Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[SuburbanFarmer]

Why "should"?

I'm all for your right to say nigger in public. Same as me being for anyone's free speech right to walk up to your kids and convince them you and their mother died in a horrific car crash, followed by the asshole insulting your kids' physical appearance. But I'd not invite that sort of person into my house, and if they were there already, I'd kick them out. Even if I don't particularly know you all that well. Freedom of speech ain't, nor should be, freedom from any social consequence. It should be the freedom from government consequence, but you're not supposed to just say whatever you want without any sort of consequence, even if that consequence is simply becoming marginalized in your local (or online) community.

Social enforcement of social norms. This is what I’m talking about.

He should have the ‘legal right’ to say anything to my kids. And the rest of us should have the legal right to shun him, and exclude him from anything we are in control of.

That's clearly not true. You wouldn't, for example, think that he should have the legal right to say something that would put your children in danger. If someone was stood at a pedestrian crossing telling children that they should cross the road when the light shows red you wouldn't support their right to ''free speech''. Nor would you wait for an accident to occur before you backed a policeman's actions to prevent them from doing it.
Clearly, not all free speech should be protected.
''Words never hurt anyone'' is demonstrably untrue.

I don’t need them arrested for saying something mean to my kids. I just need the legal right to retaliate.

Also, directing a minor into imminent danger falls under an entirely different set of laws. That would not be a free speech case.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Why "should"?

I'm all for your right to say nigger in public. Same as me being for anyone's free speech right to walk up to your kids and convince them you and their mother died in a horrific car crash, followed by the asshole insulting your kids' physical appearance. But I'd not invite that sort of person into my house, and if they were there already, I'd kick them out. Even if I don't particularly know you all that well. Freedom of speech ain't, nor should be, freedom from any social consequence. It should be the freedom from government consequence, but you're not supposed to just say whatever you want without any sort of consequence, even if that consequence is simply becoming marginalized in your local (or online) community.

Social enforcement of social norms. This is what I’m talking about.

He should have the ‘legal right’ to say anything to my kids. And the rest of us should have the legal right to shun him, and exclude him from anything we are in control of.

Excatly. And what YT is doing falls into the social enforcement of social norms category, where people have a legal right to say whatever they like, but cannot expect to be welcomed (back) into your house if they said something too disrespectful.

As I said, I don’t need a law forcing YouTube to allow free speech. But I should also have an alternate choice. The government should not subsidize their monopoly on the broadcast of internet videos, or protect their patent rights to do so.

[Montegriffo]

Social enforcement of social norms. This is what I’m talking about.

He should have the ‘legal right’ to say anything to my kids. And the rest of us should have the legal right to shun him, and exclude him from anything we are in control of.

That's clearly not true. You wouldn't, for example, think that he should have the legal right to say something that would put your children in danger. If someone was stood at a pedestrian crossing telling children that they should cross the road when the light shows red you wouldn't support their right to ''free speech''. Nor would you wait for an accident to occur before you backed a policeman's actions to prevent them from doing it.
Clearly, not all free speech should be protected.
''Words never hurt anyone'' is demonstrably untrue.

I don’t need them arrested for saying something mean to my kids. I just need the legal right to retaliate.

Also, directing a minor into imminent danger falls under an entirely different set of laws. That would not be a free speech case.

OK, so now you have backed away from ''He should have the ‘legal right’ to say anything to my kids'' we can agree that there are limits to freedom of speech and that we are just quibbling over the details.

[heydaralon]

Far better to attack the idea in open discourse, instead of driving all the most hateful ideas underground

This assumes that 1) people are amenable to reason, which they usually aren't. Especially when their hackles are up, and 2) that all bad ideas are wrong, which they might not be. There may be true things that it is better that people don't know.

We should have never translated the bible into the Vulgate. That is when every idiot got big ideas about their ability to understand things.

There is always a risk to free speech. The idea that society is moving towards some kind of concensus is indeed utopian. The point is not that free speech will ever lead to a utopia. In fact, the idea of banning certain speech is a bit utopian in that it assumes that this will change human nature. The point is that free speech has an intrisic value in and of itself. Since governments and social order is an abstraction, it seems to me that free speech should be treated as the default state. That's what I feel is wrong with a lot of these discussions. They are attempting to act as though what you say should be subordinated to whatever current fads are popular or what the latest victim group is. This shit is important. It transcends twitter hashtag outrage and legislation. It is arguably the most important aspect of being human there is. It is what differentiates us from termites.




Your earlier posts was discussing demonetization, which is not even what is being discussed. We are discussing the idea of being imprisoned for saying things that the govt does not approve of.

While I do like your style of comparing the UK to Communist China (though China is probably a bit more liberty oriented), I think your position on free speech is curious for a self described "libertine."
Unless you are just trolling. If that is the case, then I'd like to remind you that my dad was a 9/11 first responder, who sacrificed himself day in and day out so that you could enjoy this forum. If you aren't going to respect my dad then you can at least show me some respect, which you should be doing anyway.

