They are not trying to suppress free speech. They are trying to suppress blasphemy. Once you accept that concept, you can understand why appeals to free speech fall on deaf ears.
"You would have to hold a very strange set of views to think that the United States is so deeply and profoundly unjust, and the powerful so oppressive, and yet, there is also going to be a regime of limits on speech that somehow happens to be in assistance of the people who are standing up against that oppression."
To quote a family saying that my sister invented, you are confusing the issue with relevant facts.
Arg!!! This attempt at political side equivalency is really irritating and I see it as problematic as it deflects from the actual guilty party, and prevents the needed dialog for getting back to what is good.
It is like the old 1A liberals cannot accept that it is their political cohort causing this mess and have a deep need to soften the bad news by pulling in a "both sides do it" narrative... like a parent dealing with a squabble of two siblings ignoring that only one of them is guilty of causing it.
There has ALWAYS been a minority of mostly highly religious conservatives on the right that believe we should eliminate the evil of speech and push the gospel. They maybe comprise 20% of the right political side of politics and maybe 6% of the total electorate. They have been there since time began and will always be there. They are not the standard Republican/conservative who is generally very libertarian and completely protective of 1A rights and 2A rights and all A rights frankly.
The mess we are experiencing in cancel culture and these attacks against free speech are at least 90% from the political left. People that consider themselves liberal progressives or leftists... all of them Democrats in terms of their voting patterns.
Mr. Lukianoff gets to the point of the matter and should spend more time there. It is about power. We have experienced a power shift of those historically feeling powerless and oppressed who had demanded their 1A rights, ironically because of our great progress on civil rights... that by the way, Republicans led the way in passing... but because the shift happened so quickly there has not been enough evolutionary time for the previous powerless to learn how to behave well with their new found power. They are still insecure about themselves because of their recent historical experience, and they are really quite out of control... power drunk and inexperienced for how to deal with it... comfortable in their own victim clothing and unwilling to dress in their new collective authoritarian robes. But powerful authoritarians they are. Someone coined the term "crybullies" and it fits. Man we saw them fluff their feathers during the pandemic.
This is largely a female issue. Females having gone from traditional family roles to a place of dominance in society and the economy (while claiming they are still marginalized and oppressed) within a generation or two... too fast for our evolutionary processes to catch up. They ended up getting what the feminist said they wanted, and now they don't know what to do with it... and they really are not happy because they never had the time to even ask themselves what they really wanted. Being unhappy still... they still feel victimized and need someone to blame... someone to lash out against.
Hate crime laws were always a Pandora's Box of mess as it established a standard that we can and should prosecute people for their words that another considered upsetting. The new power has exploited this concept and started a wrecking ball to our 1A rights.
The key concepts for limits on 1A rights need to be simply that they should always only apply to power and not the people. The Florida ban on certain children book content is not the same as canceling professors as the children's book content is decided by power over the children... the people have voted to stop it. Frankly anything related to children is a power play as children are powerless.
We also need to reconsider this principle of hate crime as we should never criminalize emotions as we can never know what is in the heart of another. We should just leave criminal law to adjudicate MATERIAL harm. Limits to the speech of power ONLY and focus on material harm vs being upset over words. This is a tough one for left-leaning people... I know because I have determined that one of the personality traits common with left-leaning people is very high sensitivity over words. It is why there is so much rage over Trump... the man that just says the words he is thinking without much of an emotional filter to regulate to prevent listeners from being enraged over the words.
But establish near absolute freedom of speech for the people, limiting them only for power, and focus on only material harm in our book of criminal and civil laws, and we will repair.
Whereas it is true that colleges and universities absorb a tremendous amount of wealth and are, therefore, wealthy, I question (because I do not know or understand) the level of influence academe has on society. Academe does two things for society; education and research. As far as education, students leaving academe - whether they go into the private, public or not-for-profit sectors - will be encouraged rather forcibly to adopt the norms of their new organizations. Further, former students, if lucky in their new lives, will be expected to learn and grow more quickly than in their many years of formal study.
Academic research can be extremely valuable for and influential to the societies that support it. However, much (or some) of publicly supported academic research is only of interest and influence to other academics and academic institutions, which would seem blunt the influence of the research on society.
