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Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

latimes.com

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Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#21

Post by tomnipotent »

gamblor956 wrote: post #12
bryan_w wrote: post #10

The same free speech that is protecting racists today is the same one that prevented Gay people from being censored in the 90s for their "deviant" behavior.

Is your statement intended to be ironic? Gay people were heavily censored in the early 90s outside of cities like San Francisco and West Hollywood. It wasn't until Will and Grace premiered in 1998 that the needle began moving toward acceptance.

According to Wikipedia [1], comedy TV shows with LGBT characters by decade (which is probably a good proxy). Ellen's "coming out" episode was in 1997.

  70s: 12
  80s: 11
  90s: 28
  00s: 45
Willing to wager the trend is similar to movies.

We had (just the ones I can recall off-hand, but had to lookup years):

  Paris is Burning ('90)
  My Own Private Idaho ('91)
  Fried Green Tomatoes ('91)
  Philadelphia ('93)
  To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar ('95)
  Jeffrey ('95)
  Birdcage ('96)
  Bound ('96)
  In & Out ('97)
  Boys Don't Cry ('99)
Of course, most of these role were filled by cis people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comedy_television_seri...

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#22

Post by krapp »

klmadfejno wrote: post #15

As great as free speech is, I don't think western political systems will survive it if it's not accompanied by transparency and accountability. Humans are hard wired to perceive their environments as local. They are not local anymore. The bar of plausible deniability has sunk two inches into the mud we stand on for any dumbass political justification. I don't want restrictions on free speech, but I also feel absolute…

Sorry, but both "transparency" and "accountability" are considered censorship now.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#23

Post by TMWNN »

klmadfejno wrote: post #9
fennecfoxen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as…

I don't think equating racist power structures in police and government to red scare communists is a good analogy. The fear of communists was mostly made up in rhetoric. The protestors on race relations are pretty clear on why they're upset.

The US and the West faced for 45 years a totalitarian system that had conquered a dozen neighboring countries and had a powerful military. How far was "too far" in combating that?

As mentioned, there were Communist spies in the US government, far more than was generally understood at the time; we know that now thanks to the Venona files. That doesn't change the fact that Joe McCarthy was almost always correct only by accident. (You shoot in a random direction often enough, you'll hit someone eventually.) Worse, his excessive rhetoric likely for years discouraged legitimate rooting out of said spies.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#24

Post by elliekelly »

tomnipotent wrote: post #21
gamblor956 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your statement intended to be ironic? Gay people were heavily censored in the early 90s outside of cities like San Francisco and West Hollywood. It wasn't until Will and Grace premiered in 1998 that the needle began moving toward acceptance.

According to Wikipedia [1], comedy TV shows with LGBT characters by decade (which is probably a good proxy). Ellen's "coming out" episode was in 1997. 70s: 12 80s: 11 90s: 28 00s: 45 Willing to wager the trend is similar to movies. We had (just the ones I can recall off-hand, but had to lookup years): Paris is Burning ('90) My Own Private Idaho ('91) Fried Green Tomatoes ('91) Philadelphia ('93) To Wong Foo, Thanks f…

But how often were those characters the butt of the joke or gay for comedic relief?

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#25

Post by mellosouls »

guscost wrote: post #8

“I trust you guys. I love you guys. We'll keep this space open. This is the last stronghold for civil discourse. After this shit it's just rat-a-tat tattity tat-tat ta tat tat TAT.” - Dave Chappelle

“I seen Candace Owens try to convince white America, ‘don’t worry about it he’s a criminal anyway', I don’t give a fuck what this nigga did… I don’t care if he personally kicked Candace Owens in her stink pussy. I don’t know if it stinks, but I imagine it does."

- Dave Chappelle, civil discourse champion, also

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#26

Post by tomnipotent »

elliekelly wrote: post #24
tomnipotent wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia [1], comedy TV shows with LGBT characters by decade (which is probably a good proxy). Ellen's "coming out" episode was in 1997. 70s: 12 80s: 11 90s: 28 00s: 45 Willing to wager the trend is similar to movies. We had (just the ones I can recall off-hand, but had to lookup years): Paris is Burning ('90) My Own Private Idaho ('91) Fried Green Tomatoes ('91) Philadelphia ('93) To Wong Foo, Thanks f…

But how often were those characters the butt of the joke or gay for comedic relief?

As of 2015, same-sex marriage is legal across all 50 states (no idea about territories). Progress can sometimes can incredibly ugly, and I wish it wasn't, but a win is a win.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#27

Post by drtillberg »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #7
the_resistence wrote: post #3

Regrettably, that is what's lost in all of this. Protesters against other opinions and belief systems strongly defend free speech so long as you are saying what they approve of.

The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as…

A chaplin recently had to resign in apology at a distinguished academic institution for ... making factual and insightful comments about the George Floyd incident.[1] McCarthy eventually was shamed and disgraced by his casual destructiveness. "Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

[1] https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/mit-chaplain-resigns-over-emai...

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#28

Post by graton »

harryh wrote: post #4
rbecker wrote: post #2

Just in case someone finds the examples in the article all acceptable censorship, here's a few more off the top of my head: Evergreen professor forced to resign for opposing day of white absence: https://blog.usejournal.com/the-controversy-of-bret-weinstei... UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail": https://freebeacon.com/issues/university-to-investigate-lect... Dat…

The last one about the data scientist tweet got even crazier : https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-raci...

That link was posted here on HN and then got flagged. You can find it if you paste the URL into HN's search.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#29

Post by bosswipe »

There's a disconnect that keeps running through a lot of the arguments from the conservative side which I don't understand. The examples given in this piece are a) the right of street protesters to be heard without being attacked by government officers vs b) the right of people to not get fired for what they say by private organizations like the New York Times.

This disconnect keeps coming up, and it's extra weird because conservatives have traditionally been the bigger proponents of corporate freedom to fire whoever they want. But now many conservatives seem to want some kind of new labor protection laws.

Maybe what is going on is not really about free speech but more about quickly changing cultural norms. It used to be OK to make blatant racist and sexist jokes in an office setting but at some point that changed and now you can easily get fired over it. That's not a change in free speech restrictions, it's a change in what is considered culturally acceptable behavior between private actors. But changing cultural norms aren't something that should be somehow regulated by the government.

Re: Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

#30

Post by Proven »

klmadfejno wrote: post #15

As great as free speech is, I don't think western political systems will survive it if it's not accompanied by transparency and accountability. Humans are hard wired to perceive their environments as local. They are not local anymore. The bar of plausible deniability has sunk two inches into the mud we stand on for any dumbass political justification. I don't want restrictions on free speech, but I also feel absolute…

You can't get screwed if there's no government to screw you.

You want the government to do 100 different things. One of them will be to screw you over.

Big government is not a predominantly western political system. Small government is.

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