If you are placed in that cell for a good reason other than speech, yes. Prisoners have the same right to free speech as everyone else. That is not to say prisoners should be given a larger forum than the one they currently have.
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I was working on a side project in a neighborhood coffee shop one day when I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two people who clearly had divergent religious views. They were obviously unshakable in their convictions, but while they were polite to each other, they were endlessly hoping to change each other’s minds about what was the right thing to believe. I really wanted to convince them they were wasting their time, though I suppose I too would be wasting mine by doing so.
That said, debates are never about convincing your opponent they are wrong; it’s about convincing the impartial and undecided that you have the stronger argument. Since colleges are the marketplaces of ideas filled with students who are trying out new ways of thinking, this is an important process to shape the leaders of the future.
Social media echo chambers are anathema to this, sadly. If a rival idea is presented, it’s only to place it in the worst light possible to be openly mocked.
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Sounds great in principle, but many are arguing now that colleges should provide a platform and funding to odious people with murderous views. Some views don’t deserve that, any reasonable “debate” about them having already been settled.
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The Internet was built with tax dollars, layered atop a telecommunications system built with tax dollars. I helped build the former, my father helped build the latter (he worked on Ma Bell’s Long Line system as a US Army technical officer).
Today’s Internet would not exist without state sponsorship. Facebook is the tiny privately owned tip of a huge pyramid of long term public funding.
But anyway, when you are discussing the Internet, freedom of speech is rarely an appropriate metaphor. Usually cognition is better served by reference to freedom of the press.
And as we know, “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” The poor and disenfranchised can beg for space in the letters to the editor column… which the owners will edit or delete to suit their own whims.
We’ve had these arguments before, about other newfangled communications methods. In 1941 Norman Woelfel wrote “It is foolish to assume, because in America we do not have an official propaganda agency dictating what shall be broadcast, that American radio is free. Like the press which is free for those who own and control it, the radio is free for those who can buy equipment, hire technicians and talent, and secure profitable advertising contracts.”
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At the risk of speaking in absolutes, I think it helps to remind ourselves what was wrong with these distasteful ideas rather than sweep them under the rug hoping they’ll go away. I might be convinced of some exceptions, especially if it jeopardizes the personal safety of vulnerable individuals, but I think society is more resilient if we present solid reasons to oppose destructive policies out in the open rather than silence any talk of it at all. But that’s just me. I have faith that most people want to live in a just society and they can be made to see it’s in their own interest to respect the freedoms we all share.
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Who is that? Christina Hoff Sommers? Ben Shapiro? (I don’t follow the first or agree with the second, but they are not Nazis.)
How do you even know the debate on X has been settled if entire areas are excluded from the discourse? I can accept that there is stuff that’s best left unexamined because nothing we could find there would do us any good. But the line currently getting drawn goes much further than that.
And in some science-fictional future on the planet Mars, all the people enjoy equal amounts of freedom and right to life. It’s just that when a worker says the wrong thing, the company president withdraws their access to his private oxygen generator. Perfect freedom of speech, and perfectly guaranteed right to life.
But true, it’s a matter of definitions. Only I afraid that the restrictive definition can cover any number of dystopias.
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Legally, yes. I’m saying “Rich people should give to charity, because poor people are starving and they too have a right to live”, and you keep reiterating that “rich people should not be compelled to give up their riches for people they don’t like”.
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I meant you are not expected by society to give a soapbox to nazis. As in, give charity, even to people you don’t like, but if you refuse to give to a nazi, that’s ok.
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But that “end” is the reality in every other sector of society. It works for other things. Public transport companies are NOT allowed to filter their customers by race or political opinion, etc.
So maybe you aren’t using straw-man arguments, but is it fair to say that you just don’t see the difference between what I’m saying and the alleged “straw-man” you’ve been using? I’m at a loss to explain any further. It should be obvious to anyone who agrees that Obamacare is not communism…
But the way this is being put sounds scary - what are “consequences”? Do I have the right to murder someone, even though I might have to suffer “consequences” for it?
True, Freedom of Speech as an absolute right does not work - but neither does the right Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. If I’m only happy when I kill people, I will have to suffer consequences. My right to liberty will be curtailed. Why is it that with freedom of speech, people always prefer to talk about an absolute right and make sure to define it in a way that any limitations on what people can say aren’t “limitations on free speech” after all?
I mean, it’s like saying a prison inmate is really free, because the Right to Freedom is absolute, it’s just subject to consequences?
I was thinking Milo, Richard Spencer and Charles Murray.
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So you agree then that Milo, Richard and Charles should be denied the legitimizing platform of a campus stage and funding from college coffers?
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So then your points 1 & 2 are the status quo i.e. no one can force you to amplify the voice of another and point 3 is the other end. Thus your assertion that I’m employing a straw man argument is shown to be baseless and was little more than a distraction intended to suggest my viewpoint was extreme and unreasonable.
In fact I do see the difference between my position that no one should be forced to amplify the voice of others or to provide them with a forum to reach a larger audience and your position that this, the current condition, creates inequality in the freedom of speech we all enjoy which suggests that this inequality is somehow unjust due to factors like “being denied by owners of private platform that other people use to spread their ideas”. That difference being that we simply do not have the right to be heard and that being heard is not a condition of being free to speak your mind. Additionally no one has the right to tell others that they must listen to viewpoints they view as offensive or to provide them a forum for which to spread their ideas.
