[mruts]

I dunno, it doesn't seem like we are moving toward liberalism. Everyone wants everyone else kicked off a twitter, everyone wants censorship. Tumblr bans porn, youtube bans anything people complain about, cloudflare doesn't want to do business with 8chan, etc etc. These are all incredibly illiberal and having nothing to do with true liberalism.

Liberalism, fundamentally, is about freedom (negative rights), both economic and social. The freedom to offend, to abhor, to hate, to disagree, to keep one's own money, to control one's own body, to decide himself how he should live his own life. This means legal drugs of all kinds, this means legal hate speech, legal death threats, legal sodomy, legal polygamy, legal bestiality, etc.

We are so far away from this world of liberalism and freedom that it makes me sad every time I think about it. In fact, I feel like in the past few decades we are getting farther away still.

[ajxs]

Thank you for posting this, it articulated my views on this issue so perfectly. I would call myself a liberal. Recently someone else who would describe themselves as a liberal called me a "free speech absolutist", a term they thought to constitute a dire epithet. To me this event only further highlighted what a dire state of affairs we were in. The triggering event was posting a clip of the Sir Thomas More "Give the devil benefit of law" speech from 'A man for all seasons', which I thought was liberal if nothing else.

[tombert]

Youtube didn't "ban" "anything people complain about", they just demonetized it and stopped recommending it as frequently. Still not great, but they're not taking your soapbox away, they're just not paying as much for it.

What would you suggest companies like Cloudflare do exactly? There have been talks of 8chan being accessory to literal terrorism; do you think that they really want to be hosting that stuff? Isn't it part of Cloudflare's free speech to say "we don't want to be party to this"? Isn't it a very liberal position to say "all these private companies can do business with people that they want to"?

Now, I'm actually totally willing to entertain the discussion that these corporations are so big that they should be either broken up and/or treated as utilities, but that seems to fight against classical liberalism.

EDIT:

Also, in the United States, it wasn't that long ago that marijuana possession was an enforceable crime in all fifty states, which is slowly going away. I wouldn't bring this up, except you mentioned drugs being illegal as some sort of evidence that we're becoming less liberal, despite the fact that cannabis legalization has been happening and expanding.

Not exactly sure how legal bestiality fits into liberalism; if you view the animal as a thinking entity, wouldn't having sex with something unable to provide consent be a violation of liberal principles?

[mruts]

Youtube has removed many videos pushing subversive views[1]. Do I agree with these views (maybe I do, I haven't seen the videos, but I doubt it), no. But that's beside the point. And you're right, youtube and 8chan don't want to be hosting that stuff. If I had the power I would like to think I would act differently, but I understand that the teleological purpose of a company is to make money and if I was in a similar situation, I might fold as well.

And, like you said, classical liberalism is about freedom, for both corporations and individuals. I certainly don't think that censorship on these platforms should be illegal or anything. I'm just disappointed, I guess. I feel like the world is moving in the wrong direction. I always thought the internet was going to empower everyone and subvert centralized power structures. In some regards, it did and it still does. But these subversive upstarts are now the new centralized power structures and it seems like the next wave of subversion and decentralized has not happened yet and may not ever happen.

It troubles me that the very same people arguing about a women's right to choose are slamming facebook and youtube and twitter for allowing people to express their opinions. It troubles me that these same people don't recognize the rights to buy and use drugs or consume pornography. The political axis of most people seem two multi-dimensional: They like some freedoms and want to take away others. But the way I see it there is only one dimension: oppression and tyranny on one end and free speech and individualism on the other. Social and economic freedoms go hand and hand, which is something both conservatives and liberals both seem to be confused about.

Health care isn't a human right, housing isn't a human right, forcing businesses to transact with you if they don't want to isn't a human right. The only true human right is to live one's own life free from tyranny and oppression. To do anything that doesn't impinge upon another human's right to do the same.

> Not exactly sure how legal bestiality fits into liberalism; if you view the animal as a thinking entity, wouldn't having sex with something unable to provide consent be a violation of liberal principles?

Well, I mean, then maybe we should outlaw animals having sex with each other? It's not like they give consent to each other.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/youtube-remove-e...

[tombert]

> And you're right, youtube and 8chan don't want to be hosting that stuff.

It actually looks like 8chan is perfectly fine hosting this stuff, which is the problem. I doubt Cloudflare would have as much of an issue if 8chan were proactive in taking down a lot of its more terroristic content.

> It troubles me that the very same people arguing about a women's right to choose are slamming facebook and youtube and twitter for allowing people to express their opinions.

Is anyone actually getting mad at Youtube/Facebook for simply allowing dissenting opinions? Most people get upset with the really awful stuff, like, genuine harassment or race-baiting; I honestly don't know anyone that is calling for the removal of people just because they hold an opinion against the norm.

