At least in the US, government threats to freedom of speech aren't the real issue. The real issue is the extreme censorship in the private sector. There have already been several cases where people where punished for saying 'pregnant women'. Twitter has banned people for saying 'men are not women'. People have been fired for daring to observe well-known facts.
In Canada, a nurse is being investigated for saying 'I love J.K. Rowling'. In the US, people have been banned for daring to suggest that humans are mammals with two sexes.
I was disappointed by some of Brettschneider's responses to Yascha's probing. They didn't seem as well-considered as I would have hoped from someone whose expertise is free speech.
First, what do you do when there is profound disagreement on what constitutes hate speech? Yes at the margins, like KKK vitriol, it seems to be easy. But when everything becomes freighted with moral valence? What do you do then? If people say it's racist to call a protest a riot, what do we do with those cases? I didn't think he ever took that question seriously, despite Yascha trying to get at it several times.
Second, I'm not sure what I think about firing a teacher who is responsible for teaching the Civil Rights Era while themselves being racist. As long as they keep racism out of the classroom, and stick to the curriculum, I think I'd actually be ok with that. In a similar vein, what if a science teacher has to teach evolution while believing in intelligent design? That seems fine to me, as long as they do their best at teaching evolution. Evolution is a tricky and subtle concept, and I'd imagine most teachers wouldn't be able to detail it perfectly or respond to every question a student might throw at them. Does that mean they're unqualified to teach it? I don't think so.
"Should you be able to fire a teacher who is a member of the Klan or, to take very real cases, who's on Facebook saying not just offensive, but racist things?"
Such a lazy remark on Brettschneider's part when, as I'm sure he is well aware, there is a far-left academic/media/NGO complex that calls everything "racist" that deviates from their orthodoxies.
This article is worth the annual subscription. Thank you.
But my head is spinning because, although I think this level of dialog about the topic is necessary, I see it as like diving in the ocean to explain the storm above that is causing the mess with the currents below.
The first point I would make is that the debate over acceptance of disallowed speech and acceptable speech (the anti-free speech argument) isn't really about speech at all... it is about social and political tribal power. It is a construct of tribal power pursuit that is the same as is the basis for racism. It is a mechanism to punch down those outside of of the tribe so that those inside the tribe get to benefit in privilege. This is exactly why free speech needs to be absolute and not nitpicked because lacking absolute freedom of speech and expression leads to tyranny of one group over the other.
The problem of racism wasn't that white southern Democrats used the N word, it was that they materially harmed blacks from being able to equitably live, and they prevented blacks from their freedom of speech and expression. The first is material harm that can and should be prosecuted. The second is where we made our great mistake (and affirmative action is just another form of it).
Where we effed up is to adopt the acceptance of restricted hate speech. However moral and noble we believed this to be (ignoring at this time, like for affirmative action, the destructive projection that blacks are victims that need special care), once we accepted that we could read the minds of people and prosecute them for their expression of a specific negative emotion, we in effect opened the window to destroy free speech. Because today we have tribal actors exploiting the "hate" justification to attack, cancel, de-platform, and incarcerate their opposing tribe. And it just so happens that attacking tribe dominates federal government, the media and activist Twitter mob hive.
How can you defend free speech once you have adopted that exception that hate can be assessed and that hateful speech can be banned and prosecuted? You cannot. Everything that causes a triggering emotion can be defined as hate speech. That is where we find ourselves today. Virtue signaled into a deep hole of our own making.
The second point relates to the fine opinion that government should remain mostly neutral on speech. While I agree with this, today the government only plays through the media and persecution against speech is also done primarily through the media. If the media is controlled by government, or even colludes with government, then government can act as a neutral party while relying on the media to do its dirty work. This is another strengthening argument for free speech to be absolute. Because today we cannot separate the government we elect from the non-elected tyrannical power of the modern media.
The first step is national legislation that requires the elimination of all hate speech laws and hate crime laws. Crime is crime and should be prosecuted and punishment be given based on the material harm done... not including the irrational attempt to quantify emotional intent or harm.
