Former Journalist Decides There's Too Much Free Speech These Days
from the STOP-SAYING-STUFF-ON-MY-LAWN dept
I guess if you don't really rely on the First Amendment as much as you used to, it's cool to tell everyone else these protections are overrated. That seems to be Richard Stengel's take on this important Constitutional amendment. The former Time editor and State Department undersecretary has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that says we Americans perhaps enjoy too much free speech.
Stengel's piece starts out rationally enough as he remembers his time as a First Amendment beneficiary.
When I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting “free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Speech that everyone likes doesn't need to be protected. It kind of takes care of itself. Speech people may find offensive still needs protection from the government. If we don't have that, we're just another totalitarian state where citizens and journalists only utter/publish government-approved speech.
It wasn't until Stengel's stint as a government employee that he began to question the benefits of the First Amendment. Weird how that works.
But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?
One man's religious text is another man's tinder. As a government employee, perhaps Stengel could have defended this right rather than question it. If the government isn't allowed to pick an official religion, all religious texts should be considered flammable. If you start by outlawing the burning of the Koran, you'll have to ban burning the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and anything L. Ron Hubbard has written. Is that what Stengel wants? A hate-free solution that makes every religion's assertions unmockable and unchallengable? Because that's what banning burning certain books will do.
Now that's he out of the journalism biz, Stengel considers free speech to be a "design flaw" in an era where "everyone has a megaphone." Stengel is drawing an arbitrary line between the present and the past, saying that free speech prior to the rise of social media was good and worth protecting. The internet's "megaphone" has somehow made speech less worthy of protection.
According to Stengel, the First Amendment used to protect the correct amount of speech. Now, it protects too much.
[T]he intellectual underpinning of the First Amendment was engineered for a simpler era. The amendment rests on the notion that the truth will win out in what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called “the marketplace of ideas.” This “marketplace” model has a long history going back to 17th-century English intellectual John Milton, but in all that time, no one ever quite explained how good ideas drive out bad ones, how truth triumphs over falsehood.
Ah. Pining for a "simpler era." A time when people still owned slaves and women couldn't vote and journalists had limited reach and the government had most of the megaphones.
What's really bothering Stengel isn't the First Amendment, even if he really seems to think he's got something worth saying about free speech. Instead, Stengel starts talking about "fake news" and election interference. Stengel calls for less free speech using examples that don't have much to do with the First Amendment.
It is important to remember that our First Amendment doesn’t just protect the good guys; our foremost liberty also protects any bad actors who hide behind it to weaken our society. In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, Russia’s Internet Research Agency planted false stories hoping they would go viral. They did. Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment.
Stengel is conflating moderation efforts (or lack thereof) by private companies with the First Amendment. If Facebook and Twitter did little to police "false" stories, that's on those companies. Dragging the First Amendment into a critique of election interference efforts by a foreign nation makes no sense. It only makes sense if you're trying to make the case the First Amendment needs to be overhauled, but can't actually find enough examples of speech you think should be regulated.
From there, Stengel moves on to "hate speech." He says this "enables discrimination" and "diminishes tolerance." He's not wrong. It also has the power to nudge people towards acts of violence. But should it be outlawed? That's the question Stengel almost answered earlier, when asked by residents of countries with severe speech restrictions why the US would allow people to burn the Koran. He had no answer then. He thinks he has an answer now. But he doesn't.
Instead of offering a solution, Stengel poses a rhetorical question and suggests states just start crafting speech-limiting legislation.
Isn’t [hate speech], by definition, speech that undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law? Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?
Yes. Let's start "experimenting" with First Amendment protections. Let's turn the United States into a patchwork of speech laws and unleash that on the connected internet so people living in states with better speech laws can be prosecuted by states with worse speech laws just because the offense took place wherever the offended person saw it. That doesn't sound like America to me. That sounds like Turkey -- a nation where the rules for speech are written by the people with the most power and the thinnest skin.
If some jerk in Texas offends someone in Massachusetts, let's give the state with more speech restrictions the power to enforce judgments against other people whose speech isn't illegal where they live. Or vice versa, let's allow some offended person in a state without restrictive hate speech laws use another state's laws to punish someone for their "hate." A fiefdom in every state and an Erdogan in every home. That's one hell of a slogan.
Stengel signs off with a paragraph that may as well have been penned by George Orwell.
All speech is not equal.
Some speech is more equal than others.
And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.
Perhaps by establishing a Ministry of Truth.