People called for Alex Jones to be banned (which eventually happened) because he was actively and purposefully doing things to hurt people. He was spreading a lot of misinformation, which led to someone with a gun trying to shoot up a pizza shop, and to people directly targeting the victims' parents of the Sandy Hook massacre because he, for years, spread the idea that it was a hoax; he also would constantly accuse anyone he disagreed with of being a pedophile.

Everyone has a line for free speech; the easy example is "yelling fire in the crowded theater", but if I hired a hitman, it's not like it would be a valid court defense for me to say "Well it's my free speech to tell someone to kill someone". Saying that there should be no limits on free speech is intellectually dishonest, and we gain nothing from it. If certain people are causing measurable and unambiguous harm from the things that they're saying, then, to me, that's where we draw the line at giving them a platform.

> Well, I mean, then maybe we should outlaw animals having sex with each other? It's not like they give consent to each other.

I don't believe that you're saying this in good faith. If two thirteen-year-olds have sex with each other, society doesn't typically have too much of an outrage because they're just two kids who don't know better. If a forty-five-year-old has sex with a thirteen-year-old then we get upset, because a grown-ass adult should know better.

[ulisesrmzroche]

There ain’t no right to live without tyranny or oppression. Literally no right to do anything except what society says.

This is just you and your libertarian sentimentalism.

[claudiawerner]

>But the way I see it there is only one dimension: oppression and tyranny on one end and free speech and individualism on the other.

Other people don't see it that way, though, and in fact there are a few well-mounted defences from philosophers which define that "other" view. You're arguing for a roughly liberal (perhaps liberal egalitarian) point of view, but we shouldn't act as though this is the only way to conceive a healthy view of liberty and freedom. Liberalism isn't the only game in town any more, and it hasn't been the only game in town (speaking in terms of relief from the oppression of kings and barons) since the 19th century. It is a valid view that is commonly held and argued for, sure, but it is by no means the only coherent view of liberty there is.

>don't recognize the rights to buy and use drugs or consume pornography

Perhaps it's surprising, but there are actually liberal views against pornography, i.e they claim to proceed from core liberal tenets to positions in which pornography would not be permissible - see Rae Langton's work for example. In fact, this caused so much of a storm that liberal philosophers took it upon themselves to try and argue against it precisely because they viewed it as a threat to some traditional liberal opinions. It may further surprise you that some philosophers have argued that J.S. Mill himself(!) would have been against pornography.

>Social and economic freedoms go hand and hand, which is something both conservatives and liberals both seem to be confused about.

This is actually the core of certain 19th c. German critiques of liberalism.

>The only true human right is to live one's own life free from tyranny and oppression.

This is simply one opinion amongst many. Negative liberties, like traditional liberalism, isn't the only game in town any more, even in liberal circles. The idea that freedom is necessarily freedom from is not supported by some major liberal theorists (look at Rawls, or perhaps Habermas). The distinction itself, Eric Nelson argues, may not even be relevant any more.

Perhaps you didn't mean to say that this is what liberty is, but rather you were only stating your own conception of liberty, so my apologies if so - but to say that the only other possible conception of liberty is fundamentally wrong, or worse, that it is "totalitarian" is pretty shabby (as far as political philosophy goes).

>Well, I mean, then maybe we should outlaw animals having sex with each other? It's not like they give consent to each other.

This misses the point which is that most philosophers don't consider animals to be moral agents. Liberal philosophers themselves are divided on the "rights" of animals, however some prominent theorists argue that the property relations of animals should be viewed as custodial/trustee ones[0].

Even on free speech contemporary liberal philosophers are divided, but vanishingly few argue for no restrictions at all on speech, even considering obvious caveats (like threats of immediate violence). The trouble is finding a justification within a given free speech principle for certain restrictions to be permitted. It is a question of why we value free speech at all. For example, one justification for the primacy of freedom of speech is that freedom of speech aids discerning truth from falsehood, however how would this apply to deliberate lies? Surely most upholders of free speech would allow at least some lies to be uttered. So then comes the next free speech justification: that speech is inseparable from thought, but that also has its critics etc. (see Susan Brison on this point)

What I'm trying to say is this: maybe critics of liberalism have a point, and maybe we ought to rationally investigate why we hold certain liberal ideals rather than, in J.S. Mill's words, cling to them as dead dogma. It doesn't take an anti-porn conservative or a pro-universal healthcare progressive to do that.

[0] https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/97...

[mruts]

You know, this is probably one of the best comments I've ever received that consists of counterpoints to my own. Kudos for your well reasoned points with links. I really wish the rest of hacker news was as gracious and thoughtful as you. And this is high praise coming from me!

I disagree with your interpretations about Rawls or Mills, but I very much appreciate your views.

[ulisesrmzroche]

Legal death threats? Lol hard pass.

Liberalism does not mean the unrestrained freedom to do as you please.

(I don’t even know where to start responding tbh.)(you’re fundamentally misunderstanding even society as a concept)