I think it would be useful, in discussing government speech is to distinguish among both the levels of government: federal, state, local; and the various potential speakers: executive, legislators, teachers, officials in various departments, etc. As government has become so ubiquitous, who is speaking, and in what capacity, can implicate different questions. I'm not sure that's clear in the discussion here.
For example: A president speaks on behalf of the whole nation; a state assembly member speaks for a specific constituency; a public school teacher speaks within specific parameters that have no counterpart for elected officials; a state employed pharmacist will have different limits than, say a licensed private pharmacist.
With elected officials in particular, they can say whatever they want, but have to take into consideration the politics of the constituency they represent. We live in a time when there is a contingent of elected officials in both parties pushing the envelope of what they think is representative of their voters, but they are always free to make that judgment, knowing an election is always coming up.
When government officials want or need to take a position, as Mr. Brettschneider discusses, there is one more factor to consider: the law. Firing a KKK supporting teacher would, I expect, be politically supportable most anywhere now. But because the government as a whole is representative of everyone in the relevant constituency regardless of viewpoint, there is a special obligation to use the government's monopoly on using force (in this case, denying someone a government job) within existing, public legal limits. That was historically the role that the ACLU played so valuably, balancing the right to free speech against the very popular politics driving local governments to disregard legal obligations.
There is very often tension between popular opinion (even, maybe especially right opinion) and established and public limits on government, a natural tension in any representative democracy. That is, in fact, why we limit governmental action in so many ways. The larger government gets, the more opportunities there are for it to misbehave. I think this issue of modern government's sheer scale is one of the reasons issues like this come up more frequently.
The most obvious problem is that he'd have the government weighing in on controversial matters by teaching people the "correct" beliefs, without considering that the government may disagree with him on what beliefs those are.
I didn't buy his specific examples of good government propagandizing, either. Perhaps the arguments in the book are tighter.
A group of medical students walks out of the commencement speech because it is being given by a professor with pro-life views, but the subject of abortion is not broached in any way in the speech.
Is this unreasonable intolerance, or the students expressing their right to protest?
In order for a Majority/Minority society to function effectively there needs to be negative consequences of using disparaging words describing the minority.
No. There needs to be reasonable, consistent and logical arguments made against the use of disparaging words to describe the minority. As a society's mentality changes, the use of slurs becomes less acceptable in public discourse, and so they cease to be tools of oppression. There is no shortcut to that.
The rules suppressing disparaging words with 'consequences' create the kind of wall against wall opposition that does not allow a society to function but disintegrates it into closed groups, with damage to the majority as well as to the minority. Because to begin with, the number of disparaging words tends to grow exponentially as every nuance of a concept is sifted for wrongthink on one side or the other. Who decides what words are disparaging and in what context? anybody who can feel offended by even seeing a word? That's a pit with no bottom.
Moreover, minority and majority change according to what aspect of society one examines. Blacks in America may be a minority, coloured people increasingly less so, whites may become a minority in the near future: then what, should one receive negative consequences for using 'disparaging' words to refer to white people, once they have dropped under 50%? Should then people be free to use the old slurs against people of colour?
Many of those against whom we inveigh from the left are minorities, though not necessarily racial ones. Some hold disproportionate power. Some do not.
For a democratic society to function there needs to be reprobation for the use of insults in any discussion, and a requirement of reasoned argumentation. It is a simple matter of civility and thereby of civilization. No 'consequences' for the use of words.
Let consequences be the result of such words as incite crimes, and only that. What offends is not the same as what harms.
There are consequences for using disparaging words against white people. One University president used the word "polack" and he was immediately removed from the position. (The word was used as a "joke" not an insult). And white people will remain the majority until at least the end of this century. A large minority of hispanics identify as white. And a large minority marry non-hispanic whites and their children identify as white. I do think, however, that the number of words with consequences should be kept to a minimum.
