No Stupid Questions

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.". ― H.L. Mencken

It’s very simple. It’s because people falsely mistake freedom of speech for freedom from consequence.

Because assholes commonly don't understand "free speech" doesn't also mean "free of consequences." They don't think they should have consequences. They don't actually care about free speech.

None of the free speech crowd actually understand what the first amendment means. So they claim that boycotting an artist for saying some racist shit is denying them their freedom of speech. These turds need to take a civics class.

Because freedom of speech only needs to be invoked for distasteful speech. And what's distasteful is subjective.

I'm pretty far left in my politics, and growing up in a very far right area of the country, I'm aware that the principal behind free speech is very important. The social pressure to fit in was bad enough on its own; I could only imagine how bad it would have been if they had ability to shut people up by force.

Everyone gets their rocks off dunking on rightoids being shitheels and hiding behind their freedom to be a shitheel. They rarely pause to think how it might be turned on them. Because newsflash, shitheelery is really fucking popular because humans are terrible. If your ideal form of governance and the distribution of rights therein depends on people being as "good" as you are, you're going to have a bad time.

Because insuring free speech includes everyone and the most strident assholes believe themselves to have the right to speak first and as loudly as possible.
It doesn't mean we don't discount their bullshit and laugh at them, it just means they are the loudest and quickest.

Just to be clear, if they do somehow bring up a valid point, it is not dismissed out of hand like the obvious bullshit is.

Freedom of speech does mean that.

It means you have the absolute right to say anything you want to say. It also means you can say something without being a hypocrite, as you are free to speak on a particluar topic you have knowledge on or have not committed whatever you are condemning.

Many people misunderstand the term freedom of speech with regards US federal law. That law is a specific protection from the federal government for citizens, businesses, and other organizations. It is specifically to protect them from retaliation by the federal government.

It is important to note that the law does not protect citizens, businesses, or organiztions from each other. Such protections would be from local laws regarding defamation or libel.

GenX lefty here.

I grew up with freedom of speech (the overall ideal, not the US legal concept) being a non-negotiable, axiomatic thing.

Every bit of social progress the world has seen, came about by loudly and obnoxiously challenging accepted norms, and refusing to sit down and shut up. Civil rights, worker's rights, women's rights, gay rights, trans rights and a whole bunch more - all of them only advanced by brave people getting up on their hind legs and speaking up for them, even though it was considered an affront to common decency, even an abomination.

For a bunch of overprivileged idiots to try and pull the ladder up behind them because their comfort is offended... really fucking bothers me.

I promise, I absolutely guaranfuckingtee that every person alive today will one day be on the wrong side of history; there are norms in society that our descendants (should humanity survive long enough for us to have any) will be utterly disgusted with all of us; and we would be just as disgusted by them. The shiny GenZ hope-of-the-world darlings of today will be the contempible boomers of 60 years from now, that's just how history works. You can't stop that from happening; the best you can do is increase social flexibility and mobility so they don't remain totally rooted in the norms of their youth.

The absolute unmitigated gall of people today to imagine that no, unlike all that came before them, they have the right of it, that their accepted norms must be coddled and protected from any that might dare challenge them, that social change can stop right here.... fuck no, fuck that, fuck them, fuck the entire concept.

You don't disable progress, you mustn't hobble change. And speech that offends us is the only way you get change, pretty much by definition.

Once you silence offensive speech (of whatever form), you're locking in the status quo, and ironically that's the most conservative thing you can ever do. Even if you believe that you and your team will never censor genuine activism, once you enable shutting-people-up as an option, you hand an absolutely terrifying weapon to the assholes that take power next time you lose the election.

Now I will grudgingly concede that the landscape has changed, that the coming of the information age has shifted the way everything works, that the mechanisms and underlying rules are changing, and that the principles of absolute freedom of speech that made sense in my youth no longer get you the same results. The internet is a big scary machine, and its ability to create filter bubbles and viral trends and cliques and misinformation and just general ugh... is pretty damn terrifying. Just look at the damn antivaxers, climate change deniers, the rampant and increasing transphobia, the fascist assholes getting their hooks in everywhere - clearly the marketplace of ideas is a mob town now, and we can't just expect it to run itself.