I’m all for protecting “thought that we hate,” but not speech that incites hate.
And we'll leave that up to the creativity of fifty different legislatures, all with their own agendas to push and their own ideas of what constitutes "hate." And once they've started poking holes in one Constitutional protection, they can move on to the others.
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Filed Under: free speech, hate speech, journalism, richard stengel
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Ah, blasphemy — a victimless crime.
made the First Word by Gary
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When does 'being mean' become 'hate speech'?
So what gets me is, a different 'class' of people are protected in every decade depending on what the national conversation is at the moment. For example, running around calling black people the 'N' word in the 60s would never have been prosecuted as hate speech had there been such a law.
Being derogatory towards gay people in the 80s was just the sad fact of history that the government wouldn't have done anything about.
Dunking on various religions is just a national pastime that would be selectively enforced...
The problem with 'hate speech' is who is doing the prosecution. Bully a gay kid to death; that just happens. Burn the American flag? Throw that communist terrorist scum in prison!
Selective enforcement is the crux of regulating speech in a fair and impartial way. You can't outlaw being an asshole. You would just regulate 'some' assholes you didn't like more than others.
Our First Amendment right is protection against unpopular speech; Like that time when those 'uppity' women wanted the right to vote. Or black people demanded to be treated as equal. Or when the LGBT community had the audacity to request to be married. (/s) I'm sure some people wished that the First Amendment wasn't around so they could have shut that speech down!
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No court has yet defined “hate speech” in a way that can justify its censorship. No court ever will. “Hate speech” means different things to different people, and not all of those things can be covered in a single definition.
Some White people view a statement such as “Black lives matter” as hate speech against White people. Other White people don’t. Who’s right? Until a court can answer that question objectively and fairly, it shouldn't be trying to define “hate speech” — and the government shouldn't be trying to stop it.
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It's easy to define hate speech. It's anything I don't like. Right now I don't like Republicans, so pretty much anything on Fox news is hate speech. Tomorrow, I might change my mind....
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I hate you because you are an insane Leftist!!! You should be tossed into jail or shipped off to North Korea where your ideas will fit you right in.
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Woosh
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Murica. Love it or leave it bro.
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Re: When does 'being mean' become 'hate speech'?
They still do. There are people near me protesting against unequal and brutal enforcement against turnstile jumpers.
If Black People being oppressed in America would be a bird, it would be a Phoenix.
If it were a video game character, it would be Dracula (and his castle) from the Castlevania series.
Slavery died only to be resurrected as Jim Crow only for that to die and be resurrected as Mass Incarceration, which is what we have now.
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Re: Re: When does 'being mean' become 'hate speech'?
and we still have the war on drugs
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Re: Re: Re: When does 'being mean' become 'hate speech'?
That too.
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Re: Re: When does 'being mean' become 'hate speech'?
"Slavery died only to be resurrected as Jim Crow only for that to die and be resurrected as Mass Incarceration, which is what we have now."
Don't forget to add disproportionate disenfranchisement to that list. Having a black guy lose his right to vote for petty crimes pulled when he was a teen, then have him still being left without voting rights after twenty years of being an upstanding citizen COULD be referred to as simply "draconian"...
Except that situation doesn't happen much to white people.
The problem with banning "hate speech" is that the ban does nothing to mitigate the actual hate. It only kills the public debate on racial hatred. To the great benefit of racists.
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Why?
Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?
Because such laws would be unconstitutional, fortunately.
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Re: Why?
Laws becoming law that might not be constitutional does not prevent such laws from being enacted. If later after a gambit of suits brought against the laws for constitutionality laws are removed, the damage may already have ruined thousands of lives.
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“I may not like what you say, sir, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it…so long as I’m personally comfortable with what you say.” — Richard Stengel, probably
I’m all for questioning the effectiveness of methods we use for countering hate speech. I'm even all for questioning the methods we use in response to speech such as, for example, deliberate provocation for its own sake (i.e., burning a Qu’ran). But I can’t abide bby the idea that speech that makes us uncomfortable — speech that offends or angers us in ways we can’t even imagine — should be censored by the government.
As an example: Richard Stengel’s opinions on free speech make me plenty pissed off. But he should absolutely have the right to express them (and the Washington Post should have every right to publish/host them) without government interference.
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... though that doesn't mean he is entitled to a space on any specific platform either.
If nobody likes his ideas and everybody kick him out for being despicable, that's not a First Amendment issue.
That's just people showing you the door.