At least in the US, government threats to freedom of speech aren't the real issue. The real issue is the extreme censorship in the private sector. There have already been several cases where people where punished for saying 'pregnant women'. Twitter has banned people for saying 'men are not women'. People have been fired for daring to observe well-known facts.
In Canada, a nurse is being investigated for saying 'I love J.K. Rowling'. In the US, people have been banned for daring to suggest that humans are mammals with two sexes.
I was disappointed by some of Brettschneider's responses to Yascha's probing. They didn't seem as well-considered as I would have hoped from someone whose expertise is free speech.
First, what do you do when there is profound disagreement on what constitutes hate speech? Yes at the margins, like KKK vitriol, it seems to be easy. But when everything becomes freighted with moral valence? What do you do then? If people say it's racist to call a protest a riot, what do we do with those cases? I didn't think he ever took that question seriously, despite Yascha trying to get at it several times.
Second, I'm not sure what I think about firing a teacher who is responsible for teaching the Civil Rights Era while themselves being racist. As long as they keep racism out of the classroom, and stick to the curriculum, I think I'd actually be ok with that. In a similar vein, what if a science teacher has to teach evolution while believing in intelligent design? That seems fine to me, as long as they do their best at teaching evolution. Evolution is a tricky and subtle concept, and I'd imagine most teachers wouldn't be able to detail it perfectly or respond to every question a student might throw at them. Does that mean they're unqualified to teach it? I don't think so.
Agreed.
"Should you be able to fire a teacher who is a member of the Klan or, to take very real cases, who's on Facebook saying not just offensive, but racist things?"
Such a lazy remark on Brettschneider's part when, as I'm sure he is well aware, there is a far-left academic/media/NGO complex that calls everything "racist" that deviates from their orthodoxies.
This article is worth the annual subscription. Thank you.
But my head is spinning because, although I think this level of dialog about the topic is necessary, I see it as like diving in the ocean to explain the storm above that is causing the mess with the currents below.
The first point I would make is that the debate over acceptance of disallowed speech and acceptable speech (the anti-free speech argument) isn't really about speech at all... it is about social and political tribal power. It is a construct of tribal power pursuit that is the same as is the basis for racism. It is a mechanism to punch down those outside of of the tribe so that those inside the tribe get to benefit in privilege. This is exactly why free speech needs to be absolute and not nitpicked because lacking absolute freedom of speech and expression leads to tyranny of one group over the other.
The problem of racism wasn't that white southern Democrats used the N word, it was that they materially harmed blacks from being able to equitably live, and they prevented blacks from their freedom of speech and expression. The first is material harm that can and should be prosecuted. The second is where we made our great mistake (and affirmative action is just another form of it).
Where we effed up is to adopt the acceptance of restricted hate speech. However moral and noble we believed this to be (ignoring at this time, like for affirmative action, the destructive projection that blacks are victims that need special care), once we accepted that we could read the minds of people and prosecute them for their expression of a specific negative emotion, we in effect opened the window to destroy free speech. Because today we have tribal actors exploiting the "hate" justification to attack, cancel, de-platform, and incarcerate their opposing tribe. And it just so happens that attacking tribe dominates federal government, the media and activist Twitter mob hive.
How can you defend free speech once you have adopted that exception that hate can be assessed and that hateful speech can be banned and prosecuted? You cannot. Everything that causes a triggering emotion can be defined as hate speech. That is where we find ourselves today. Virtue signaled into a deep hole of our own making.
The second point relates to the fine opinion that government should remain mostly neutral on speech. While I agree with this, today the government only plays through the media and persecution against speech is also done primarily through the media. If the media is controlled by government, or even colludes with government, then government can act as a neutral party while relying on the media to do its dirty work. This is another strengthening argument for free speech to be absolute. Because today we cannot separate the government we elect from the non-elected tyrannical power of the modern media.
The first step is national legislation that requires the elimination of all hate speech laws and hate crime laws. Crime is crime and should be prosecuted and punishment be given based on the material harm done... not including the irrational attempt to quantify emotional intent or harm.
