald) who objected on the grounds that all the attention was merely helping me sell even more books have been supplanted by more committed warriors who feel that, with Zuckerberg and Bezos at your back, there is no one so lofty he can’t be brought low…
We’re not alone in this. In Britain, Australia, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and many other places, democratic societies have become far too comfortable in policing the opinions of the citizenry…
… Ian Fine, the senior counsel of the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, declared that his organization was committed to the abolition of hatred—not “hate crimes,” not even “hate speech,” but hate—a human emotion; you know, like the human emotions the control-freak enforcers attempt to abolish in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives. Any society of free peoples will include its share of hate: it could not be human without it. And, as bad as racists and homophobes and Islamophobes and whateverphobes may be, empowering Mr. Fine’s ever more coercive enforcement regime to micro-regulate us into glassy-eyed compliance is a thousand times worse.
If people are not taught to love liberty and to protect it, they will not defend it against those forces that would quash it.
Leftists are jubilant today one day after Right Wing Watch, a far-left website devoted to attacking all forms of traditional conservative thought, had its channel suspended permanently from YouTube. Within 24 hours, this “permanent suspension” was rescinded as rectification for the original “mistake.” At the same time, countless conservatives who have had their right to free expression abrogated seldom, if ever, are allowed to return to whichever platform had defenestrated them. Such is the state of affairs in a dying republic tyrannized by the power-maddened oligarchs of Big Tech.
It is curious how people like Ian Fine cannot see how they themselves are driven by hate of anyone who thinks differently than they do. It is a puzzlement.
“ I’m of the opinion that, as our lives have become safer and more protected in terms of vanquishing disease, vastly lengthened lifespans, huge increases in conveniences, enormously faster communication, and a host of other improvements, many of us have become more intent on trying to eliminate many things perceived as still dangerous. As we’ve become safer, we’ve demanded even more safety, and expanded the definitions of ‘safe.’”
Bingo, Neo. I felt this safety culture forming around me in the early 80s when as a young parent I was swamped with offers for bombproof baby seats and the perfect toys to prepare your child for lifelong success. Every product and service seemed to be sold as a way to prevent trauma, shock, illness, sadness, loss. I found it all mildly ridiculous but it was —and is— insidious, a kind of narcotic. If X is safer, then surely it’s better? If safer, why not 2X or 3X? The flaws in this logic are obvious but too easily elided. So on we go, obsessing over hangnails while far greater threats go unattended. Because you cannot defend everything; in fact, “He who defends everything, defends nothing.”
Also? Living in a defensive crouch is not only boring, it means you have conceded the initiative to others. They will keep shouting “Boo!” at you to keep you pinned down, while they go on eating your lunch.
“Recent generations have grown up with the idea that their feelings will be protected… from anything and everything upsetting.” neo
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Ben Franklin
I’m confident that old Ben would agree that what is undeserved, will in time be lost. China’s CCP is licking their chops.
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.
It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.
And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” Ronald Reagan’s January 5, 1967: Inaugural Address (Public Ceremony)
The liberals who are enabling the left’s seizure of power are also enabling the fashioning of the chains of their future enslavement and they are willfully blind to it and thus deserve their fate.
But in enabling the enslavement of those who protest against the left’s treason, they stand complicit in the left’s crimes.
“As we’ve become safer, we’ve demanded even more safety, and expanded the definitions of “safe.””
“To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”
–Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
I gave up given that speech isnt free, not even here…
cause you have to tolerate what you DONT LIKE for it to be free
why bother?
Well. Art, I for one miss your comments
Related:
The policy of multiculturalism as a generator of racial intolerance, ethnic hatred and civil breakdown.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/29/the-implosion-of-multiculturalism/
Key grafs:
“[Anti-Semitism and anti-Indian bigotry] is…the inexorable consequence of identitarianism’s misanthropic division of every social group into the categories of ‘Privileged’ or ‘Oppressed’. This leads to the cultivation not only of identities deserving of our sympathy but also of identities deserving of our hatred. Pity for certain groups (the victims) is sustained by loathing for other groups (their oppressors). Racial animosity is as central to the woke worldview as racial sympathy is – these are complementary forces in this warped ideology. Wokeness isn’t anti-racism. On the contrary, it is a hyper-racialised protection racket in which some groups are afforded the certificate of recognition in return for their retaining the status of ‘victim group’ while other groups are problematised on account of their supposed racial privilege….