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I find Stengel's speech to be hateful to the First Amendment...does that mean we get to outlaw his speech too?
The glaring flaw in the hate speech isn't protected speech argument is who gets to decide what qualifies as hate speech. One man's hate speech is another man's mantra.
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Religious Protections
And don't forget the end-run of anti-blasphemy laws. Punishing the non-believers!
I know people who would love to criminalize blasphemy. Against their religion, at least.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-13-countries-where-being-an-atheist-is-punishabl e-by-death-a6960561.html
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Ah, blasphemy — a victimless crime.
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Once we criminalize burning holy books, the thumpers will be coming for us with pitchforks and torches for making fun of them, eh?
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Who has the power to prove which book or books are holy and which ones are not?
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My holy book is the Bro Code. Or was it “I Am America (And So Can You)”?
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Or more aptly...
One man's (heretical) religious text is another man's Grindr.
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Every time I see/read about someone hating on the first amendment protections, I can't help but feel that they are inciting hate.
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If Stengel couldn't answer that question, perhaps it says more about his lack of understanding of the First Amendment (and therefore his qualifications for that job) than it does about the First Amendment itself?
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Love that line ... "Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats"
LOL - I can imagine just how "sophisticated" they are.
It's a book. I thought there was a thing about not worshiping an idol, is this book an idol?
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"It's a book. I thought there was a thing about not worshiping an idol, is this book an idol?"
No, no. It's just scripture which means burning the book is tantamount to attacking God, therefore blasphemy.
Christianity has more or less the same proscription.
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"Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect [burning the Koran]?"
And the answer is that there is a difference allowing something and protecting it. The government needs to allow all speech because the only possible alternative is the government deciding which speech to allow and that gets in the way of having free elections.
People who burn Korans or Bibles or whatever are not "protected" or shielded from the natural consequences of their speech. It just isn't controlled by the gov't.
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People who burn Korans or Bibles or whatever are not "protected" or shielded from the natural consequences of their speech.
They are "protected" from governmental interference.
Of course if the books actually had the magical properties ascribed to them, angels or whatnot would come down and start smiting!
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Well "protecting" against actions by the protector only really works for the mob.
Apart from smiting, the government also isn't going to protect you from more earthly forms of legal retaliation like getting kicked out of private establishments or platforms, banning, shunning, boycotts, protests, insults against your mother, being left by your wife etc
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For God's sake, man, "protected speech" is a legal term.
Is this some kind of Seinfeldian standup routine you're workshopping for us? "Why do they call it protected speech? It's not protected, and it's not speech!"
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The point I was trying to make there is that in protecting speech (as well as counter-speech) the government isn't actually taking a side as the question implies but instead it just allows people to decide for themselves whether they think Koran burning is to be tolerated.
"legal term"... you got me.
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If I had the means I'd build a mosque out of korans and then burn it down using gas cans shaped like feet. Shun me all you like.
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why shaped like feet?
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Legally, no, there isn't. In the context of the First Amendment, "allowed" and "protected" are synonymous. You've never heard the expression "protected speech"?
The First Amendment is a protection of speech. "Congress shall make no law." Your speech is protected from government reprisal, unless it falls into one of a handful of explicitly-defined categories of unprotected speech (incitement, defamation, etc.).
You...appear to have completely misunderstood what "protected" means in this context. It's not the person who's protected, it's the act. And it's not a protection from "natural consequences", it's a protection from government retaliation.
That said? If you consider an ass-whoopin' to be a natural consequence, the law protects people from that, too, at least theoretically. It's not legal to respond violently to someone exercising protected speech.
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Yes you are right I suppose the feds are protecting your speech against laws created by the states but they won't protect your speech from private citizens or companies who still have the right to block it from their platform, shout over you, throw you out of their house or do retaliate in all sorts of legal, speech chilling ways (yes, they still need to obey regular unrelated laws).
The only protection they provide your speech is from themselves. I don't see how you would be able to democratically decide what to censor; as soon as something is censored then the next discussion could be tainted by the limitations.
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That is not remotely what I said, though that is true under the Fourteenth Amendment's incorporation doctrine.
Yes. I'm familiar with the First Amendment.
At this point I have no idea what you're even trying to say.
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"At this point I have no idea what you're even trying to say."
Once you start censoring anything you are giving up some of the control over your elections (if you banned hate speech for example, this would restrict what candidates can say in their campaigns and so to some extent who you will be able to elect as representatives). By extension, you then also lose that control over what is being censored.
