I think we need a harm reduction philosophy of covering Trump and his party and the election. And these are some things to consider: One is to cut his or Vance’s mic when they start lying.
So not only is censorship the go-to remedy, but it's one-sided — openly one-sided.
And I know this is a hugely controversial idea, and it’s usually controversial because it will enable them to scream censorship, but there needs to be a philosophy of journalism that is oriented toward the public good.
That is, Gessen has thought through the censorship problem and determined that "harm reduction" or "the public good" supervenes the free flow of ideas to the people and allowing us to choose what we like. Gesson seems to object even to the speech that is objecting to the suppression of speech — to the "them" who "scream censorship."
When I talk to my students about it...
Gessen teaches journalism at the City University of New York.
I always say: Imagine that information is water and some of the water is poisoned.
How is speech like water? Speech comes from a human mind. And when is speech "information"? When it is truth? Poison is not water, but an additional substance tainting the water. Lies and mistakes in speech are not like poison in water. How would you go about purifying speech and turning it into "information"? The traditional American ideology is that the way to get to the truth is to have a free flow of words — a marketplace of ideas — and to let people read and hear and think and have their own discussions about what is true. How could you possibly know the truth in advance and deliver it to the people?
But Gessen pushes on with the analogy, which has been tested in the CUNY classroom:
And if you are tasked with conveying the water to the public...
So a censor is posited at the outset.
... it would be a crime for you to convey poisoned water.
The censor is presumed to have the capacity to tell truth from lies. And the government is visualized as having the power to criminalize speech.
And I think that political lies, lies in the public sphere, are just as poisonous to our politics as poisoned water is to humans. And if we think of ourselves as conveyors, as mediators, as media, who transport this information, this water, then we have this abiding responsibility to do something about it. We can’t just turn to one of the candidates and say, “I’d like to see you take a sip of that. And see what happens to you.”
So one idea is to turn off the microphone when the disfavored candidate is deemed to be lying. But that is not all. Gessen continues:
I think we also need to figure out ways to contextualize the candidates. Certainly, this two-minute-per-person debate format is not conducive to creating nuanced or contextualized pictures.
Ah! Nuance! Context! I have tags for "nuance" and "context." I love when that happens. A chime goes off in my blogger brain. But back to Gessen:
But what if we had a different format? What if journalists prepared fact-based reports to create context for the debate? Who said that the debate absolutely has to be broadcast live? If we have one person who is lying in the debate, maybe that’s not the best possible format.
If you increase the power of the journalists who are known to disfavor one of the candidates, why would that person agree to debate? There are so many other outlets for free speech. The water overflows its once-solid banks and floods where it will. Now where is your fantasy of control?
Posts
203 comments:
1 – 200 of 203 Newer› Newest»This smacks loudly of a death by a thousand cuts.
"The Public Good" - I just finished watching Atlas Shrugged, where The Public Good is used as a bludgeon to prevent one of the heroes from living free. They (the Left) never learn.
The networks lost a second and third Trump-Harris debate because of the censorious behavior of the two ABC moderators.
A journalist prof isn’t pushing his students to make a better point. Instead, he’s encouraging them to just silence the opposition when it becomes inconvenient.
"If you increase the power of the journalists who are known to disfavor one of the candidates, why would that person agree to debate?"
They already have too much power in a debate, and yet the GOP continues to agree to their rules. It's a good question, cycle after cycle, that never gets resolved.
Taken out of context I can agree with this: "there needs to be a philosophy of journalism that is oriented toward the public good." Journalism, properly defined, is a public good. Holding BOTH sides to account for their statements is good. Applying the best disinfectant -- sunshine -- to public policy and government action is a public good. Respect for the First Amendment is a public good.
It's like the whole institutional Left is out to prove the Prager Theorem correct: "Truth and justice are not left-wing values." You can see it is Classical liberals respecting the first amendment, and conservatives doing the same. And the fact it is never a run-of-the-mill blue collar worker who says, "You know we need more censorship." No, it is always a rich Leftists who wants to be in charge of policing speech. Always.
I bet he thinks he's being edgy, and is expecting to get lots of attention and accolades for it. 'Nuance and context' comes in a lot of different versions, as we've seen throughout history. It doesn't stay popular, or even powerful, for very long.
The dose makes the poison. Dilute anything enough and it's not poisonous. Also, you can drown in just enough water to cover your nose.
It highlights the issue that the media have discovered that 'flooding the zone' with their effluent don't work
Gessen is a "they".
If you had to cut the mic whenever a politician was lying, there would be nothing but the sound of silence.
Kerry (a former Presidenrial candidate (D - France)) has recently stated a desire to essentially end the 1st Amendment.
Walz (Current VP Candidate has openly claimed the 1st Amendment doesn't protect misinformation or anything deemed hate speech.
At least two recent prominent columnists - established lefties-call for open censorship.
The current Admin attempted to install a truth czar to deal with "misinformation."
When will everyone just admit that the Democrat party's official stance is to create MiniTru and begin with the placing of the boot on a human face forever?
Another proponent of "Dynamic Silence":
"Invented by Rabbi Feinberg of the American Jewish Committee in 1947 as a method of closing off all access to the public media - and thus the larger culture - for people or organizations deemed to have an unacceptable point of view, it can still be understood as being comprised of two parts. In the first part, unfavored individuals are denied unmediated exposure to the public. In the second part, only negative aspects of the unfavored individuals are reported. This starts a downward spiral of de-legitimization in the public eye in which the harder unfavored individuals try to get public exposure, the more negative and unflattering that exposure becomes until, finally, nobody wants to be associated with the ideas of beliefs of the unfavored individuals."
A large number of the "lies" these journalists would like to sensor are simply facts they don't like.
Mash Gessen is originally from Russia, so one suspects that a more controlled press, dedicated to approved "pravda," if you will, comes more naturally to her.
True “harm reduction” would be the NYT building emptied and leveled.
Gessen's water analogy reminds me of one of those lesser Platonic dialogues, where Socrates compares some abstract concept to a supposedly comparable physical entity. Socrates then pushes it further and further to a tenuous place. The modern reader thinks, "whoa, no, that's not how it works".
