Big thanks to the Persuasion team for publishing this. If you are interested in the sort of subject matter I address in this piece, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter as well, where I write about developments in US and world politics regularly. Cheers.
Let's be honest. These laws stifle MUCH more than religious dissent. First of all, they go after anyone who questions how well muslim immigrants can assimilate and how many millions should be invited in. That's raising a political question about immigration policy. We know that Questioning trans men in women's sports, obligatory pronoun use, gender surgery on kids can also get people flagged for hate speech. Again, this is political speech, questioning government policy. And we have even seen speech questioning foreign policy and wars labelled as hate speech. The US is guilty of this under Trump, flagging anyone who questions zionism as an anti-semite.
And lets not forget the dark history of covid health policy dissenters who were deplatformed and censored for questioning government policies.
Max, I appreciate the article and agree with you on many of your conclusions, especially the ideal that it is bad to let violence set our laws.
However, I found a few points to be unconvincing arguments, significantly weaker than the rest of the piece. One is the idea that "victim blaming" here is inconsistent or incoherent, where I find the reasoning you present natural, if unpleasant. The other is the section reproduced below:
> If criticizing Islam is, according to McGarva’s reasoning, no different from “hostility towards members of a religious group,” then it is very difficult to see how hate speech legislation differs, in practice, from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam.
I find it very EASY to see how hate speech legislation differs from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam — it differs in every way except one!
I should say (as you as well do), that even in that one way that hate speech legislation is similar to Islam, it is still different: the punishment is a fine or jail time, not death
The fact that the punishment is less severe than death does not save it from being unacceptable. There should be no punishment for offending religious belief systems, just as there should be no punishment for offending any other type of belief system. The egregious violation of free expression rights is not justified because those charged and convicted will only go to prison, and emerge at some point while still being alive.
Government is guilty of a theocratic violation of free expression whenever it singles out adherents of religious belief systems as deserving special insulation from being offended, which type of insulation is not offered to those who have adopted non religious belief systems.
We don’t need to protect expression that is non controversial and unoffensive. Those words which challenge one’s deepest convictions and which ridicule one’s most cherished ideals are in need of protection from legal reprisal. Otherwise, the concept of free expression is reduced to an ineffective umbrella that is taken away the moment it begins to rain.
I don't think I claimed that punishing speech is always good, or was good in this case! I claimed that it's silly to say it's the same as death, and I stand by this claim.
It's self evident to say that putting people in jail is not the same as killing them. However, the focus of this article and the subsequent comments is not to state such an obvious fact. It's to deal with whether there should be any government imposed punishment on what should be free speech. Even a fine, let alone incarceration, is unacceptable.
You are mistaken. The focus of my comment was what I said it was (to praise the article but call out two pieces dramatically weaker than the rest, fo gentle feedback), nothing else.
Then you need to clarify that outside of the penalty, restrictions on hate speech are no different than laws against blaspheming Islam, because they both censor ideas. The point is that religious believers deserve no greater legal insulation from having their beliefs insulted than do members of other identifiable groups. If you agree that there should never be laws that provide greater protection for shielding religious beliefs--including Islam--from being offended, then that's the main point.
Big thanks to the Persuasion team for publishing this. If you are interested in the sort of subject matter I address in this piece, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter as well, where I write about developments in US and world politics regularly. Cheers.
Let's be honest. These laws stifle MUCH more than religious dissent. First of all, they go after anyone who questions how well muslim immigrants can assimilate and how many millions should be invited in. That's raising a political question about immigration policy. We know that Questioning trans men in women's sports, obligatory pronoun use, gender surgery on kids can also get people flagged for hate speech. Again, this is political speech, questioning government policy. And we have even seen speech questioning foreign policy and wars labelled as hate speech. The US is guilty of this under Trump, flagging anyone who questions zionism as an anti-semite.
And lets not forget the dark history of covid health policy dissenters who were deplatformed and censored for questioning government policies.
Max, I appreciate the article and agree with you on many of your conclusions, especially the ideal that it is bad to let violence set our laws.
However, I found a few points to be unconvincing arguments, significantly weaker than the rest of the piece. One is the idea that "victim blaming" here is inconsistent or incoherent, where I find the reasoning you present natural, if unpleasant. The other is the section reproduced below:
> If criticizing Islam is, according to McGarva’s reasoning, no different from “hostility towards members of a religious group,” then it is very difficult to see how hate speech legislation differs, in practice, from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam.
I find it very EASY to see how hate speech legislation differs from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam — it differs in every way except one!
I should say (as you as well do), that even in that one way that hate speech legislation is similar to Islam, it is still different: the punishment is a fine or jail time, not death
The fact that the punishment is less severe than death does not save it from being unacceptable. There should be no punishment for offending religious belief systems, just as there should be no punishment for offending any other type of belief system. The egregious violation of free expression rights is not justified because those charged and convicted will only go to prison, and emerge at some point while still being alive.
Government is guilty of a theocratic violation of free expression whenever it singles out adherents of religious belief systems as deserving special insulation from being offended, which type of insulation is not offered to those who have adopted non religious belief systems.
We don’t need to protect expression that is non controversial and unoffensive. Those words which challenge one’s deepest convictions and which ridicule one’s most cherished ideals are in need of protection from legal reprisal. Otherwise, the concept of free expression is reduced to an ineffective umbrella that is taken away the moment it begins to rain.
I don't think I claimed that punishing speech is always good, or was good in this case! I claimed that it's silly to say it's the same as death, and I stand by this claim.
It's self evident to say that putting people in jail is not the same as killing them. However, the focus of this article and the subsequent comments is not to state such an obvious fact. It's to deal with whether there should be any government imposed punishment on what should be free speech. Even a fine, let alone incarceration, is unacceptable.
Eddie,
You are mistaken. The focus of my comment was what I said it was (to praise the article but call out two pieces dramatically weaker than the rest, fo gentle feedback), nothing else.
Alex
Then you need to clarify that outside of the penalty, restrictions on hate speech are no different than laws against blaspheming Islam, because they both censor ideas. The point is that religious believers deserve no greater legal insulation from having their beliefs insulted than do members of other identifiable groups. If you agree that there should never be laws that provide greater protection for shielding religious beliefs--including Islam--from being offended, then that's the main point.