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"they won't protect your speech from private citizens or companies"
Is this something that you want?
Is there anything else that government can protect you from?
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you forgot to mention the supernatural consequences for acts such as burning holy text.
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Natural consequence as in delusional idiots attacking you for not revering their deeply held beliefs?
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Input vs Output
Sounds like he's frustrated that some people don't seem to care whether what they hear is true of not. I sympathize, but I'm not willing to take the shortcut of surrendering public discourse over an oligarchy for determination of worth. Because that would, you know, break our entire country. This country functions because people are allowed to say stupid things (Stengel) and other people (me) are allowed to say "that's dumb" and ignore it. We need to encourage more discrimination listeners, not more discriminating barriers to speech.
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We literally called people that said stuff like this
Nazis. Remember that?
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Not just Nazis
Nazis weren't the only ones who suppressed speech. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who Richard Stengel has cited, famously used the "fire in the crowded theater" line, but the speech he was trying to suppress was anti-war activism in Schenck v. United States.
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Re: We literally called people that said stuff like this
Nazis. Remember that?
Now we call them "Very Fine People."
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Until the glamour falls, anyway.
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Sadly, Spencer's outburst of shouting what he REALLY thought about various ethnic minorities, including the part about buying, selling, and OWNING them, only gives him more credibility among the Klan and on Stormfront.
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Re: We literally called people that said stuff like this
And BAM you just go and Godwin the thread like when I drop a Zof off at the lake after a night of beer and Taco Bell.
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Re: Re: We literally called people that said stuff like this
Zof is a religion so you might want to temper back a tad.
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Line in the sand
What I find so fascinating about Americans commenting on free-speech issues is that they have drawn an arbitrary line in the sand (pornography of a seventeen-year-and-364-day-old is illegal, but of an eighteen-year-old is perfectly fine; calling for followers to hurt a specific person is illegal, but saying that an ethnic group needs to be exterminated is fine; giving more than a certain dollar value to a politician to spend on their campaign is illegal, but giving that same money to a PAC to spend on that politician's behalf is fine), but they act as if where they've drawn that line is the only sensible place that line could ever possibly be drawn.
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And where would you draw it? This is a bad example because no matter where you draw the line, one second before that is illegal and one second after that is fine.
Say what now? Who in America (other than racists) is calling for exterminating an ethnic group? Also, where in the law is that even found? Because I'm pretty sure the law says something pretty opposite to that. Something about murder of any kind being illegal, except in self-defense.
And many people have brought this up and called for reform on campaign finance laws. It's a huge fight every election. This is another bad example.
Well, your bad examples and outright false statement aside, there are certain things where there really is only one sensible place to draw the line. Like freedom of speech. You either protect all speech, or you get government approved and dictated speech. There is no middle ground.
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Let's start with:
Plainly false. I've given three examples of unprotected speech, and you don't seem to be arguing that that speech should be protected. Saying "there is no middle ground" is saying that you should be able to say literally anything, from incitement, to speech integral to criminal conduct, to fraud, and so on. I don't think that's the argument you want to make.
You've chosen a middle ground. Pretending you haven't is only fooling yourself.
I would think it should be drawn based on research conducted to determine how to prevent people from being exploited and traumatized. It'd be somewhat less arbitrary than society collectively deciding that people magically gain adulthood at eighteen.
...The racists aren't enough?
Also, isn't someone who calls for extermination of an ethnic group kind of racist by default? It's like saying, "Who in America (except the politicians) is passing laws?"
I'm not talking about committing murder being legal. I'm talking about what might be called "stochastic terrorism." The crime of "incitement" only limits people from calling for violence if they intend to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely. Intention, imminence, and probability. However, if you don't care what the effects of your speech are, if the person decides to commit the act days after your speech, if any one speech isn't likely to cause an act of violence but the combined aggregate virtually guarantees that someone will act violently on your behalf... that's all legal. So, saying something like "Go kill a [X]" would probably be illegal, but "All [X] should die, and we'll be the ones to do it" wouldn't.
And I acknowledge there's a clear enough line there, but I laugh at the idea that that's the only place that line could be drawn.
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Fine, I will give this to you on a technicality since I did say "all".
However, I find your statement slightly disingenuous since most people discussing this topic generally refer to it as "all speech" while silently acknowledging the narrow limits on it. Those limits generally being things that would cause direct physical harm to another person. (The campaign finance one is tricky because technically their speech is not limited and their right to give to their candidate of choice is protected. The amount doesn't restrict their right to support who they want, it's more to insure democracy is not undercut by the exceedingly wealthy, which, in itself, protects the right to free speech for the rest of the population.)