But generally it takes a bit of critical thought to find the rhetorical slight-of-hand.
Bless you for highlighting how close we are to losing our First amendment rights if we continue to.vote for Democrats. It's leftist democrats who have the scary belief that some speech should be freer than other.
But this attitude is not shocking to those of us who've been paying attention for the past two decades. The only thing changed is that they are becoming more blatant about their desire to strip away our constitutional rights
Gessen is simply saying the quiet part out loud.
Since the 1960's, the majority of "journalists" have always been "properly educated" liberals who told us what they wanted us to know and avoided what was inconvenient to their narrative.
Ramzi Yousef and Mohamed Atta targeted the wrong building.
Forget it Althouse, it's the Democrats.
@Bob
You motivated me to do a word search for "public good" in my Kindle version of "Atlas Shrugged." I got 10 hits. I'll quote 2:
“Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle—the principle of the public good.”
“Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that ‘the good’ was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it—well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act.”
***
"I refuse to apologize for my ability—I refuse to apologize for my success—I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code—and I will accept no other. I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope to accomplish—but I will not say it, because I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work—my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good—that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices—that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation—as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own—I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!”
"this two-minute-per-person debate format is not conducive to creating nuanced or contextualized pictures" The debates aren't debates, but two minutes was sufficient to expose Walz's Hong Kong lie and for Vance to fact-check the fact-checkers.
Anyway, it's always useful for our prog masters to come out and say how they mean to rule us.
"Instead, he’s encouraging..."
M. Gessen uses "they/them" pronouns.
If the government mandated that you could only drink water that came from government taps, would you drink that water? I sure wouldn't.
Who is "shocked" at this point? When has a Democrat official stood up and countered these many such claims?
Since we live in a land of 'nuance' and 'context', he should use his pronouns a lot, as frequently as possible. And I'll use mine, with an extra dash of 'nuance' and 'context'.
Here’s a radical idea: put up a competent candidate that can call out his/her opponent during the debate. The problem isn’t one candidate lying, the problem is your preferred candidates - Biden, Harris and Walz - were incapable of responding to their opponents claims. Perhaps putting your candidates in situations where they get asked tough questions and pressed on their record might help prepare them for the verbal combat of a debate. It was clear to me Walz was completely unprepared for direct rebuttals. Having the moderators participate in the debate isn’t the solution. If a candidate requires moderator assistance, perhaps that is a clear indication that they are not prepared to be president or be one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Trump took the risk of dealing with bias in his.debate with Biden and it worked. It was his only chance to get Biden live on TV.
This is a corporate representative desiring to collude with their favorite political party to impose censorship. They are fascists.
Both Ayn Rand and M. Gessen were born in Russia — Rand in St. Petersburg and Gessen in Moscow. Rand in 1905, when it was the Russian Empire, Gessen in 1967, when it was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
I'm sure they knew their interests were furthered by letting it stand.
It is funny, however, to remember how scared the NYT people were that their building would be targeted in the wake of 9/11.
Ah, Professor Gessen, show us your paradise. Tell us more of your utopian future. The more we know, the more we will be enlightened.
No doubt we will be happy to follow along and STFU eventually. Right? This follows the path of human nature, for we long to be your minions. Thanks for the glimpse into your world.
Or, perhaps you haven't thought this completely through from any perspective other than your own. One of these things is probably more true than the other. I have my opinions.
Maybe Althouse meant to say, "shocked, shocked..."
Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle, that something really major happened between Skokie* and now and I was asleep for it. I wonder what that was.
*The case where the ACLU took up the cause of the American Nazi Party who'd been denied a permit by the City of Skokie, IL -which had a lot of Jewish residents and Holocaust survivors living here- to conduct a march there.
It’s like the NYT woke up and decided journalism wasn’t dying fast enough so they invited this moron into intensive care to turn off the life support machine.
"Imagine that information is water"
Fact check: False. Information is not water.
Therefore Gessen and anyone saying this is guilty of spreading misinformation and their microphones should be silenced.
Pure. Crystalline. Unadulterated. Bullshit. What an asshole. I bet his little minion students lap this fascist shit up.
This is my comment on the NYT page:
The notion that Trump is the only liar in politics, or that his lying is uniquely a danger is beyond ridiculous; it's pathological. The corporate press is already covering for the lies of Democrats and has been for decades. But, now that this filter is no longer effective due to the internet, the press is now outright calling for an end to free speech. The press needs to start talking like Americans again and stop talking like fascists and communists. The real threat to Democracy isn't Trump, but an entrenched elite that now seeks to destroy the Constitution in order to maintain their grip on power.
"The Real Loser of the V.P. Debate/It’s our politics"
In other words, it was Tim Walz.
The example the leftists give about the limits of free speech is that "you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater." However, it's perfectly fine to yell 'fire' if the theater is actually on fire. Right now, the theater is on fire. And it's good that some people are yelling
I cannot fathom how this person can hold a position of influence and authority.
Masha was one of the people on the notorious Zoom call that caught Jeffery Toobin in flagrante delicto! Haven't they suffered enough?!
This is what they want:
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
The first step is to silence "others".
I'm with the Professor. Well reasoned and succinct.
Masha Gessen is not immersed in the US tradition of free speech. Wikipedia describes Gessen as "... a Russian-American journalist, author, translator. Gessen is nonbinary and trans and uses they/them pronouns. Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights. Gessen writes primarily in English but also in their native Russian." Gessen has made a name with attacks on the authoritarianism of Putin.
The metaphor of speech as water is preposterous. Gessen is a perfect representative of the NYT, in all of its deluded malevolent narcissism.
Perceived Threat to Public Safety: Somebody might yell fire in a crowded theater.
Proposed Solution: Burn down all the theaters.
One of my favorite things is watching credentialed people talk themselves into idiotic schemes.
God dammit. My comment got censored. Probably because it had the words debate, Tim Walz and lost in it.
The masks these leftist Soviets used to wear to hide their true feelings is not only gone, it's rotting in the landfill.
So, essentially he’s saying that if journalists do their job we won need debates.
They’ll just tell us who to vote for.
Hello Pravda.
As for Gessen - you can take the person out of Russia; but you can’t Russia out of the person. Good God, Gessen teaches “journalism”!