[heydaralon]

I don't see the relevance of ''quantity'' in making laws. To continue the speeding analogy, there are countless millions of cases of speeding every day but only a tiny fraction of these cases end up causing accidents. This is no reason to abandon laws against speeding. Driving too fast clearly has the potential to cause injury as does incitement to hatred. As with most things the devil is in the detail. The accused is afforded all the means available to defend himself in court. The laws were passed, with amendments, by our legally elected representatives in Parliament. This is not Nazi show trials happening here in the UK it is how modern societies function under rule of law.

The logical problem with your speeding analogy is that whereas speeding is a direct and verifiably proven imminent threat to people's lives, charging someone for insulting some group in a way that may "incite hate" relies on alot more steps, assumptions or premises that need to be(come) true in order to finally talk of hateful, racist speech being an imminent threat. For the analogy to really be similar in nature, there'd have be both a law against speeding AND a law against some factor legislators believe "incites" speeding. Let's say that's having an attractive woman (or man if homosexual) on the passenger seat. Henceforth that's illegal because a panel who looked at certain selected correlations concluded having attractive female passengers "incites speeding", which again they argue is because young men want to impress their women. Therefore Brits are now only allowed ugly people in the passenger seat or someone who they're verifiably unattracted to. Arguing against this law is now considered the same as arguing against speeding...

How reasonable would that strike you? Not disputing that you have a rule of law. I am arguing that in this case your rule of law isn't guided by particularly sound reasoning.

Just as an aside Bjorn. Speeding tickets are bullshit. Nanny state-ism 101. Idk how they do it in Denmark, but here we have disgusting rat-fuck-animals who simply hide their cop cars in the median behind bushes all day waiting for people to catch. They use the ticket revenue to pay pensions for these lowlifes who simply sit around harrassing people trying to get to work or school. It is revolting. Frankly, most cops are not out solving murders or rapes. Most cops are simply busting people for speeding or drugs. They make society worse, not better. The speeding analogy is doubly revolting.

It would be like a Islamic legal theorist arguing for acid attacks on literate women because muslim countries already have female genital mutilation.

Since we are invoking Godwin's law a lot in this thread, I feel like people who are for speeding tickets are like the Jews in Auschwitz who helped the Nazis gas their friends and maintained order in the camps in exchange for getting gassed last.

Look! Anne Frank is trying to escape! And she has contraband! I did good right? So I get an extra crust of bread now right? I love you Herr Police Officer.

[SuburbanFarmer]

That's clearly not true. You wouldn't, for example, think that he should have the legal right to say something that would put your children in danger. If someone was stood at a pedestrian crossing telling children that they should cross the road when the light shows red you wouldn't support their right to ''free speech''. Nor would you wait for an accident to occur before you backed a policeman's actions to prevent them from doing it.
Clearly, not all free speech should be protected.
''Words never hurt anyone'' is demonstrably untrue.

I don’t need them arrested for saying something mean to my kids. I just need the legal right to retaliate.

Also, directing a minor into imminent danger falls under an entirely different set of laws. That would not be a free speech case.

OK, so now you have backed away from ''He should have the ‘legal right’ to say anything to my kids'' we can agree that there are limits to freedom of speech and that we are just quibbling over the details.

Ok, if you prefer pedantry, we are discussing ‘free speech of opinion’, not the right to yell ‘fire’ in a theater.

[heydaralon]

Where are the parents in this scenario where strange men are giving them obviously stupid commands? This sounds like the parents were not doing their job. At all. I guess those parents just expected the government to do their job for them. Of course, in the UK where everyone is infantilized by nanny state laws, the parents shouldn't be held accountable either because they are basically children.

If my kid crossed the street without looking for huge speeding solid metal multi-ton cars and died, I wouldn't be too sad about it, because the deck was obviously stacked against him from the start. Though I might lament my pisspoor parenting. I never explained object permanence to my kid, which is sad, because I think infants learn that naturally.


Also, Grumpy and Monte, the fire in a crowded theater shit got overturned in the Supreme Court nearly half a century ago. Holmes possessed a pretty half-assed legal mind.

[heydaralon]

Monte to use your crosswalk analogy. If I told you to stick your penis into a rotating lawnmower blade, and that if you did so you would win the lottery and not be injured, would you do so? If you did, should I be held accountable? Is there any personal accountability here?

It seems like many of these anti-free speech laws cut both ways. They injure the person with "hate speech" and they injure society. They actually encourage people to be stupid and only think what the government tells them is ok. Since we all know the government is infallible, then it encourages everyone to not examine things. If they work as intended, they actually would make for a far stupider and more gullible populace. Though I suppose that is the goal of any nanny state.

[Montegriffo]

I don’t need them arrested for saying something mean to my kids. I just need the legal right to retaliate.

Also, directing a minor into imminent danger falls under an entirely different set of laws. That would not be a free speech case.

OK, so now you have backed away from ''He should have the ‘legal right’ to say anything to my kids'' we can agree that there are limits to freedom of speech and that we are just quibbling over the details.

Ok, if you prefer pedantry, we are discussing ‘free speech of opinion’, not the right to yell ‘fire’ in a theater.

We're talking about the ''freedom'' to say things that could put others in danger.

[heydaralon]

*clutches pearls and quickly watches BBC for reassurance that the govt hate speech task force will apprehend the thought criminal.