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Not part of the rest of the conversation, just narrowing in on the idea of speech being free if there are consequences. That sounds like some sort of 1950's-era doublespeak. If there are consequences, how would speech be free? It's a very American-centric perspective that "Free Speech" is defined as "1st Amendment". Free speech means not getting fired, jumped, killed, poisoned, expelled, etc. Fired is something that would happen in Soviet Times as well, in the USSR, and in the McCarthy era, in the U.S.

Apologies for the "two sidesism".

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slg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How do you define which speech is speech worthy of protection and which speech is a consequence of speech and therefore not worthy of protection?

For example, imagine some CEO says something politically objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their company as part of my free speech rights or would that be illegal because I'm rendering a consequence for the CEO's speech?

I just have trouble conceptualizing what you think a world with consequence free speech would actually look like.

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noworriesnate 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a good question that would require a long debate to answer, but the answer obviously is neither of these two extremes:

- Every entity except the US govt is allowed to enforce consequences for speech

- there should never ever be any consequences for any speech ever

	▲	slg 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It is funny to see this type of comment downthread of a criticism of bothsidesism. You set up a spectrum in which one "extreme" is the status quo of American culture going back generations and the other "extreme" is a seemingly impossible to achieve idea for which I have never seen a single reasonable person advocate. One of those is a lot more extreme than the other. The only reason we are even having this conversation in this thread is because the Trump administration is trying to be more extreme than your first "extreme" by having the US government inflict consequences for speech.

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mancerayder 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to?

I object to people casually paraphrasing, you have a right to free speech but not consequences of that speech. "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" Aside from sounding vaguely like a threat, it's a paradoxical attack on freedom of speech. Here's my point again:

Freedom of speech means a lot of things. One of them is the American-centric perspective of "1st Amendment" + Supreme Court precedent, which is that the government should not be involved in unduly prohibiting speech, and we define a bunch of speech as protected. For example, we exclude imminent threat, which in the U.S. is not protected - I can't go up in a speech and rile people up to go attack another race tomorrow. But I can rail against a race (which in most of Europe would be prohibited speech as it's Incitement)).

Now that I've established it means a few things, let's talk about 'consequences.'. The 1st Amendment protects you from government prosecution for protected speech. It doesn't protect you from getting fired, people following you around with placards because of your speech, Instagram banning you, your ISP blocking you, your bank canceling your accounts, etc.

Yet these are the (non-1st-Amendment-centric) attacks on Freedom of Speech. You can argue they're good, they're not good, whatever.

Summary of my argument: freedom of speech CAN mean freedom from SOME consequences.

Consequences are the WHOLE point. In the U.S. we had McCarthyism, where if you were vaguely left-wing you would lose your job, you would lose your life. In the USSR if you didn't follow party lines you'd lose your job, or be reassigned a shitty job. These are Consequences.

In the Reign of the last decade of a new racialized political activism, some people lost jobs for reasons that were dubious, because they had unpopular views. The Left did it.

Today, the Right is doing it, and they're taking in an extra step.

When does it stop? Ahh, good question! It stops when we begin respecting Freedom of Speech as a principle and not a recycled way to attack our enemies.

Again, apologies for both-sides-ism, as someone who believes in civil liberties, I am a both-sides-ist.

	▲	slg 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to? The way some people use the internet truly puzzle me. A username is on each comment. I made a comment, you replied, and I replied back. I wasn't arguing with myself. You took the time to reiterate your philosophy in more depth without even bothering to first take the literal second to check the usernames to clear up your confusion or pausing for a moment to actually engage with anything actually said in my last comment? I wasn't asking you for more details on your philosophy, I was asking you direct and specific questions on how this philosophy meshes with the complexities of the real world. I frankly don't know how to respond beyond just referring you back to the questions in my previous comment.

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foldr 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Free speech doesn’t mean not getting fired. You can get fired in any county for things that you say (e.g. insulting your coworkers, lying to your boss, defaming your employer on social media, …). The exact laws and social conventions obviously vary from country to country, but this shouldn’t be a difficult concept in general.

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theultdev 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Someone doxxing you and pressuring your employee to fire you because you said something they don't agree with politically is the same as you insulting your coworkers in your eyes?

You don't see any discrepancy between those two scenarios?

And you don't see anything wrong with the former scenario?

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fabbari 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Not the op, but no - I don't see anything wrong with the scenario: the employer is making the call, and if they find the speech of the employee doesn't fit with their worldview they have all the rights to fire them.

Practical example: the employer is an LGBTQ+ friendly establishment, the employee is on social media saying that LGBTQ+ people are all deviants and will all burn in hell for their sins. I think the employer should have the freedom to fire the person, right?

Forcing the employer to keep the employee is the equivalent of compelled speech.

Edit: fixed - no joke - pronouns

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ziddoap 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They didn't say it was the same. You're arguing with what you imagined they said.

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theultdev 5 hours ago | parent [-]

They presented a strawman. I'm unravelling it.

I want to know where their values are and if they contradict.

I'm re-presenting the original scenario being discussed and the scenario they introduced.

Comparing the two while also redirecting back to the original moral dilemma.

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anigbrowl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're just abstracting it and trying to draw concrete conclusions form abstract cases. Of course it depends on what someone says; to ignore this is asinine.

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ziddoap 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unraveling it by creating your own?

Maybe we can have a strawman party after.

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theultdev 5 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	ziddoap 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right into the ad hominem, fantastic debate tactic. Very dialectic of you. The irony of saying "maybe you'll figure out how to have a real debate." after a string of personal attacks is chef's kiss. >yet you complain when you get a meta level comment about your behavior. I'm not complaining. And you're not giving me a "meta level comment about my behavior". You're just attempting to insult me.