Facts they don't like, criticism they don't like. You shall not insult the KING!
I am really starting to worry about our future. So many people seem to be embracing government censorship. Once free speech is gone to gates are open for Totalitarianism.
Nobody who is even SLIGHTLY informed is shocked by these comments. These people have made it clear that they intend to rule over us and to rip the US Constitution to threads.
We have to eliminate them from our polity.
Gessen making his pitch for Reichminister für Volksaufklärung here.
Althouse said...
"So a censor is posited at the outset."
"Posited" is the inverse of garnered?
Who in good conscience can vote for the side that espouses things like this?
thanks.
These people are irredeemable as Americans. I could back off that assessment if I knew that in private they admit the bullshit they are spouting is just because Trump in an election year, but they'd need to come clean and beg forgiveness before they commit seppuku with their pencils...
You can take the girl out of the Soviet Union, but you can't take the Soviet Union out of the girl.
You can, however, take the girl out of the girl.
"M. Gessen" though, does sound like a great character in a spy or mystery novel.
They/them is incorrect grammar.
Once a Soviet - always a Soviet.
"The water overflows its once-solid banks and floods where it will. Now where is your fantasy of control?"
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
The Communist march through our institutions is complete.
Agreed, and we might be drinking poisoned water and not even know it. Just ask anyone stationed at Camp Lejeune between 1953-1987. Although I think the operative word there is "contaminated", not poisoned.
The Democrat Party wants to shut up their political opponents because they're The Good Guys! And throw Americans in prison for saying things not approved by The Party- because they're The Good Guys!!!
And I will exercise my free speech right and refuse to refer to a specific, singular person in the plural.
Most/Maoist Loyalist MSNBC watching Democrats.
She is obviously in the employ of the donor class.
The irony reek here is overpowering. He's talking about cutting Vance’s mic when Vance "starts lying." This, in the context of Vance having used that mic in a debate against the currently most notorious liar in the country.
This brings to mind the proposition that the dimmest students in our colleges and universities major in journalism and education. Propaganda today, propaganda tomorrow, propaganda forever.
This column sounds like poison to me. So who at the NYT is going to prevent it from remaining published?
Oh, I see. My opinions aren’t part of this process.
If you look up a picture of M. Gessen, it all makes sense
It really is disgusting that this man has a job teaching others his communist manifesto in a nation where freedom of speech is foundational.
Actual public good would = firing him.
Go get a job in Russia, bitch.
And you can, in fact, yell fire in a crowded theater so that whole premise is bunk to begin with.
Losers want to censor. Always.
Losers want to censor. Always.
Speaking of death, I'll make Gessen an offer:
He and his can censor "lies".
But any time they censor something that isn't a lie, they get immediately executed.
No appeal, no delay, just like their censorship.
So, for example, all the moderators froth last two debates would be executed for their attempt to suppress true statements from Trump and Vance.
How's this enforced? Simple? "They called someone a lie, and it wasn't" is a perfect defense against a murder charge.
And the person making that dfense gets the trial heard in their place of residence, not the place where the killing took place.
That's fair, right?
The best part of the modern college/university is how uneducated the professor are. Oh they have lots of credentials showing they pleased their older professors on the way up, but they show little discipline of intellect, regulation of emotions or even establishment of principles. But then, the ones we hear from now were mentored by the 1960s college students who abandoned the lessons of their professors.
But as all have proclaimed, this Vance/Walz debate changes nothing. Only the Trump/Biden debate caused reaction. These "debates", more oral exams, are just fodder for the media and talking heads. They could be exposure for someone down in the pack during primaries. But for someone willing to do social media, like Trump, the debates are just a gimme to old assed legacy media and not of real campaigning value these days.
So is Gessen a male or female “non-binary”?
"What if journalists prepared fact-based reports to create context for the debate? "
These people astound me. They really do. How could someone be that arrogant? How did they get to that state?
What we are going to have to do to these people will be as illegal as it was when George Washington did it.
"The young student should come to regard acquaintance with the varying views as necessary to the formation of a reliable opinion on any topic and of sound judgement in general. That conviction will compel him to keep on the lookout for new light."
McMurry, Frank M. ( Morton). How to Study and Teaching How to Study
"When a student has formed the habit of collecting and valuing the ideas of others, rather than his own, the self becomes dwarfed from neglect and buried under the mass of borrowed thought. He may then pass good examinations, but he cannot think. Distrust of self has become so deep-rooted that he instinctively looks away from himself to books and friends for ideas; and anything that he produces cannot be good, because it is not a true expression of self. This is the class of people that Mill describes in the words, "They like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes; until, by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow; their human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own." 1 Such people cannot perform the hard tasks required in study, because they have lost their native power to react on the ideas presented."
George Washington just started stacking bodies once King George made his intentions known.
Or it's Russian meddling in an our election process.
"And I know this is a hugely controversial idea, and it’s usually controversial because it will enable them to scream censorship, but there needs to be a philosophy of journalism that is oriented toward the public good."
Journalism should be oriented toward the public good...by presenting, as best as is known at the time of reporting, the verifiable FACTS of any events or matters being reported upon. Tell what happened, what was done, what was said, what were the consequences...all that is known about the event. As additional verifiable facts become known, go back to press with that additional information, either adding to, modifying, or even correcting or repudiating the previously reported facts (as known). Any reporting that cannot be verified as factual should be identified as uncertain information, pending confirmation or correction.
There are also commentary writers who provide their perspective on the reported events of the day. That is not journalism, but interpretation and speculation on the future effects and outcomes that may come about due to the facts that others have already reported. Journalism and commentary should be clearly demarcated from each other, to the absolute degree possible. The cure for falsehoods--intentional or unintentional--is to provide the counteracting facts, making clear to point out the prior errors in reporting.
