Is this the "can I?" "may I?" distinction that seemed so important in elementary school?
I guess there's also a "should I?" that makes it even more complex.
I like that the blog post acknowledgesthat outside smartypants spaces like here, there, and Twitter, there's a ton of low-information folks who say "But free speech!" at the drop of a hat.
1: I don't think so. I can imagine peer/contractual interactions where "may I" is critical, but I don't think free speech, in this type of discussion, is one of those.
Like, there are "may I" interactions on Twitter, where posters don't want responses/feedback/input*, they're just venting, but only hardcore assholes view that as a "free speech" issue.
The key distinction between may and should, in that context at least, is that should is really an internal judgment question, while may is much more about explicit permission.
*that is, they might not lock down the replies ("you can't") but they ask/tell people not to ("you mayn't")
I think mostly when people talk about free speech, and freedom in general, they just mean "no one gets to tell me what to do!" Which is a very popular sentiment for obvious reasons. It's also a value that the left has general lost sight of, and which has hurt us electorally (especially around covid).
The summer program I worked at in grad school has a genius set of minimal "rules" meant to convince the students that they have a *lot* of freedom. It's kind of a lie, of course there's lots of policies that aren't "rules" (say, if you want to leave campus you need to be in a group of at least 3 people, tell someone in the office, and be back by 10, but we can make an exception to the curfew time if you have a good reason), but philosophically the point is that those are logistics around how you can do the things you want to do, and not rules meant to stop you from doing things. And they do seem kind of convinced by that. The "rules" are: 1) Be excellent to each other, and 2) No stupid stuff. In particular, 2 is genius, people hate rules and like to break them, but they don't like to be "stupid" and reminding someone not to do stupid stuff is surprisingly effective (at least among nerdy generally well-behaved kids). Anyway, we should phrase regulations as logistics around how to do what you want safely, and not about stopping you from doing things. Gun control should be about "how to let you do fun stuff with guns, without it ending up with the guns ending up in the hands of bad people." (Yes there's a danger here that people interpret "bad people" in racist ways, but that's a separate message that can be phrased positively: "law abiding black people should be allowed to have fun with guns too!")
A 2019 Atlantic piece by the same author with common bad tropes about free speech (entirely "FSR" descriptive territory). He just posted on Mastodon that he's updating it again and on the hunt for new tropes.
The problem, as I see it, is that "free speech" is a term that these days is used primarily by bigots who think other people shouldn't be allowed to point out that they're bigots. For example, MIT just adopted some kind of statement of free speech principles which was primarily driven by crotchety old conservative faculty and which emphasizes "uninhibited debate" instead of, I don't know, not being assholes. Some Harvard undergrad has been spamming faculty trying to get signatures on a "free speech" statement which is almost entirely about how they wish there were more transphobic speakers on campus.
So this makes a reasonable framework for talking about that, no? It can be discussed in terms of "free speech culture" being something with some value, but that doesn't trump considerations of decency and accuracy, and at a private institution first amendment law isn't really much of an issue.
7. Progressive people need to take ownership of the phrases, "common courtesy" and "everyday politeness" and watch the right tie itself in knots explaining why they're opposed to such ideas.
That ship has sailed, sunk, and been shit on by a flock of whales.
9: It doesn't work on TV, but I think a good phrasing here is "Don't be an asshole."
The problem is that the maga right has basically embraced being an asshole, I'm not sure they'd even tie themselves in knots explaining why they're pro-asshole. That said, the swing voters are generally anti-asshole, which is why the Republicans keep losing when they nominate assholes.
The funny thing is that the swing voters are anti-asshole, but the Republican base is really asshole-positive. They have a genuine problem bridging that gap.
Right, it's the perfect wedge issue!
Pro-choice, pro-fish, but against assholes!
You can't have a wedge in an asshole. It's just topography.
If we're having to be reality-based, then we'll have to admit whales' fecal plumes float upward, and then where will we be?
7: I get annoyed by this issue because I do put some value on free speech culture -- that listening to people who you're pretty sure are probably wrong about lots of stuff is a valuable thing, although far from the only or most important valuable thing -- and it irks me that advocating for free speech culture is completely occupied by people who mean that offenses against decency or honesty shouldn't be criticized.
I think there's a generational divide there, where advocating for free speech that's not asshole-specific is pretty much limited to people who came of age before social media. I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems to be true.
I bet it's because post-social media, opinions are as available and ubiquitous as air, so there's less reason to think of them as needing encouragement or validation for the sake of public dialog.
I was going to say kind of the opposite, speech is never that free because it's public and on record and you're going to get judged for it. Free-wheeling discussion only happens when it's anonymous or there's no written record.
Still a lot freer than when you had to use a press or a mimeograph machine or whatever.
I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death my right to call you an asshole every time you exercise your right to say it.
It is difficult to get a person to be precise about free speech when their political goals depend on muddying the ways people talk about it.
Do kids today even know how to work a Ditto machine? Is it just an expression to them?
I bet they never even sniffed a test paper to see if it's fresh. No wonder they don't understand free speech.
"You can't have a wedge in an asshole. It's just topography"
Bottomography, anyway.
5: "if you want to leave campus you need to be in a group of at least 3 people, tell someone in the office, and be back by 10"
How old were these children?
25: I'd have to check, but do they even say "ditto" anymore?
28: High school.
I imagine things might be different in the UK, but in the US when parents call they're not happy with an answer like "no, we can't tell you anything about where your child is." It goes much better if you can say "they're at a movie with x and y which gets out at time t, and y has a working cell phone with cell phone number N."
"Your child is drinking schnapps in a 1976 Ford Ltd parked in a pasture."
31: Since it's a math camp, most of the parents know how to use algebra to determine the values of all those unknowns.
As Upetgi et al have explained, the lack of clarity around the concept of free speech is not a mistake or an error. It's a technique. Fake accent said it most directly in 24.
So all that's left for me to do is to quibble around the edges, which I will now commence to do. Here is Upetgi in 5:
I think mostly when people talk about free speech, and freedom in general, they just mean "no one gets to tell me what to do!" Which is a very popular sentiment for obvious reasons. It's also a value that the left has general lost sight of, and which has hurt us electorally (especially around covid).
The Left* -- particularly the Internet Left -- is, in fact, is every bit as good at this as the MAGA Right. Try engaging a "Leftist" on the subject of Ukraine, for instance. Or institutional racism. Or sometimes even vaccinations or the "Russia Hoax." And definitely "free speech."
This characterization is particularly apt:
"no one gets to tell me what to do!"
On the Left (as well as the Right), this includes: "No one gets to tell me what to think." The core argument of the Greenwald/Taibbi/Musk types is opposition to the tyranny of facts. And yeah, liberals don't know what to do about this, except hope that the good guys win.
*I recognize that we have not defined our terms and that I am almost certainly using "Left" in a way that Upetgi did not intend.
I just found out that someone named a jewelry store "Pandora," so I'm starting to think the problem with western culture is that nobody in the west remembers it.
25: I thought you must have meant mimeograph machine because ditto is just " But google says I'm wrong.
Even after the school got a photocopier, use was restricted and most tests and handouts were done on the ditto.
I think a good phrasing here is "Don't be an asshole."
On several occasions, I've used "What you're calling woke used to be called having manners. But I guess your mama just didn't raise you that way."
If someone accuses me of "virtue signaling," I always check my fly.
35: It would be a good idea.
42 to 41 also. At least that's what the Walmart security guy said.
42: dude, you also thought apartheid was a good idea.