“We are seeing just how divisive and dangerous the ideology of multiculturalism has become. Multiculturalism is surely the worst and most toxic policy that has been adopted in postwar Britain. No, this does not mean it is bad to have a multi-ethnic and multi-racial society. The vast majority of people are perfectly fine with that. But multiculturalism is something different. It is a policy, embraced across the entire political spectrum, that actively undermines the ideals of national unity and community solidarity by fostering cultural difference and ethnic separatism. It has Balkanised Britain, nurturing the politics of grievance and even the politics of hatred. When everyone is actively encouraged to live in their own cultural universe, solidarity withers and antagonism intensifies.”
Just because you can shut them up doesn’t mean they don’t still hate you.
My mother taught me the “sticks and stones” verse and emphasized that it was 100% up to me how I received and responded to what other people said. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I fully understood how powerful that was; I realized that I had all the power in my reaction, and that I should never cede power to those that sought to intimidate, verbally attack, and otherwise shut me up.
To me these folks that want to stop speech that disagrees with them are soft and weak and lacking in conviction of their own principles and point of view.
Coincidently, Francis Menton writes on this topic today:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-6-28-attempting-to-silence-your-opponents-is-a-sign-you-are-losing-the-debate
I think this is a great summary of the safety-ist facet of the anti-1A movement.
There is no speech that isn’t “hate speech” to somebody.
This is the inevitable fact of life that Left utopians lie or gaslight us into denying because they’ve got no “thrasos — Greek for guts.
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”
The Gipper was right. And when he said the above, that generation was being born. Millennials value safety and conformity (to an ever shrinking set of ‘Woke’ norms) far more than liberty. As they assume more and more positions of power, from ageing Boomers and eventually Xers as well, our freedoms will continue to diminish.
Artfldgr:
Of course you are free – and I would defend your right to be free – to have a website of your own, to write a book of your own, to say what you want to say however you want to say it. I am against hate speech laws or anti-speech laws, as well.
I am neither a common carrier nor a public utility nor a government entity. I am a private person with a website (which I pay for) and which exists for the primary purpose of expressing my own thoughts on various subjects and having the public read them. I also have a comments section, which is important to me (I don’t think I’d have a blog without one) but which is secondary to that main function of my writing posts. That comments section consists of people who are willing to follow the rules that I set up for commenting here. The rules are pretty simple and consist mainly of rules against repetitive nasty fighting (a little fighting is fine), continual insults to me or to other commenters (not disagreement, which is okay, but insults), and dominating comment threads with extremely lengthy and repetitive comments from one person. I don’t ban people easily, but I request that they stop these behaviors and usually they have no problem with that.
None of this has to do with traditional free speech, anymore than requesting that someone be polite in your own home or at a party you throw violates free speech.
I am virtually certain you understand the difference between a person’s blog and the rules for comments there, versus the sort of thing I described in this post, where a government criminalizes hate speech, or where a Twitter mob tries to get someone fired from work.
You have been welcome to comment here for about a decade and a half. You are still welcome to comment here. You’ve made many valuable and interesting contributions.
Well since we are all Free Speech Advocates… Let’s actually demonstrate it by signing up to Gab (it costs nothing) and taking a look at it every day for a month.
And if you don’t like Free Speech, you can go here to get posts taken down and people banned:
Upgrade your Israel Activism – Intro to the New Act-IL App
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWD5xiiafBc
Question for the Terminally Naive:
What do you think would happen if someone wrote an Act-White App and tried to get it on the Apple and Google App Stores?
Don’t worry about the Three Letter Agencies, cut to the chase and work for a Foreign State. Everyone else in your government and media apparatus seemingly does already anyway.
Fair and Balanced — That’s why Two Heads are Better than One! Vote Zaphod!
Question for the terminally naive: What do you think would happen if someone wrote an ActWhite App and tried to get it approved on the Apple and Google App Stores?
Barry links to Spiked and the Batley bi-election campaign by race mongering Labour: methinks they’ve hired Xiden’s consultants (that’s how it usually goes — the latest US victors pols advise the Brits)…
“As Labour MP Navendu Mishra says, the leaflet is a blatant attempt to turn communities against each other. Labour is engaging in ‘dogwhistle racism’, he says. And yet much of the left has been silent about these Indiaphobic leaflets, this cynical Hindu-baiting that Labour officials clearly believe will appeal to Muslim voters. The identitarian left sees racism everywhere – in every criticism of Islam, in every vote for Brexit, in every bristling at Meghan Markle’s poor-me routine. And yet they look the other way when a mainstream party uses inflammatory rhetoric about Kashmir to try to weaponise some Muslims’ anti-Indian outlook for electoral gain.