I was watching a morning news show this morning--a very rare event for me--and the two hosts and their guest were talking about a serious subject--the future of work in an increasingly automated world, where even "intellectual" work, (as opposed to merely physical work) is more and swiftly being performed by non-human labor. The discussion was compressed to a four or five minute spot, and, as usual, the hosts made some banal jokes about the possibility that even their jobs could be automated, for the sole purpose to end the spot with the hosts and their guest could end the bit on light-heated, giggly mood. It was meant to erase from their audience any (well-founded) anxiety, to convey that this serious matter that potentially affects everyone is really not worrisome. It leaves the viewers dazed and doped up with "all is okay" happy talk, smiles, and light banter. This is the worst sort of slanting of news. By making all discussions short and "light," with laughter and banter surrounding the "news," even the serious facts that are actually presented are erased even as they're being presented.
It might have been better had Trump not debated Biden, who may have been able to hang on and stay in the race but for that debate.
Indicating that he is mentally deficient.
I doubted it when certain people accused Republicans of "shredding the Constitution." Now I completely disbelieve it when the radicals who have co-opted the Democratic Party accuse anyone other than themselves.
Hamas apologist gessen do tell
J-school grads are seldom the sharpest wck in the bulletin board, so he notion that they even determine truth versus falsehood is absurd.
" '... it would be a crime for you to convey poisoned water.'
The censor is presumed to have the capacity to tell truth from lies. And the government is visualized as having the power to criminalize speech."
Apparently his thought is that lies (or statements that he doesn't like) are poison and not only should such statements be banned, it should be a crime for - reporters? debate moderators? networks? - to broadcast them?
Both the ‘lies” Gessen quotes are, I’m betting, the truth. Haitians do eat cats and dogs. What we have here is the insistence that talking honestly about any race or nationalities’ behavior and habits is a form of bigotry that has to be suppressed. Haitian society is really grotesquely fucked up. It’s not racist to “notice” that, in the lingo of Steve Sailer. Walz did sign off on the legalization of infanticide in botched abortions. Same law is in effect in NY State. So, Gessen is the liar, which is to be expected.
"But what if we had a different format? What if journalists prepared fact-based reports to create context for the debate? Who said that the debate absolutely has to be broadcast live? If we have one person who is lying in the debate, maybe that’s not the best possible format."
What about this - simply eliminate Trump and Vance form the debate altogether! They could have just Harris or Walz (or both, if she needs him to hold her hand) and just ask them questions and wait for them to answer - much better!
Oh wait, that would just be an interview, which Harris is notoriously afraid to do.
Poisons are all in the dose. Many poisons are medicines.
Ask inigo montoya
The first quote from Atlas Shrugged (below) seems particularly apt following the revelation that there's no money for hurricane victims because FEMA diverted it to the Biden-Harris project of flying illegal aliens into the country and picking up all of their living expenses here.
Here again is the quote:
“Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that ‘the good’ was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it—well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act.”
Take me to the river...
John Stuart Mill, often taken as a champion of free speech, had his "harm principle:" “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” He may have been referring to immanent bodily harm. Today in a society that is more "diverse," softer, and used to a more powerful government, everybody can feel maligned, demeaned, or harmed by free speech and demand limits and restrictions. Mill sought to free expression from the restrictions imposed by religion, tradition, and the opinions of the uneducated. Some have said that Mill left open whether an "enlightened," "science based" regime could exercise censorship in the name of enlightenment, progress, and the public good.
They have to suppress because 'Trump is an existential threat.'
It's their "Here comes Skylab!"
When I was a college student, many years ago, I took a journalism class as an elective. The majority of the class were journo majors. My impression was that they were the worst victims of Dunning-Kruger I had ever witnessed, and I've never seen any evidence to the contrary. In fact, the evidence in favor just grows stronger every day.
Lost in all of this is that the very journalists that Gessen is lionizing have bee spectacularly wrong about major issues up to and including propagating known lies. Gessen and the others are the ones serving up the poison.
I've said it before. If we do not punish those in power who are advocating the destruction of our rights, we are complicit with them. You cannot remain neutral much less condone this by providing aid, comfort and financial support to them.
I'm reminded of the scene in the movie 1776 where the Continental Congress is entertaining a motion to debate writing a declaration of independence. Rhode Island is the deciding vote. Stephen Hopkins is that colony's delegate and he says: "Hopkins: Well, in all my years I ain't never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about. Hell yeah! I'm for debating anything. Rhode Island says yea!"
In my youth (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) I admired the Democrat Party for their staunch support of freedom of speech/the press. Those issues are why I may never vote for a Democrat again unless they publicly decry the horrifying stance of their party.
Here's the problem with Mr. Gessen's idea. Ben Rhodes was absolutely correct when he said that you couildl tell and say anything to the sycophantic little "journolists" who covered the White House. Rhodes said, "They are all 27 years old and they don't know anything."
In short, these kiddos couldn't tell poisoned water from Pepsi Cola.
I appreciate the exposure to the 'information is like water' simile because I can now be prepared to discuss the weaknesses thereof.
A quick Google search reveals that she is “Russian -American professor Masha Gessen.” One would think that any Russian-American would have an extensive knowledge of the evils of government censorship, but apparently not.
"there needs to be a philosophy of journalism that is oriented toward the public good." People rarely, if ever, actually debate good versus evil. They debate varying definitions of good.
Someone, not a cowed student, but somebody, should ask this dweeb if Hunter's laptop was authentic. If getting the jab and boosters absolutely made you free from catching or spreading Covid. Whether Covid could conceivably have come from a Chinese lab. Whether Russia, Russia, Russia sprung forth from the DNC playing a dirty trick.
So the look up it’s photo test yields the expected results. Probably likes long walks in the Brooklyn waterfront t pending in getting brutally ass raped by the local boys.
I spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane powder. -Wesley (Dread Pirate Roberts)
Good point. These companies have lost ad revenue by acting as agents of the Left.
I love the book and used to use it as a text in one of my MBA courses.
I shouldn't like the movie, but I do. All 3 parts are excellent, even if we have a different Dagney and other characters in each.
I thought they really captured the essence of the book. Including, perhaps especially, "The Public Good"
Rand meant for the book to be prophetic and it was. She did not mean for it to be used by the deep state as an instruction manual. As they seem to be doing.
John Henry
Do we really need the City University of New York?
Yeah these post need a Democrats / Progressive tag!
Keep M Gessen.