Actually, I do, at least partially. Incitement to violence I think is a sensible limit, but incitement to non-violent action should be perfectly allowable.
And what speech is integral to criminal conduct? Saying hello to your fellow criminal? Telling him to drive to a certain location? There is no law against "speech integral to criminal conduct" for good reason, it's the same reason there is no law against hate speech. How do you define it? Much of the "speech integral to criminal conduct" is used in normal every day speech. People are allowed to speculate how they might rob a bank, they're just not allowed to actually do it. The act is against the law, the speech is not.
Same with fraud and so on. You can talk about it all you want. Once your speech turns to action is where the line is drawn. In other words, once you actually commit the crime.
If it's a middle ground then it's a middle ground very far away from the middle and very close to one end of the spectrum.
So you're fine with children being used for pornography as long as they aren't exploited and traumatized by it? I'll have to disagree with you on that one and say that pretty much any child pornography is traumatizing for the child. I think 18 (the legal definition of an adult in America) is a reasonable restriction to protect children.
I don't think it's "magic", I think it's need to draw the line somewhere for lots of things, not just pornography. Should we let 12 year olds drive cars or drink? I think 18 has come about after many years of experience showing that to be an age when humans generally have gained enough knowledge, wisdom, and experience to be trusted with greater responsibility. (And yes, exceptions do exist, I'm talking generally.)
I think you misread my statement. Either that or you are making the argument that the majority of people in the US are racist and are calling for mass genocide of ethnic groups. My original point being, the majority of Americans are not calling for killing off ethnic groups and it is against the law to engage in such acts.
Yes. Relevance?
Neither am I. But speech involved in murder can also be legal in many other circumstances. For instance "I'm going to kill you" is perfectly legal and protected speech.
Isn't that still terrorism?
I agree.
Ok, then where would you draw the line and still maintain our current (or better) free speech protections?
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On the contrary; I think that the people saying "all speech" while meaning "all speech except the limits I accept implicitly" are the ones being disingenuous. They're saying it's self-evident which speech isn't "all speech." And that's exactly what I take issue with.
Fraud is direct physical harm? Defamation is, too? Your "generally" is putting in a lot of work there.
So... incitement to commit burglary is fine? Incitement to defraud?
Here.
With fraud, the speech is the action. The only difference between fraud and not-fraud is what you're saying to the customer. If you're lying about what you're selling to someone, that's fraud, and not protected speech. If you're telling the truth, it's protected. The speech itself is the crime.
True. And perhaps all acceptable middle grounds will be towards that end of the spectrum. My point is that saying that moving that line a few inches to prevent people from advocating violence against minorities will inevitably lead to "another totalitarian state where citizens and journalists only utter/publish government-approved speech" is ridiculous hyperbole.
If you define a 17-and-364-days-year-old person as a child, and an 18-year-old person as not one, as if that one day will suddenly remove all of the trauma? Yes, if the evidence said move the line a month sooner, or seven years later, I'd be with the evidence, and not your gut instinct on what a "reasonable restriction" is.
And I think that more research should be done to determine exactly where that line should be placed. I think 18 was chosen pretty arbitrarily, and I'd be absolutely flabbergasted if 6,575 days was somehow significant.
I was never arguing that the majority of Americans were doing anything. They don't have murder laws to prevent the majority of people from killing other people; they're there for the tiny minority of people who do. I fail to see why a hate speech law, or any other law, would be different.
The racists are inciting people to kill. The fact that most Americans aren't mouth-frothing racists and are not inciting people to kill has dick-all to do with whether those who are should be punished for it.
Not necessarily. True threats of violence are another exception to the First Amendment.
Saying such a thing in jest (or hyperbole, or in any other way that it's meant not to be taken as a serious threat) is protected.
Not by any legal, American definition of terrorism.
Why shouldn't the latter be illegal?
And there it is again.
You're assuming that the line either shouldn't be moved, or it should be moved in the "more speech" direction. You're taking for granted that everything that is now protected should still be protected. That's my entire point: that you're making that assumption as if it were given.
To answer your question, I think that the US should move towards having something like Canada's hate speech laws. And to pass an Amendment if necessary to get there.
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You mean the ones where those Human Rights Tribunals can bankrupt you with very little due process mere because someone claims you said or did something that offends them?