They are not trying to suppress free speech. They are trying to suppress blasphemy. Once you accept that concept, you can understand why appeals to free speech fall on deaf ears.
"You would have to hold a very strange set of views to think that the United States is so deeply and profoundly unjust, and the powerful so oppressive, and yet, there is also going to be a regime of limits on speech that somehow happens to be in assistance of the people who are standing up against that oppression."
To quote a family saying that my sister invented, you are confusing the issue with relevant facts.
Arg!!! This attempt at political side equivalency is really irritating and I see it as problematic as it deflects from the actual guilty party, and prevents the needed dialog for getting back to what is good.
It is like the old 1A liberals cannot accept that it is their political cohort causing this mess and have a deep need to soften the bad news by pulling in a "both sides do it" narrative... like a parent dealing with a squabble of two siblings ignoring that only one of them is guilty of causing it.
There has ALWAYS been a minority of mostly highly religious conservatives on the right that believe we should eliminate the evil of speech and push the gospel. They maybe comprise 20% of the right political side of politics and maybe 6% of the total electorate. They have been there since time began and will always be there. They are not the standard Republican/conservative who is generally very libertarian and completely protective of 1A rights and 2A rights and all A rights frankly.
The mess we are experiencing in cancel culture and these attacks against free speech are at least 90% from the political left. People that consider themselves liberal progressives or leftists... all of them Democrats in terms of their voting patterns.
Mr. Lukianoff gets to the point of the matter and should spend more time there. It is about power. We have experienced a power shift of those historically feeling powerless and oppressed who had demanded their 1A rights, ironically because of our great progress on civil rights... that by the way, Republicans led the way in passing... but because the shift happened so quickly there has not been enough evolutionary time for the previous powerless to learn how to behave well with their new found power. They are still insecure about themselves because of their recent historical experience, and they are really quite out of control... power drunk and inexperienced for how to deal with it... comfortable in their own victim clothing and unwilling to dress in their new collective authoritarian robes. But powerful authoritarians they are. Someone coined the term "crybullies" and it fits. Man we saw them fluff their feathers during the pandemic.
This is largely a female issue. Females having gone from traditional family roles to a place of dominance in society and the economy (while claiming they are still marginalized and oppressed) within a generation or two... too fast for our evolutionary processes to catch up. They ended up getting what the feminist said they wanted, and now they don't know what to do with it... and they really are not happy because they never had the time to even ask themselves what they really wanted. Being unhappy still... they still feel victimized and need someone to blame... someone to lash out against.
Hate crime laws were always a Pandora's Box of mess as it established a standard that we can and should prosecute people for their words that another considered upsetting. The new power has exploited this concept and started a wrecking ball to our 1A rights.
The key concepts for limits on 1A rights need to be simply that they should always only apply to power and not the people. The Florida ban on certain children book content is not the same as canceling professors as the children's book content is decided by power over the children... the people have voted to stop it. Frankly anything related to children is a power play as children are powerless.
We also need to reconsider this principle of hate crime as we should never criminalize emotions as we can never know what is in the heart of another. We should just leave criminal law to adjudicate MATERIAL harm. Limits to the speech of power ONLY and focus on material harm vs being upset over words. This is a tough one for left-leaning people... I know because I have determined that one of the personality traits common with left-leaning people is very high sensitivity over words. It is why there is so much rage over Trump... the man that just says the words he is thinking without much of an emotional filter to regulate to prevent listeners from being enraged over the words.
But establish near absolute freedom of speech for the people, limiting them only for power, and focus on only material harm in our book of criminal and civil laws, and we will repair.
Whereas it is true that colleges and universities absorb a tremendous amount of wealth and are, therefore, wealthy, I question (because I do not know or understand) the level of influence academe has on society. Academe does two things for society; education and research. As far as education, students leaving academe - whether they go into the private, public or not-for-profit sectors - will be encouraged rather forcibly to adopt the norms of their new organizations. Further, former students, if lucky in their new lives, will be expected to learn and grow more quickly than in their many years of formal study.
Academic research can be extremely valuable for and influential to the societies that support it. However, much (or some) of publicly supported academic research is only of interest and influence to other academics and academic institutions, which would seem blunt the influence of the research on society.