When the NYT is running pieces that openly call for regulating political speech based on the "public good," it's a sure bet that they're not just talking about Trump's speech between now and election day. To the extent this is about Trump, it's a "Never let a crisis go to waste"-type connection. IOW, they're invoking the horror of Trump to get the thing they REALLY want, and that's the elimination of political dissent so that a small band of global elites can run America and the world.
...at some point in the past you were no longer allowed to be shocked by their disdain of free speech rights, but that was a while ago. Years ago...like last time...
I did the same with lefty journalism. I can read up to 1500 words now without their ideas infecting me. In fact I may have achieved total immunity.
Where's Inga, Dinky Dau, Rich, and the rest to defend this open call to censor their political opponents? Cook was here and entered a rambling diatribe against journalism in general; which was ok... where's the rest of the leftists here to defend their Utopia of government controlled speech and jailing anyone who dissents?
Do we really need New York?
I recommend Gessen (and everyone) listen to Matt Taibbi’s speech at the recent “Rescue the Republic” event:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pTfe8sP-KPM
When you say "classical liberals" who do you mean, Mike? Not trying to be snarky but really want to know. The traditional definition of "classical liberal", going back to the 1940s (See Hayek) is more or less synonymous with (small l) libertarian, minarchist, minimalist govt.
In the past year or two I've been seeing it used more in the sense of the liberalism of FDR and others who adopted it when "Progressive" started to smell bad and which continued into the 50s and 60s at least, possibly to Bill Clinton. Hayek also had some thoughts on this in the 40s. "Liberal is a good word that has been hijacked to mean its exact opposite" (Road to Serfdom, from memory)
I like to consider myself a "liberal". I do not like to use the classical modifier because I think the word stands up fine on its own. But I won't object if called a "classical liberal" or a minarchist or a libertarian.
Liberal is a fine word, usually translated from the Latin as "A free man". Same root as "liberty" and "liberate". Liberty and freedom used to be core American values. They don't seem to be so much anymore. Democracy seems to be the current buzz word which is to some extent the opposite.
So when you say "classical liberal", what do you mean? Apologies if anyone senses snark in this comment. Certainly not my intention.
John Henry
NEWS: North, East, West, South.
Who What When Why How.
So simple when I was in fourth grade.
BTW, Gessen was born female.
You inspired me, but only so much--I took the lazy way out by pasting the text of my pinned tweet:
The claim that more speech is the best response to bad speech is founded on optimism about people, their decency, and their rational faculties. If you don't like, don't trust, and don't want to empower people, then free speech is not your friend.
https://newrepublic.com/article/72485/j-school-confidential
This is always a good read. Actually, anything by Michael Lewis is a good read.
It is a history of J schools amd an explanation of what is taught and how (up to 1993, anyway)
It explains a lot about how we got here.
And Halberstam's 1976 Powers That Be, about the newspaper industry, is a pretty clear explanation of how what we see today is nothing new but has been going on since the printing press was invented.
The problem today is that they have competition. There is now someone, lots of someones with all different viewpoints who when a Walter Cronkite says "And that's the way it is" will say "BULLSHIT!!! Walter. That is not the way it is. This is the way it is." To which someone else will say "BULLSHIT!!! Billy. This is the way it is." and so on
and they just can't handle it.
John Henry
Masha Gessen doesn't speak of herself in the third person, so they are not her/his/their/them/whateverthef**k pronouns, they are others' pronouns for her. It is her request for others to use certain pronouns when referring to her. This is a request which I rightly decline.
M. Gessen may use they/them but I don't. That is unless I'm referring to a group of people. No one gets their own pronouns. That's not how language works.
The major happening is that the Reds assumed power in our institutions and immediately reversed every ideal which they had used to neutralize and then occupy said institutions.
Sounds like "democracy" Ann. The 51% get to decide what is the public good then impose it at gunpoint on the other 49%. We have a constitution that stops the worst excesses. It is difficult to change but if enough people got the bit in their mouth to add an amendment to ban gay marriage, or abortion, or even blue eyes, there is nothing to stop them.
John Henry
Taibbi basically explains that we’re humans and we’re Americans, and it’s a fools errand to try to shut us up or regulate content for us.
And probably not even the theoretical 51% is required. If you get 10-20% who are noisy, active and violent enough, they can ram something through.
Remember the demos that you and Meade attended at the capital a few years back (as observers) was it about teachers unions? All the drum circles, chanting, signs and so on trying to get the law changed?
We laughed at their saying "This is what democracy looks like." It did not occur to me at the time but that is exactly what democracy looks like. A rather small minority, through their activism, imposing their will on the majority.
And always remember that this will is imposed at gunpoint when they get their way and get laws made.
John Henry
"BTW, Gessen was born female."
And remains so to this day.
Sally has a point that we cannot argue.
You don't want to drink your Flourine? It's good for you. It was democratically decided that you will drink it. You had no choice until some Coke execs, inspired by Starbucks, decided to make bottled water a thing in the 90s.
And now we are finding that, while flouridated water may reduce cavities, it may also cause other physical and mental health problems.
Oh how we used to laugh at the Birchers railing against flouridation in the 60s.
John Henry
A quick check with Brave search shows that most water in Russia is probably not flouridated.
John Henry
Her "We the Living" is semi-autobiographical about the oppression she felt in USSR. One of her better books, IMHO.
"There are so many other outlets for free speech."
That's a problem, but we have people working to fix that.
It all depends on your definition of "lying' as Bill Clinton would say.
MATT TAIBBI:. "There are no working-class censors. The dirty secret of content moderation all over the world is that it’s a tiny sliver of educated rich correcting everybody else."
Who appointed these people? How do they maintain their control? How do we wrest it from them? There are only so many Elon Musks in the world.
J-School is for folks who could not qualify for Ed school.
I am guessing assigned sex at birth was female, based on photos and some things in the Wikipedia profile, such as referring to children "born to them" and reference to a double mastectomy due to the discovery of the BRCA gene mutation. (Males can have mastectomies, too, of course, but their risk of breast cancer with the BRCA mutation is much less - 1-10% vs. 45-85% for females. So, males aren't usually checked for the mutation or offered preventive surgery the way females are.)