I think it would be useful, in discussing government speech is to distinguish among both the levels of government: federal, state, local; and the various potential speakers: executive, legislators, teachers, officials in various departments, etc. As government has become so ubiquitous, who is speaking, and in what capacity, can implicate different questions. I'm not sure that's clear in the discussion here.
For example: A president speaks on behalf of the whole nation; a state assembly member speaks for a specific constituency; a public school teacher speaks within specific parameters that have no counterpart for elected officials; a state employed pharmacist will have different limits than, say a licensed private pharmacist.
With elected officials in particular, they can say whatever they want, but have to take into consideration the politics of the constituency they represent. We live in a time when there is a contingent of elected officials in both parties pushing the envelope of what they think is representative of their voters, but they are always free to make that judgment, knowing an election is always coming up.
When government officials want or need to take a position, as Mr. Brettschneider discusses, there is one more factor to consider: the law. Firing a KKK supporting teacher would, I expect, be politically supportable most anywhere now. But because the government as a whole is representative of everyone in the relevant constituency regardless of viewpoint, there is a special obligation to use the government's monopoly on using force (in this case, denying someone a government job) within existing, public legal limits. That was historically the role that the ACLU played so valuably, balancing the right to free speech against the very popular politics driving local governments to disregard legal obligations.
There is very often tension between popular opinion (even, maybe especially right opinion) and established and public limits on government, a natural tension in any representative democracy. That is, in fact, why we limit governmental action in so many ways. The larger government gets, the more opportunities there are for it to misbehave. I think this issue of modern government's sheer scale is one of the reasons issues like this come up more frequently.
The guest's arguments were not good.
The most obvious problem is that he'd have the government weighing in on controversial matters by teaching people the "correct" beliefs, without considering that the government may disagree with him on what beliefs those are.
I didn't buy his specific examples of good government propagandizing, either. Perhaps the arguments in the book are tighter.
A group of medical students walks out of the commencement speech because it is being given by a professor with pro-life views, but the subject of abortion is not broached in any way in the speech.
Is this unreasonable intolerance, or the students expressing their right to protest?
In order for a Majority/Minority society to function effectively there needs to be negative consequences of using disparaging words describing the minority.
No. There needs to be reasonable, consistent and logical arguments made against the use of disparaging words to describe the minority. As a society's mentality changes, the use of slurs becomes less acceptable in public discourse, and so they cease to be tools of oppression. There is no shortcut to that.
The rules suppressing disparaging words with 'consequences' create the kind of wall against wall opposition that does not allow a society to function but disintegrates it into closed groups, with damage to the majority as well as to the minority. Because to begin with, the number of disparaging words tends to grow exponentially as every nuance of a concept is sifted for wrongthink on one side or the other. Who decides what words are disparaging and in what context? anybody who can feel offended by even seeing a word? That's a pit with no bottom.
Moreover, minority and majority change according to what aspect of society one examines. Blacks in America may be a minority, coloured people increasingly less so, whites may become a minority in the near future: then what, should one receive negative consequences for using 'disparaging' words to refer to white people, once they have dropped under 50%? Should then people be free to use the old slurs against people of colour?
Many of those against whom we inveigh from the left are minorities, though not necessarily racial ones. Some hold disproportionate power. Some do not.
For a democratic society to function there needs to be reprobation for the use of insults in any discussion, and a requirement of reasoned argumentation. It is a simple matter of civility and thereby of civilization. No 'consequences' for the use of words.
Let consequences be the result of such words as incite crimes, and only that. What offends is not the same as what harms.
There are consequences for using disparaging words against white people. One University president used the word "polack" and he was immediately removed from the position. (The word was used as a "joke" not an insult). And white people will remain the majority until at least the end of this century. A large minority of hispanics identify as white. And a large minority marry non-hispanic whites and their children identify as white. I do think, however, that the number of words with consequences should be kept to a minimum.