Yeah, it would be so much better if only we had those kinds of star chambers here in the U.S. \sarc
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Citation? I remember a few cases that might fit that description, but none that weren't reversed on appeal.
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I know there's a false narrative that went around claiming that they made it illegal to accidentally call someone by the wrong pronoun.
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Actually, I'd give a point to the previous AC on these:
Well, more like half a point here. It is indeed legal to wish some degree of violence on a vaguely defined group of people at some undetermined time in the future, as long as it's not a direct call for imminent action. It's bad, but it's difficult to draw a fine line that wouldn't outlaw certain acceptable speech. So it's been drawn at "call to imminent illegal action". I'm not sure about Stengel, but Trump for example should really be glad about this status quo, since he actually called for violence several times during his rallies. (Personally, I think he even blatantly crossed that line a few times, his targets only being saved by the crowd being - barely - more reasonable than him.)
As you say, there is indeed call for reform here. However, that is indeed the law of the land at the moment, at changing it is difficult because those who can change it are the same ones who benefit from it.
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Okay, then.
Let's assume a society where the government cares what the law is, and enforces it more-or-less even-handedly (in any other society, it doesn't really matter what the law is; the mob will do what they want to you and the government will turn a blind eye).
Can you provide an example where violent rhetoric would be acceptable speech, in such a society?
Just about the only violent rhetoric I find even morally ambiguous is that directed at other groups employing violence and/or violent rhetoric (e.g. "Go beat up Nazis/antifa"), and if the law is enforced equally, that justification goes away.
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First, I didn't say it was "acceptable", only that it's "legal". When your speech is legal but unacceptable, you still risk paying a social cost, just not a legal one.
Second, the line defined by law can be moved. It must be done very carefully though, lest you give too much power to the government to suppress speech it doesn't like.
As for examples of acceptable violent rhetoric, lots of jokes fall in that category, like threatening to throw a certain judge in a woodchipper. How do you differentiate humor from actual threats? That is one fine line to draw. Be careful of wishes for strict enforcement of the law.
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Perhaps you should read the part of your comment that I quoted. You absolutely used the word "acceptable." Check it against your original comment if you want to confirm.
No disagreement there.
I don't think I wished for "strict" enforcement; only respectful (the authorities care what the law is) and "even-handed" enforcement (used no differently against the government's political opponents as its supporters).
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He didn't say violent rhetoric was acceptable. On that he said:
Therefore Wyrm's reply was correct - he didn't call it acceptable, he called it legal. The part that you quoted, which mentioned "acceptable," was raising the point that it's exceptionally difficult (if not impossible) to craft a law to outlaw violent rhetoric that doesn't also outlaw other acceptable speech.
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Oh, I forgot - Wyrm, if "he" is incorrect, my apologies.
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Are you saying that it's difficult to distinguish violent rhetoric from any other kind of speech? Because I disagree with that notion.
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Well, there’s sarcasm, for example.
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No, I'm saying that it's difficult to write a law that would outlaw only violent rhetoric without the wording of the law technically making other forms of speech illegal, and therefore making the law open to abuse.
As for respectful and even-handed enforcement... I don't have sufficient faith in humanity to believe that you'd get enough incorruptible people into office to make that happen.
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The problem comes when you start equating 'spending money on political issues' with 'spending money on behalf of politicians'.
We can argue about whether some things are protected speech or not-- flag-burning, strip dancing, etc.-- but there's one thing the Founders intended to be protected above all else when they wrote the 1st Amendment and that is political speech.
If I as a citizen feel strongly about a political issue, I should be able to speak out about that issue-- either on my own or in concert with other like-minded citizens-- to include paying for the most efficient means of distributing my speech to a wide audience. The fact that some politician might agree with me and that my views might help her get elected doesn't mean the government gets to take my right to speak out on that issue away from me, nor does it mean the government gets to relegate my speech to being able to reach only those people I can shout at as they walk past me in the park.
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Re: Line in the sand
Not always. Let me take it one at a time:
Many, MANY people on the left want Citizens United overturned (and for that matter, many more thoughtful people on the left would go further and overhaul the campaign finance system itself to have public funding of elections).
That's because genocide is rarely done outside of a state or state-sanctioned level. And many countries with "hate speech" laws also prohibit laws against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions campaign on the grounds that it advocated genocide against Jews. While many, many such laws were created in the US, every single one of them was struck down. If we prohibited hate speech, we would probably also prohibit laws against BDS.