It's a misunderstanding to believe that people like Gessen think they or journalists or anyone can tell truth from lies. Nor do they believe they should provide truth and only truth to the public. Whether information conveyed to the public is true or false is not relevant. Their goal is a public information utility that provides what is needed to manufacture consensus and consent and to filter out anything that is unnecessary or obstructive to their manufacturing process. Truth and falsehood aren't important. They aren't part of the equation at all. The narrative is the truth and anything counter to the narrative is false for their purposes.
A phenomenal speech. So good I saved the transcript.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
A high enough dose of water will kill you.
And then there is also the danger of drowning, but that is not poisoning.
John Henry
I read Gessen’s bio in Wikipedia:
Interesting bits:
1. Gessen's maternal grandmother, Ruzya Solodovnik, was a Russian-born intellectual who worked as a censor for the Stalinist government until she was fired during an antisemitic purge.
2. In August 2023,[34] Russia opened a criminal case against Gessen on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian army's actions in Ukraine. In December 2023, it was reported that Gessen's name appeared on the Russian Interior Ministry's online wanted list.[35] Gessen was accused of spreading "false information" after discussing atrocities in the Ukrainian city of Bucha during an interview with Russian journalist Yury Dud.[36] In July 2024, Gessen was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 8 years in prison.[37]
"Gessen teaches journalism at the City University of New York."
And therein lies the problem.
Vance had the truth and the facts to correct the pair of sophomoric minds from CBS. In Gessen's world, the truth is irrelevant. The Narrative is everything. Such a good little Stalinist.
Regarding lie detection:
There has to be a break in the social conditioning. We are conditioned to fit into our societies as to have little to no conflict within it, so we can maintain trust and peace. This is done by our parents, by our schools, friends, advertising, and ultimately by the government if we've decided you need it bad enough. For someone who has their conditioning thoroughly broken in half, not bent, it is impossible for them to be fully conditioned back into the society they were broken from. The most you could hope for is being duct taped back together and pass as an oddball "normie". This happens usually by being born with higher intelligence that causes you to perceive the world differently, and have your conditioning broken that way. Being autistic, weird, ugly, poor, or going through traumatic experiences can break this conditioning too. If you’re lucky, you would have cognizant parents that would teach you from a young age. Once it’s broken, and your perception is altered, you begin to see things that nobody would even ask questions about, because as mentioned before, they want to maintain the trust and peace.
When you reach this point, you have two options: desperately claw your way back to normalcy and hope you can live with knowing the truth, or immerse yourself in it to find ways of destroying it or a the very least avoid discomfort. It’s about understanding that the reality presented to you might be more complex than anybody at first realizes.
It is the antithesis of consensus manufacturing, and it doesn't work on people like us because everything they produce conflicts with established priors we know to be true. In short, they hate us.
Should people like Gessen continue to acquire and exercise political power it will be time to hang them and the supporters from lampposts. There is no other answer to such tyranny than violent revolution.
That has to be the ultimate unintended irony. The champion of truth wants us to deny it at the pronoun level:
"Instead, he’s encouraging..."
M. Gessen uses "they/them" pronouns.
It may be tedious to bring it up again but it is such a blatant, obvious example. These are the people who propagated the Russian collusion hoax. They knew early on it was a hoax (and if they didn't, their incompetence disqualifies them as fact-checkers). They are propagandists, not diviners of truth. They are exactly the people the First Amendment was written to protect us from.
The Soros-sellouts. Like Drudge.
I note that USA Today has an opinion column today on how Harris/Walz are complete enemies to Free Speech. It's the main reason I can't vote for Democrats.
Robert thinks any media to the right of Pravda is extreme right wing.
"it would be a crime for you to convey poisoned water."
If Hesson were not a modern day intellectual analogue of Lucretia Borgia, this might be worth thinking about.
Anyway to cut off Gessen's mic?
Hmmmmm.....this sounds like an unsupported smear made by George Lincoln Rockwell , former leader of the Jew-hating American Nazi Party. Is it?
Others here can see some that man's "ideas" here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20021222094145/www.skrewdriver.net/tttw12.html
So censorship and "deplatforming" are Jewish ideas...right, RSM?
It is unambiguous now. Prima Facie. They have openly denigrated free speech and called for limitations on speech hundreds of times, in clear and distinct disrespect not only for the 1st Amendments letter of the law but its spirit as well, not including the numerous other constitutional principles they wish to do away with.
It is undeniable that a vote for the democratic party is a vote for anti-constitutional and anti-American forces. Free though it may be, it is a traitorous vote made by traitors.
TWANLOC vote democrat. Traitors all.
Rule of thumb: if you need to censor, your ideas are no good.
Like Ice Cube song says; ‘check yo' self before you wreck yo' self’
Nope, but "Dynamic Silence" sure sounds a lot like what the media has been doing for a very long time. It's very Alinskyesque, another Jewish socialist influential with the media. Saul would probably agree with me that the mouth it comes from doesn't matter if it's true.
Now that is very Alinskyesque!
Gessen might have a change of heart if somehow the Other Guys become arbiters of Truth.
The mediaswine and Democrat elite seek to control thought. It was ever so with tyrants. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984
Can anyone with a NYT subscription describe the tone of the comments in response to the article? Any pushback or just passive agreement? A fun experiment would be to republish the article, with some changes, and note a right leaning author.
As long as the candidate (or anyone else) says just exactly what Professor Gessen wants, they have free speech, and we can have "debates". Otherwise, all is lost.
Yikes!
It's scary that Gessen teaches journalism at the City University of New York and doesn't understand the importance of free speech. (Or maybe Gessen does and actually sees it as a dangerous threat.)
Here's Gessen's Wikipedia bio:
"Gessen was born into a Jewish family in Moscow to Alexander and Yelena Gessen.Gessen's paternal grandmother Ester Goldberg, the daughter of a socialist mother and a Zionist father, was born in Białystok, Poland, in 1923 and emigrated to Moscow in 1940. Ester's father Jakub Goldberg was murdered during the Holocaust in 1943, either in the Białystok Ghetto or a concentration camp.
Gessen's maternal grandmother, Ruzya Solodovnik, was a Russian-born intellectual who worked as a censor for the Stalinist government until she was fired during an antisemitic purge. Gessen's maternal grandfather Samuil was a committed Bolshevik who died during World War II, leaving Ruzya to raise Yelena alone.