So, your general thesis that the lack of equal access to private speaking platforms is unjust or diminishes free speech is one that I roundly reject as being without merit since there is no justice to be had in forcing people to provide support to a position they feel is unworthy of amplification.
Spencer - sure.
Milo is literally a court jester. If you can’t let jesters talk, that’s not a good sign.
Murray isn’t a nazi. The issue with him is that he deliberately went into one of the areas I feel may be best left unexamined. If he’s to be personally crucified as a warning to future others - well, alright… Not fair to him personally, but probably for the greater good.
But in any case: The protests don’t remain limited to these cases. Anyone outside of certain orthodoxy is a target for de-platforming initiatives. Now these don’t always find ear with the universities - and that’s a good thing - but some political opinions of the left are now being treated as sacrosanct and their criticism is viewed as politically impermissible. Which is an attempt to shove something like 50% of the American electorate not sharing these opinions outside the Overton window. And I just don’t think a democratic society can (or should) ever do that.
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Huh? Are we even having the same discussion?
You’ve been conflating two things that I consider very much different; if you were doing that on purpose, it would be a straw-man, if not, it’s a matter of me not defining the difference accurately enough. Either way, me calling it a straw-men is not a “distraction intended to suggest” anything at all.
But as you have not been answering my arguments and rather just claiming victory for no apparent reason, I’m unable to rectify that for now, as I would risk repeating myself even more than I already have. If you do want to continue this discussion, you could start by explaining to me why my analogy to capitalism/communism and my analogy to forcing businesses to do serve LGBTQ customers does not convince you.
You mean the guy who said that the wealthy are wealthy because of their high IQ and that the rest of us aren’t rich because of our low IQ? You know… like Trump. The guy who said that this was a result of their genetic makeup? The guy who got his data from explicitly racist scientists paid by the Pioneer Fund which was founded by a Nazi sympathizer, eugenicists, and advocates of white racial superiority? The guy who says that the racist pseudo-scientists he cites “are some of the most respected psychologists of our time”? That guy? Yeah not a Nazi. Just a guy who parrots Nazi and white supremacist ideology.
Of course not. It was just an innocent and earnest call to dismiss based on a logical fallacy.
citation needed. As I see it I’ve addressed every single one of your arguments. That most of them are not germaine, have no basis in fact, and suggest we enter in to tyranny in order to promote inclusion has nothing to do with it.
For the capitalism/communism point, that’s simply because a nations choice to operate with a particular set of economic rules applied justly to all is not a rational analogy for the creation of a system whereby people are forced to support and participate in speech they reject.
For the LBGTQ argument, you are attempting to compare a public business refusing to sell their product to a person in a discriminatory manner with a public business being forced to allow someone to enter their business and sell their own product. The difference should need no explanation.
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No. Your lawn is yours, but if you rent out the only large music venue in town, you would be within your rights to stop a hate rally from renting, but not (morally) within your rights to restrict the venue to AOR bands and refuse to rent to Rap bands solely because that genre is outside of your tastes.
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Correct. Even a public school like Berkeley isn’t obliged to lend charlatans, cranks, and jokers the dignity of speaking in its lecture halls, any more than it’s obliged to allow any of them to act as classroom instructors or offer admission to any student regardless of ability.
An institution, just like a hosting provider, is allowed to have standards in who it allows to use its platform – more so in the case of serious universities, since the speaker in those cases are often seeking to bask in the the glow of the institution’s legitimacy and reputation (one gained by not allowing just anyone to speak on its platform).
Unsponsored randos are always welcome to show up with their soapboxes in Sproul Plaza, but when they’re sponsored by a student group or if they want to use interior spaces they’re subject to Berkeley’s rules (one of which should be: if your speaker sparks a riot, your group agrees to pay for the security costs).
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Why not? If I have the only large venue in town and my business is based on AOR music, why would I have any interest in booking anything but AOR? For that matter, how is it a moral rather than a business choice to specialize in AOR music?
To put it in terms of the internet, if I open a forum that specializes in rational reasoned discussion and was so successful that my platform became the largest one on the net, how would it be immoral to say that neo-nazi propaganda is unwelcome on my site and will not be tolerated? It seems to me that would actually be not only the moral choice but the sound business choice as well.
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Not at all, as that would be hate speech. The issue is where an owner decides something like “I don’t want any mention of bagpipes” or “I will only allow Democrats on my political discussion boards that is not expressly a partisan board.” And it’s not an issue where the site (or your front lawn) is a small thing, but when the site is a massive part of the public discourse, promoted as a neutral space.
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So you have a problem with people who don’t like bagpipes? You feel that if I don’t like bagpipes I can’t ban them from my large venue? That’s some special needs tyranny right there.
And why can’t I have Democrats only on my puppy blog? Why does my puppy blog have to suffer through right wing Fox News parroting?
When that’s the case, if it’s not publicly owned then there is no moral or legal obligation to allow anything and everything or to prevent you from picking certain things to not allow. Your voice is not special and despite what your mommy said neither are you. No one has the right to force a private actor to promote their crap or give it a larger audience than the one they already have. As I’ve said, if your idea has merit it will be echoed until it becomes a singular voice that will effect change. If your idea is without merit it should die unheard. Let the people decide what THEY want to echo and stop trying to impose your tyrannical utopian impracticality on others.
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A site owner is allowed to change his policy as he likes as long as it doesn’t violate the law (which neither of your examples do). Her joint, her rules – including deciding to change a non-partisan BBS to an explicitly partisan one.
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