This I agree with you. I do find our puritanical culture extremely hypocritical and maddening. That being said, it is actually legal in NYC for women to show their breasts in public as long as they're not trying to sexually arouse. See here.
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That’s such a ridiculous standard. How can anyone even determine intent if a woman walks around topless and some random jackoff gets a boner?
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The key word is "intent". It's not whether or not somebody is sexually aroused; it's whether or not that was the purpose of going in public topless.
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Yes, but, again, how do you determine this? If you ask them (and they know about the law, which is probable if they're going around topless), they're going to deny it. How do you prove the intent of someone's clothing (or lack thereof) choice?
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I believe Potter Stewart has a good quote on that (third from top).
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That quote was about obscenity. It doesn’t apply to intent.
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Re: Re: Line in the sand
Once again, I misread his tweet. I thought it said pornography given to children, not child pornography. Yeesh. That's fucked up.
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Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
Maybe I'm misreading you once again (there's a lot of that in this thread, on my part as much as anyone's), but are you really saying that if someone lies on their application to star in a porn film, claiming to be one day older than they are, and that day makes the difference between "child pornography" and "normal pornography," and they find that out a year later, that everyone who came into possession of that video should be charged? Imprisoned? Labelled as a sex offender?
Yes, it's a ridiculously contrived scenario, and I'm certainly not in favour of children (or anyone) being exploited or traumatized. My only point in this example is to draw attention to the arbitrariness, in some places, of the line between "protected speech" and "criminal speech," and of how people are unwilling to critically examine their own assumptions about the inherent rightness of where the line is currently drawn.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
"Yes, it's a ridiculously contrived scenario, and I'm certainly not in favour of children (or anyone) being exploited or traumatized. My only point in this example is to draw attention to the arbitrariness, in some places, of the line between "protected speech" and "criminal speech," and of how people are unwilling to critically examine their own assumptions about the inherent rightness of where the line is currently drawn."
Here's a few less contrived examples on how this law can pan out in real life. A 17 year old dates another 17 year old. One of them sexts the other (as some 15-20% of teens do at some point or other). A year afterwards both of them are guilty of possession and possibly production of CP.
A person at the ripe old age of 50 has a nude of their similarly aged spouse at the age of 16, taken in their early days. Criminal? Yup.
And let's not forget a real-life example a few years back of a mother trying to document her spouse's behavior when bathing their child, trying to establish evidence that the spouse in question was molesting the child. She was sentenced for production of CP and the sole custody defaulted to the suspect spouse.
It's pretty much established that "Law" almost never equates to either common sense or justice, it being this arbitrarily drawn "line in the sand" which demands an absolute completely unrelated to fairness.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
Where’s the “sad but true” button when you need one?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
I’ve always thought that laws against child pornography are overly broad. The fact that it applies to people who are themselves the same age as the depicted minor(s), people who possess explicit photos of themselves as minors or distribute them to others of similar age, and unwilling recipients of child porn if they show it to anyone shows how overly broad the law is.
At an absolute minimum, it should not apply to people who possess or distribute child porn of themselves (except on a publicly viewable website like Facebook) or who possess child porn of their spouse if the spouse is of similar age and was willing. Nor should it apply to minors who have explicit photos of others in the same age group if the subject was willing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
No, that won't happen thanks to 1980s underage porn starlet Traci Lords, who lied about her age and had fake ID that said she was 18 when she was actually 15. She did dozens of hard core porn movies as an underage teen before her deception was found out and the government did indeed try to prosecute the producers who made the movies and the actors who had sex with her in them, and anyone they caught possessing one of her films-- which were a lot of people, considering she was the hottest-selling porn girl around at the time. The government's position was that Lords' lies were irrelevant, as was the lack of knowledge about her true age on the part of the defendants. Basically, they said, child porn is a strict liability crime and intent and knowledge are irrelevant.
The cases were consolidated and went all the up to the Supreme Court, which overturned the convictions and said Lords' deception absolved the producers and actors of any criminal liability. People who knowingly possessed her films after her true age became known, however, could still be liable.
I'm just amazed that Traci Lords didn't end up floating face-down in a river somewhere. Those were the days when organized crime was still heavily involved in the porn biz and she put a lot of dangerous people on the hot seat with her shenanigans. Instead she went on to become the most successful cross-over mainstream actress of any porn girl in the industry. Maybe she was crazy like a fox.
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Re: Re: Line in the sand
Sure, but that doesn't stop people from shooting up mosques and synagogues because they've heard genocidal rhetoric.