“This is a reminder of the ruthlessly hierarchical nature of identity politics. Contemporary identitarianism celebrates some identities and demonises others. Those groups that are viewed as ‘victims’ – Muslims, black people, the trans community – are validated. Their pain is felt, their causes are taken up. But those groups that are judged, rightly or wrongly, to be a little too self-sufficient, a little too successful – Indians, Jewish people – are rounded on. Racism against those groups is ignored by the identitarian left, or actively stirred up. This is why Labour, captured by the destructive creed of wokeness, doesn’t only have a problem with anti-Semitism but increasingly with anti-Indian bigotry as well.
“This is all the inexorable consequence of identitarianism’s misanthropic division of every social group into the categories of ‘Privileged’ or ‘Oppressed’.”
Gotta love how the hate pours from the Left these days. Such lovely examples of the humanistic ideal.
“Labour MP Navendu Mishra”
Two problems right there.
The Menton post that steve links contains commentary on stories that most of us are familiar with, but it’s good to have them all in one place. However much I agree with his general viewpoint, though, I have to add a caveat to his conclusion:
Depends on how you define “long term” – the Nazis didn’t do too well, but the Bolsheviks got almost a century out of their bullying power.
Which depended on disarming their population, and quite a bit of lying.
Apropos of which, even the WaPo had to call foul on Biden along those lines:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-canon-2nd-amendment-wrong
Gee, I wonder why there were no corrections the first time.
Especially since the Post’s real agenda, as Kessler makes clear, is to prop up the Biden administration, by pleading that they “please don’t make us fact-check you with blatant falsehoods, when you can just give us something we can spin as Mostly True.”
Free speech also means defending your position without manipulating the plain meaning of words.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/jen-psaki-fox-news-gop-defunded-police
That “whole bunch of other things” totally dwarfed the amount allocated to police departments, with which they can actually do anything they want; note that the wording also suggests (to the totally clueless) that without this Rescue Plan, the police would have no money at all.
Here’s another example of why the leftist media doesn’t want anyone to free speech back at them – by pointing out their lies by omission.
https://nypost.com/2021/06/24/the-week-in-whoppers-cnns-outrageous-omission-bidens-crime-falsehood-and-more/
The post also contains some other examples of Democrats saying things that just aren’t true, or flip-flopping on what they had said before.
BTW, there are so few strings on the money that Biden handed out, Texas plans to put theirs to good use.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/06/29/greg-abbott-executes-a-hilarious-but-completely-necessary-troll-using-bidens-stimulus-money-n404495
That’s not really what the Democrats had in mind.
Free speech, hate speech, whatevs – at least make it understandable speech.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/leo-terrell-professors-standard-english-racist
Time for a little free speech on COVID:
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/panic-porn-dressed-science-exposing-truth-about-delta-variant
That Mark Steyn is such a complainer. Just because Michael Mann’s lawsuit against him for blasphemy has been in the courts for 10 years.
I have been depressed for days after reading Steyn’s post.
Reminds me of Dan Rather’s movie where he is the Hero of his attempt to tank George Bush’s election with the fraudulent NG memo.
And now the Democrats are claiming they have always supported voter ID, and it’s the Republicans defunding the police (because not voting to give a slush fund to the states that might possibly be used to hire cops is EXACTLY the same as slashing money from their actual budgets).
They also help things along by deliberately omitting certain information, which affects the slant of their narrative.
David Frum, at the Atlantic, posted a pious attempt to wean Democrats away from the poll-losing ban on merit testing for selective schools, included this choice paragraph.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-lefts-war-on-gifted-kids/ar-AALAO6Q?ocid=msedgdhp
“Donald Trump … provoked his opponents to look backwards too. They saw in him a replica of racist demagogues from the American past, from Andrew Johnson to George Wallace.”
One of these things is not like the others.
How many of Frum’s woefully uneducated readers, or those too young to even know who Jackson and Wallace are, made the carefully designed inference?
The greatest propaganda con job in American history is the way the Left turned around the Civil War political allegiances, so that far too many people now believe that the Democrat Party was the one fighting to end slavery, rather than the one practicing and protecting it.
Hence, we get the take-downs of Republican President Lincoln’s statues, at the same time we are presented with a new federal holiday celebrating the implementation of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves.
If you read this without getting my point, Jackson and Wallace were both Democrats.
How can you fight the Left’s Hydra?
Cut off one head and it just grows back two more, whenever people stop paying attention.