[eropple]

Man...I'm really, really sick of this lame, lame, lame defense of lousy behavior. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that anybody other than the government has to have anything to do with you and doesn't apply to anybody here in their personal judgments of somebody who's choosing to act shitty.

And maybe it's just me, but it strikes me that, when the best defense or excuse that you can trot out is that hey, it's actually going to get you arrested to do it, the moral argument is not exactly strong.

[joshuapants]

> Freedom of speech doesn't mean that anybody other than the government has to have anything to do with you and doesn't apply to anybody here in their personal judgments of somebody who's choosing to act shitty.

Man... I'm really sick of this lame, lame, lame misunderstanding of free speech. The first amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal embodiment (among many others throughout history) of the ideal of free speech, but that's not where it ends. Attempts to shame (or otherwise coerce) unpopular speakers into silence is still a violation of that ideal.

[eropple]

You are wrong both in the textual sense and the historical sense of it. "Freedom of speech" has never in the history of the United States been anything but a governmental restriction; it has never been a moral calling for the citizenry. Nor should it be: while there is a compelling argument for the government's agnosticism with regards to the viewpoints of the citizenry, there is no serious or compelling argument for the citizenry's agnosticism with regards to the viewpoints of each other.

Shame is a tool for fixing shitlords or, if they are unfixable, rendering them powerless. It's a good tool. It gets a bad rap when the powerful are powerful no longer, but--strangely enough--never does when the powerful are powerful.

[joshuapants]

Sounds like you need to do a bit more reading on the subject.

> "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise." -Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent

But of course, you probably already do understand this and are just willfully ignorant.

> Shame is a tool for fixing shitlords or, if they are unfixable, rendering them powerless.

This has told me pretty much everything I need to know about your viewpoint. You're a bully and you relish silencing opinions you don't agree with, while thinking you hold some kind of moral high ground. Whatever gets you through the day, I guess.

[stinkytaco]

>Sounds like you need to do a bit more reading on the subject.

I feel like you're making unsupported claims. I can think if two instances where you are correct:

1. "Equal time" laws, which are so specific and narrow in their scope to the point of being almost meaningless in a fractured media landscape.

2. Slander and Libel laws which protect people from being personally attacked when the claims are untrue. These laws do not apply to true claims, nor do they apply to criticism of opinions and they are very loose in the instance of public figures.

Neither one of these apply in this situation. I am perfectly within my rights to say "That opinion is wrong." and criticize it. Indeed, one could argue that's the very point of free speech, to encourage public discourse and argument.

[eropple]

I think you're missing his point. He's attempting to staple a moral argument to the citizenry--that it's not merely the government that must ensure freedom of speech, it's that we as citizens must accept and tolerate shitty speech. Which has no significant historical basis--Noam Chomsky is a guy and I don't have to agree with him, even when he's not being misquoted--but is alarmingly popular in certain dank corners of the internet.

More specifically, this notion is the origin of redpill horseshit--itself fallout from the fundamental disaster of my generation: the belief that we deserve to be loved, that people who don't love and adore us are wrong. From that tragic misapprehension rises this back-assward idea of acceptance-for-everything-under-the-sun, which you will note is employed almost strictly by people who have lost positions of social power but still cling to the ideologies of superiority that put them there.

One must deserve to be loved, and that requires work and effort. It is not, to crib a phrase from a friend, an existential entitlement.

[eropple]

> But of course, you probably already do understand this and are just willfully ignorant.

I am in favor of freedom of speech, and I said as much. No law should be passed to abridge speech I dislike. That has no bearing on whether I have to be in the same room or associate with those who want to do it. My freedoms to associate do not stop because a shitlord exercises his freedom of speech.

> You're a bully and you relish silencing opinions you don't agree with

Sure, by some dictionary definitions, I'm a bully, because I am totally okay with use superior positioning and social force to cow people who wish to use their freedoms to hurt people I care about. But I am not the government, and I am not responsible for the freedoms, or the consequences of freedoms, of others. And shame--which I use in a cultural context and you attempt to overload with moral words like "bully", I specifically use a word like "shitlord" because it has no positive meaning afforded to the speaker/writer in its use, I have no need for the fiction of a moral high ground--stops those who would hurt those I care about, when the opprobrium of society demonstrates that their speech is protected but not accepted. And that's the critical point: the gap between protection and acceptance is wide.

But "relishing" it--eh, not really. It is a functional consequence of living in an inherently political world, where social acceptance is what is necessary to enact political aims. Gay-bashers, say, had no time for "dissenting opinions" when they were the majority. I am comfortable--not gleeful, but comfortable--with not "accepting" them when that acceptance is what they need to harm people. Or, similarly and at rather lower stakes, GamerGaters (well, their spittle-flecked precursors) likewise were so very happy to assault anyone who challenged the young-white-male status quo, and only now that they are losing do they want the kind of acceptance that helps them achieve their political aims; I'm okay with not helping them do ill by "accepting" them.

.

oh, and EDIT: You shouldn't try to reference Chomsky without actually checking out the full context of the quote you pulled from Wikipedia--I assume just by Googling for "freedom of speech" and pulling the first "liberal" name you found--to make sure it means what you think it means. Had you read the book, you'd understand that Chomsky's concerns are around mass media, which are functionally organs of the state, using that position against the citizenry. Which is, again, different in not only degree but kind from individual disapproval and political action. But thanks for playing!

[joshuapants]

I guess I should have sensed I was speaking with an edgy troll earlier. Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[heydenberk]

It's a shame you chose to dismiss the discussion rather than concede the point.

I mentioned that Gavin McInnes is a person who has made a living spewing incendiary, bigoted hate speech. You argued that we should still listen to him in order to not violate the ideal of freedom of speech. Other people eloquently pointed out that this is wrong, both by any reasonable moral standard and by the traditional motivating principles behind freedom of speech. You called those people trolls. That's a shame.

[eertami]

I agree that it's obviously nothing to do with free speech.

But it's entirely disingenuous to claim somebody is acting shitty when writing satirically.

[eropple]

Sure, if you think it's satire. I am intensely skeptical of the idea that it's an attempt at satire--both from reading his stuff and from knowing people in the circles he's traveled in--and have never seen anything to convince me otherwise.