...Your syntax is unclear here.
Are you saying that people should be able to call for sanctions against Israel for their treatment of Palestinians or that they shouldn't?
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Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
I know this for a fact because my very synagogue was vandalized thirteen years ago. That being said, hate crimes such as this have also existed in countries with laws against hate speech, even before the internet to amplify it.
I apologize for the confusion. I mean to say that people should be able to call for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against Israel. I don't agree with it, but it damn well should be their legal right.
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Thanks. I thought that's what you meant, but the double negative of "prohibit laws against BDS" was throwing me off.
Well then, I agree. I think that any hate speech laws should be narrowly-tailored enough that non-violently protesting any action of any government would be protected. However, I don't think that it's impossible to write a hate-speech law which preserves that right.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Line in the sand
The problem arises then that laws prohibiting speech advocating genocide–the legal doctrine that allows hate speech laws to exist–is explicitly the one that allows the laws prohibiting BDS to exist, since they are always argued to defend Jews against genocide. I also find it interesting that you said this:
considering that Canada passed anti-BDS laws, and while almost all states in the US have passed anti-BDS laws and/or executive orders, almost all have been struck down on First Amendment grounds.
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That's a gross misrepresentation.
Canada's government passed a resolution saying "BDS is bad."
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I mean, seriously, from your own link:
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I stand (or rather, sit) corrected. My bad.
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No worries; that story is from almost four years ago, and the headline could be read either way. It's an easy error to make.
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I just had a thought; does the law apply if the topless woman isn’t trying to arouse others but instead themselves (an exhibitionist)?
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Since this article is dated 2015 and it's now 2019 and I saw these same women in Times Square a couple of months ago still plying their trade, I can only assume de Blasio's task force spent a whole bunch of tax money and came up with nothing.
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Feelings
If it were simply illegal to have feelings, none of this nonsense would be a problem. No feelings, no violence.
Save the world, Stop the Hate, Make having feelings illegal!
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I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a movie about this exact concept that ended with someone getting their face sliced off with a sword.
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The movie you're thinking of is 'Equilibrium'.
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The movie you're thinking of is 'Equilibrium'.
Actually I was trying really hard to not think about that pompous slog. Thanks TOG! :)
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Hush your mouth, gun katas are awesome!
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“When I was a journalist”
You were never a journalist you just held a title.
Next.
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We gave up so many of our rights to be "safe", why start caring now?
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I find Stengel's opinions to be offensive. I demand that the Washington Post remove them!
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I’m all for protecting “thought that we hate,” but not speech that incites hate.
Like the speech in the holy books?
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Don't you just hate it when people don't agree with you?
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Too Much Free Speech
(apologies to School House Rock)
This is probably copyright infringement with damages in the TRILLIONS if not Quadrillions of dollars.
I'm an amendment to be.
An amendment to be.
And I hope that they ratify me.
It seems we've got some left liberals
Who have got too much freeedom
And I want to make it legal
For policemen to beat 'em!
'cause there's limits to our liberty!
Oh I hope and I pray that there are
'cause these liberal freaks go to far!
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Re: Too Much Free Speech
...but not The Simpsons?
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Re: Re: Too Much Free Speech
Well, they're owned by Disney now, so, sadly, NO!
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Re: Re: Re: Too Much Free Speech
...who do you think owns School House Rock?
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Dear god, no!
Maybe we should just thinking of Disney being a part of the MPAA and instead the MPAA being a part of Disney now…
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Face it. We will never achieve socialist utopia in the US unless we can control speech. There are just too many people out there who don't know what's good for them and won't shut up about it. Controlling free speech is the first and most important step toward our progressive dreams.
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^
Obvious troll is obvious
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Doesn't make it untrue.
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Nothing can, without it having ever been true in the first place.
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Face it. We will never want to achieve socialist utopia - anywhere.
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"There are just too many people out there who don't know what's good for them"
Sounds like something donald would tweet.
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Officer me
Journalist:there’s too much free speech.
Me: I agree. Put your hands behind your back.
Journalist:but I have a right to free spe-
Me:like I said I agree.
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Re: Officer me
all you have to do Mr Journalist, is confess to being fake news.
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Re: Officer me
Oh, are we at the border again?
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even the most sophisticated Arsb diplomats...
Aha. Ahahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Haha. Ha-hmmmm.
I think i see some of the nature of the problem with your mindset.
Ahahahahahahahahahaha...
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Are you saying that Arab diplomats are incapable of being sophisticated?
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