That's not the ethos of free speech, the ethos is the recognition that we don't have the right to silence the other fellow.

You've got to keep in mind the context of the formation of the country and the writing of the Constitution: we had just ditched the King, eh? (And by "we" I mean the wealthy land-owning (and in some cases slave-owning!) ex-Englishmen who were in the room at the time.) We decided that we didn't have the right to abridge the freedom of speech of each other.

So it's not that we welcome speech we disagree with, (e.g. see the reception of Abolition or Women's Suffrage), it's that we mustn't use the force of law to silence those we disagree with.

These days, with the rise of social media, people are communicating en mass with each other over systems that are privately owned and built in such a way that the owners feel the need to moderate and even censor some speech. That puts us in a weird situation, one that didn't tend to apply to ostensibly private communication (mail, phones). (But radio and TV and movies have always been moderated (George Carlin - "Seven Words You Can't Say On TV" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0 ). Heck, comic books used to be moderated!)

Absolutely. That wasn't what I was questioning. What I'm questioning is the proposition that wishing death on people is a "cherished American tradition". I don't think it is.

The American tradition is to be very permissive about how far speech can go before it becomes illegal. That's a very different thing.

I’m not aware of anyone calling for “unfettered” freedom of speech. Harassment is a crime and is illegal. Inciting violence is a crime and is illegal. Etc etc, yelling fire in theater, etc

When I think of free speech, I mean that people should not be persecuted for singular statements that are somehow synecdoche’d into trying to say a person is bad.

I’ve seen artists fired because they liked a tweet and someone said it offended them and then there was a spiral.

I’m not saying that we should allow people to say anything, but that we should not spend so much time trying to change people’s speech to what I want it to be like.

You do. But the idea of free speech has been twisted and warped to mean speech without social or economic consequences and that is where it goes wrong.

I doubt you believe that speech should be more criminalized than it already is. I think most of us agree that having an opinion, no matter how outrageous or evil, should not be a crime. We agree on exceptions to this for outright threats of violence.

The expectation that speech should be free-as-in-beer. That you are entitled to a platform. That you should be free of all consequence. This the problem.

Providing privacy and communications produces not subject to control of a central authority isn't a bad thing! But we also shouldn't just be mindless cogs in the free speech money machine.

I doubt it. Cases in point:

> I should not be free to

> I should not be free to go around telling all your friends

Free speech is absolute by definition, otherwise it is not free. If you don't believe in free speech, you don't believe in free speech. Own up, don't try to weasel around with words. Say it: I do not support free speech.

This is the main issue, people not speaking their mind. Just speak what you feel. Don't worry, we still have some free speech left. You can voice your disregard for the principles of freedom and liberty.

We really, really aren't.

>If speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free.

Just take a moment and thing about what you just wrote. It's absolutely nonsense.

I can't go in to a job interview and call the panel a bunch of cunts and then expect to be hired. That's a consequence of speech "administered outside the law".

Does this mean there's no free speech? No, of course it doesn't.

I find it interminably frustrating that people (moreso on the right, and moreso in America, but neither exclusively) hold free speech above pretty much everything else. People have more than ONE right.

Free association is also a right that needs to be protected. And that means people should be free to associate with (or to NOT associate with) people that have said things they disagree with.

What if the freedom of speech you are defending is impeding on the right of others to speak freely?

While I agree with the sentiment, that we have to be especially observant how we treat the freedoms of the people whose opinions we dislike, I don't think just defending those and forgetting about the grand picture is in great service of freedom of speech as it stands.

Maybe this is my liberal (?) European bias, but I don't think for example there is much value in definding some extremist political group that goes after some other people whose opinion they don't like. In the worst case, you are defending a group who has a huge chilling effect on the free speech of the other group, by making them afraid of speaking publicly about their cause.

Yes, it does. It has severe restrictions on what kinds of speech the government is capable of punishing you for expressing. That's what free speech is.

Free speech does not mean that you have the right to come into my house and scream obscenities at me. Nobody, nowhere has that right, regardless of where they're from.

I think there are ways to "try to stop people from speaking freely" that are acceptable and indeed vital. We as a society generally have conventions around what speech is appropriate, and we generally teach people (both explicitly and implicitly) to, for example, ask for things nicely, compliment people, express gratitude, etc. And we as a society generally "punish" people who violate these conventions by being reluctant to interact with those people. I don't see this as a violation of freedom of speech in any sense.