In 1981, when Gessen was a teenager, their family moved via the US Refugee Resettlement Program to the United States. As an adult in 1996, Gessen moved to Moscow, where they worked as a journalist. They hold both Russian and US citizenship."
And there's also this important bit:
"In August 2023, Russia opened a criminal case against Gessen on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian army's actions in Ukraine. In December 2023, it was reported that Gessen's name appeared on the Russian Interior Ministry's online wanted list. Gessen was accused of spreading "false information" after discussing atrocities in the Ukrainian city of Bucha during an interview with Russian journalist Yury Dud. In July 2024, Gessen was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 8 years in prison."
It's weird that someone could have a background like this and not learned the important lessons from it. (Like how important free speech is.)
The NYT is for the bolstering and morale of the already converted, not the rest of us. Fewer and fewer links in sources I read go to NYT nowadays especially to their editorials & columnists. The rest of those who cite NYT are either fellow travelers or those that link to them bc outrage porn is always good for clicks, follows, & comments. I give an NYT cite about the same credibility as a Wikipedia cite tbh, which is to say that I have to personally read it through and examined any photos and/or footnotes in depth first, bc the NYT editorial board and columnists are such shameless liars.
"You know, irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."
Kinda like Our Democracy(TM)
Kinda like Our Democracy(TM)
Now where is your fantasy of control?
It usually ends up coming from the barrel of a gun.
Lucretia Borgia was both intelligent and good looking. He's not either
Gessen is a d-bag.
Perhaps Gessen is saddled with multiple personalities. If so, they/them may be appropriate.
I was just reading the wiki. How in the world can someone have that experience and still think that censorship is acceptable or reasonable? Who do they think will be doing the censoring? Do they think they and their counterparts are going to be charge forever? Myopia
But don’t read M. Gessen, or your brain cells will lessen
It is undeniable that a vote for the democratic party is a vote for anti-constitutional and anti-American forces. Free though it may be, it is a traitorous vote made by traitors.
..worth a repeat and unfortunately not hyperbole, but prolly too late. We'll know in a few days now...
Setup by the Arkansas Mafia, (Clinton/Holder Inc.), Fundamental Transformation by Soetoro Inc. . Continues today as Biden/Harris.
Add also CNN, the go to news source of airport janitors.
Easiest degrees to acquire.
That's a low blow.
Speaking of low blows....
Someone should immediately press this person with scenarios.
Hunter laptop...would he censor that?
For sure he would.
Lessee. "Congress shall pass no law..................." Nope. Not a "but" in there.
The comparison of information to water to information is facile and pernicious. Information is everywhere. From the standpoint of modern physics, information is everything -- energy, matter, it's all information. Furthermore, there is no such thing as disinformation. It's a myth invented by the KGB as a part of propaganda strategy against the United States involving left-leaning newspaper editors suppressing some news stories and promoting others in order to confuse and demoralize the citizenry of the West, in other words nothing new under the sun. At its heart, information theory has nothing to say about misinformation other than there's a lot of it and the mis is usually misused. If history is any guide, much of what's accepted as "true" information today will be regarded as misinformation tomorrow. Pharaoh Akhenaten proclaim the sun to be an entity called Aten who was also the sole god of the universe. 3,377 years later, most people who regard themselves as informed think the sun is an inconceivably huge mass of hydrogen with a vastly energetic fusion reaction ongoing somewhere deep within. Both are tentative opinions. Akhenaten's opinion served his needs fairly well until the priests of a rival god overthrew him and his dynasty. Likewise, our opinion serves our needs fairly well, but we would be stupidly arrogant to assume our information about the sun won't be laughable misinformation in the future.
In many cases so-called information can be regarded as misinformation and information simultaneously. It depends on you point of view. Nature is full of deception; it's almost everywhere you look. For example, consider the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus). Its survival depends on its ability to deceive. The mimic octopus can change its appearance which can deceive its predators and its prey. The information that comprises its appearance is neither true nor false; it's just information. What counts is how that information is processed by those who receive it. To the hungry grouper on the hunt for an octopus diner, that set of information is interpreted as a sea snake, a deadly elapid able to kill the largest group with a single bite, or at least that how it seems to human observers. That's information for you. True information is very hard to come by, and it can take a long time to filter that particular grain from the chaff -- often in the order of lifetimes, if not millennia
M. Gessen thinks he understands information, but he's fooling himself, which is fine. Everyone fools himself constantly. But don't fool others for the sake of your will to power, that's naughty.
The Democritus dictum: Nothing exists but atoms and space, the rest is opinion.
Today we're quite uncertain about atoms and space, which leaves us with little but opinions. M. Gessen wants to ban opinions, and thereby reduce us to all-encompassing ignorance.
As students studying ancient philosophy my classmates and I used to respond (jokingly) to ANY expression of opinion: "Of course, Socrates, how could it be otherwise?"
Now, I guess, the convention is to respond: "How foolish Socrates, it can't be that way." I hope that's also intended jokingly.
We have always been at war with Eastasia!
What John Galt said was: "If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals [If you were told that your self-sacrifice was good for the rest of mankind] , and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own—I would refuse."
I'm not an objectivist -- but when I was in college an objectivist friend had me address an objectivist meeting about an essay I had written about an example of how a government program based on free enterprise worked better than a socialist government program --they thought I was like one of the villains in Atlas Shrugged. Still, more than 60 years later, I think the freedom critique is the best starting point
Gov. Tim Walz said the following at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate (per CBS’s transcript thereof):
“You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme court test.”
That was precisely the construction of this aphorism that planetgeo correctly noted above that leftists (often) give about the limits of free speech.
That construction is, however, not only a mangled, simplistic misstatement of its source, but, contra Gov. Walz, it is not the Supreme Court “test” at all. (Maybe Gov. Walz’s false statement to that effect should have been fact-checked by the CBS debate moderators.)
In Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), the Supreme Court unanimously held that Schenck and his co-defendant, who had been convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 of criminally attempting to obstruct the World War I draft by distributing leaflets urging resistance to the draft, had been properly convicted (among other things, the Act prohibited interference with military operations or recruitment).