How do we fix it? I don't fucking know. Both sides seem to lead some pretty terrible places - is there a middle path somewhere? How do we trust anyone to steer it?

Popular speech doesn't require defense.

I think those people are worried about losing their freedom of speech because people often tell them to shut the fuck up.

They are afraid of "cancel culture" because when they see someone being punished for being loud and obnoxious, they get concerned that THEY might get in trouble for being loud and obnoxious. They don't want to stop being that way, so they feel the need to fight for their right to be an asshole.

Rowan Atkinson describe it perfectly for me. https://youtu.be/xUezfuy8Qpc

The simple answer is they're attempting to insulate themselves from consequence or challenge.

Free speech doesn't work like that (it only protects you from gov't retaliation, not other private citizens), but it doesn't stop them from trying because as some of the responses here exemplify, people will fall for it and let them continue saying whatever, regardless of whether it's true or harmful to the vulnerable.

Because people don't grasp what "free speech" means, at least in the US context.

Freedom of speech (expression) protects one against government interference with expression. The US government can't stop you from saying bigoted, racist, or sexist things because you have the freedom to express yourself.

But.

Freedom of speech doesn't require anyone to offer you a platform to share your views, nor does it mandate an audience. If your views are unpopular, freedom of speech doesn't prevent others from denying you business or employment generally either; the ol' "consequences of your actions" principle.

Bad actors want the right, a mandated platform, and no consequences for being shitty. They get upset when they find out that they're entitled to neither a platform nor protection from consequence.

Well, if you’re saying things everyone agrees with, you probably won’t have problems, and it won’t even come up whether you have the right to speak. Freedom of speech only comes up as a concept when it is in conflict with other interests.

Many legal issues are defined by their extremes. That doesn’t mean they only encompass extremes. Just that it’s the extremes that delineated the actual boundaries.

People seems to be under the impression that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences, that you're free to spout all sorts of hateful nonsense and not have to deal with the hurt they cause.

There's usually no need to invoke "freedom of speech" when the things you're saying are popular and nobody is offended by it.

It's because there are, like many things, 80% of us who get what the intentions were, while there is 20 percent who abuse it or mishandle it. It's not the a majority are asses though, just the crazies get more airtime, and then it becomes an echo chamber.

I may be mistaken, but wasn't it Mark Twain who said that ever American has a God given right to make a total fool of themselves? Americans famously take a notion to doing that and flipping a very public bird to each other. The last great bird flipping was of course the election of Trump...

I wish people didn’t confuse the right to do something with the necessity to go do it. I fully support people’s right to be removeds, but I honestly don’t understand why anyone would want to be an removed

"Have you tried a task manager?" to me, with ADHD.

Bro, I tried all the task managers and tried to make my own one.

Because when the best thing that can be said about what you're saying is "it's not literally illegal to say it", you're probably scraping the bottom of the barrel with respect to the content of your words.

It's also often that if people are reduced to using it as an argument, they've already been told to shut up, and that no one in their company wants to hear what they have to say. Kind people who say disagreeable things are usually open to hearing about why people are disagreeing, or having feelings about what is said. So, that leaves the unkind assholes insisting they have a right to an audience.

It’s a combination of ignorance and entitlement. They think free speech means freedom from consequence and entitlement to a platform and/or audience. That’s why they get mad and claim it’s censorship when they’re banned for breaking rules etc.

Also they only care about their freedom of speech, despite their claims to the contrary.

I feel like this mostly happens online, and relates to "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory"

In addition, the phenomenon of social media has made everyone decide that what they have to say is just as important as a Nobel Prize Winner or president because all of our tweets and posts look the same. Everyone gets a virtual podium. To relatively insignificant people, the notion that they can shout back at a famous person or expert and appear to be on equal footing is too enticing to resist. A great example is someone who never spent a single day in med school trying to tell our nation's health experts that they were wrong about COVID for instance. The number of people with absolutely zero qualifications that thought their argument was worth making was depressing. Most would never do that in public and if they did, would simply be escorted out of the room and forgotten.

Because freedom of speech doesn’t mean I have to listen to you or let ignorance slide as a valid take. It only protects you from the government and not my calling out nonsense