And also, I don't really agree with the mode of argument of "eventually the tables will turn against you." I don't oppose strict legal consequences for murder, for instance, because one day someone might frame me for murder. I support the legal consequences for murder and I support various mechanisms to increase the likelihood that only actual murderers receive those consequences.

This is a powerful idea.

Have you found legal protections in the United States for this principle? I can think of some limited examples (Miranda rights, for example), but I do not, off the top of my head, see the the U.S. Constitution as generally protecting this right broadly.

As long as you were white, reasonably well-off, and probably male, yes. It did not mean that for almost everyone else.

Also "speaking your mind" has never been (and never should be) consequence free. There was just no recourse for the majority to apply consequences until recently.

> The idea that people would routinely get fired for voicing their opinions [...] would have seemed shockingly unfree.

I'm pretty sure people have been fired for voicing their opinions all the time - it just wasn't white folk, especially men. And not just fired - plenty of people have been killed for voicing their opinion in the USA since day 1. Just not really white folk, especially men.

> That's where society used to draw the limit.

Because society used to be a lot more lopsided in terms of diversity, power balance, etc. Now the balance has shifted and some of the people who previously had all the power do not like it one bit.

I strongly disagree. Support for freedom of speech means being anti-censorship. It's perfectly coherent to believe that particular speech does harm, and also should not be censored.

Suppose you and I are top medical researchers, and we disagree about the best way to treat a disease. It's perfectly coherent for me to believe that your speech is killing people by promoting a treatment which is suboptimal/counterproductive, and also believe that your speech should not be censored.

If free speech doesn't work in some particular culture, then it's that culture that needs to be discarded, not free speech.

Same goes for political activity. Some political organizations should be prohibited. And I dont see any issue knowing islamists or skinheads are excluded from parliement and prosecuted after intimidating opposition through violence.

Besides keep in mind, for most of those things, the legal hurdles are very high. Your voting rights cant be stripped away for small offenses.

When did American society have an 'ethos' of free speech (let alone an ethos of universal free speech)?

There's nothing to reconsider. There are people that hate how free the speech is in the US, but their efforts are largely limited to the environments where they have full cultural and administrative control over - such as certain university campuses, or online platforms they own - and once you go outside these censorship areas, your speech is free, and the government - absent occasional local stupidity outbursts routinely corrected by courts - is not able to suppress speech in any meaningful way, and the courts are determined to keep it this way.

TLDR: some people want speech not to be free in the US, but so far they fail.

This speech seems rather ... hateful. Shall we fine you? Officers! This man is screaming hateful speech in the public arena!

Or maybe you disagree with that being hate speech? In an uncivilized society, if I have the power then it doesn't really matter. You still get fined or worse.

> You can question everything, just not your own values on speech

No, you can still question that in a free society if you so choose. But you may not necessarily be able to in an unfree one.

> You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith.

This is entirely disingenuous. Supporting a philosophical position is not without reason, as you well know, and is not automatically dogmatic.

> It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points.

Perhaps, you can better explain your dogmatic devotion to your belief that freedom of speech is not an important tenant of modern civility and sophistication?

I don't think so.

What you should be allowed to do is to freely argue that the speaker you disagree with is wrong. That's free speech.

If you try to influence the theatre to not have the person speak at all, you are suppressing free speech.

I've never once met a true free speech absolutist. We accept restrictions on speech all the time. We restrict companies from outright lying about their products. We (sometimes) hold people accountable for lying under oath. We even compel certain speech by forcing companies to disclose ingredients and allergens. Even for government some material is justifiably classified and shouldn't be publicly shared. I should not be allowed to make direct calls for violence against others, phone in fake bomb threats, or yell "fire" in a theater.

There are good reasons to limit/place restrictions on speech. It's the same with every right we have. There will be instances that call for restriction. It falls on us to make sure that we preserve freedom as much as we can while still enacting sane restrictions.

Laws against racist speech do more harm than good. They hinder our efforts to understand and confront racism and they are so broadly defined that they are easily abused. That doesn't mean other restrictions on speech are't a good idea though.