The Court’s opinion was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. In response to the defendants’ argument that the Act as applied to them violated their free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment, the Court said the following:
We admit that, in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. Aikens v. Wisconsin [citation omitted]. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co. [citation omitted]. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.
Id., at 52 (emphasis added).
[Continued in next comment]
Thus, the common rendition of the aphorism by Gov. Walz and others eliminates Justice Holmes’s (and the Supreme Court’s) “falsely” and “causing panic” qualifiers from the purported “test”, and it adds a qualifier—that the theater must be “crowded”—to the “test” that Holmes did not include as a part thereof.
As planetgeo also noted, yelling “fire” in a theater (crowded or not) that actually is on fire (thus not a false yelling thereof) was not, under the Supreme Court’s Schenk analogy, prohibitable under the First Amendment. Presumably, neither would yelling “fire” in a theater (crowded or not) that is understood by the audience therein to be part of the performance before it (including, e.g., a reading, with dramatic emphasis, of the Court’s opinion in Schenk) and, hence, produces no panic.
Gov. Walz and others stating this aphorism in its mangled, simplistically reduced form wrongly expand the much more limited “test” the Schenk court articulated far beyond what the Court intended. (Really, the Schenk court’s “test” of permissible limitation of the First Amendment’s free speech right was the “clear and present danger” test, and the false “fire” yelling in a (crowded) theater causing a panic “test” was a real life example of what the Court thought was speech that would pose such a “clear and present danger”.)
But that misrepresentation of the “test” is not even the worst of it. While bad enough coming from many others, it is particularly disturbing that high governmental officials—here, the governor of a state—do not know or understand that the “clear and present danger” test enunciated by the Supreme Court in Schenk was unanimously overruled by the Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
In Brandenburg, the leader of a Ku Klux Klan group had been convicted under Ohio’s 1919 Criminal Syndicalism Statute for advocating “the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform” and “voluntarily assembling with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism” at Klan meetings where crosses were burned, firearms were carried, and speeches against blacks, Jews, and government officials were made.
The Court held that “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Id., at 447. The “clear and present danger” test of Schenk and various other World War I era cases was thus replaced with the much more speech-permissive “imminent lawless action” test.
[Continued in next comment]
Justice William O. Douglas’s concurring opinion in Brandenburg (joined by Justice Hugo Black) made this clear:
The dissents in Abrams, Schaefer, and Pierce show how easily “clear and present danger” is manipulated to crush what Brandeis called “[t]he fundamental right of free men to strive for better conditions through new legislation and new institutions” by argument and discourse (Pierce v. United States [citation omitted]) even in time of war. Though I doubt if the “clear and present danger” test is congenial to the First Amendment in time of a declared war, I am certain it is not reconcilable with the First Amendment in days of peace.
Id., at 452.
This used to be the bedrock of the civil libertarian free speech position. No longer, apparently, in what purports to be the modern intelligentsia, is this so.
As George Orwell wrote in his essay Notes on Nationalism, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
Our free speech laws are meant to protect, among other things, a very wide range of political discourse, right up to the point of advocating imminent lawless action. These laws protect revolutionary socialists and revanchist reactionaries, cranks and misanthropes, absolutists and skeptics, secularists and religious, Democrats and Republicans, common men and women and the elitists, alike. Those on the “left”, including those former liberals (classical or otherwise), who would now deny to their political opponents the broad range of speech protections afforded by the First Amendment in the name of preventing misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, etc., including by governmental action to assist in and procure the suppression of disapproved speech by private speech platforms, should consider what happens to them when the tables are turned, if and when they are, and their political opponents take the reigns of power. Whose speech may be suppressed or limited then? Particularly those who urge that Republicans, the “right”, “MAGA” supporters, or the perceived devil himself, former President Donald J Trump, are threats to our democracy itself are fools to believe that the limitations on free speech that they endorse now will not be turned on them.
In this regard, the movie adaptation of Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons has a particularly apt statement by its hero, Sir Thomas More, of the benefit to all of our constitutional legal protections of free speech:
Roper: Now you give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes, what would you do? Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes. I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh, and when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.
If a candidate requires moderator assistance, perhaps that is a clear indication that they are not prepared to be president or be one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Shhhh. Don't tell Mutaman that. He'll accuse you of whining.
In the modern world it is very dangerous to not know things. To pretend that Iran is not about to get the bomb (to remain ignorant of it) is very dangerous. Israel did not know about the Hamas plans for Oct 7 and it cost them. Suppressing the truth about Covid origins in the Wuhan lab has cost us--did you know the US gov only recently stopped sending money there? The pretend that the 2020 riots were "mostly peaceful" was costly. Censorship keeps things hidden that are important because it is inconvenient for powerful people. Hiding info does not make those things go away, it just makes us unprepared.
This is important. America has a unique political culture, and one risk of immigration is that that political culture could change. Ex-soviets tend to be pretty good on rights, but this one isn't. Ilhan Omar's father was a communist apparatchik in Somalia when it was communist. As a refugee, we decide to import a communist. Maybe not the wisest. I don't want to push too hard on immigrants here, because plenty of heritage Americans don't help nurture the political culture and want to "fundamentally change" America.
But its an issue we should think about. Really, it should be taught in civics class. We fetishize "democracy" far too much when the real key american political culture is government protects your rights and should be small, not large, etc. (Democracy is a tool to help keep that going, but is dangerous too, which is why we have all these other offsets like senate terms, and courts.)
"Those on the “left”, including those former liberals (classical or otherwise), who would now deny to their political opponents the broad range of speech protections afforded by the First Amendment in the name of preventing misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, etc..."
And by "misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, etc.", what the left means is "speech we don't like".
…and former constitutional scholar, just what the hell are ‘free speech values’? Kinda ignoring an important document there aren’t you madam?
Scratch a liberal, you'll find a fascist. Every time.
Gessen's parable of the water fails at the point of what is a poison. the argument depends on knowing without doubt what is poison and what is not. Going to lived experience we have the FDA as the authority to tell us. But the FDA uses years of controlled experiment to decide, but how does the FDA know a statement is poison before exhaustive experiment? Well, the censor just knows, right away, what is bad. Are we going to design an experiment to test the statement before the press runs the copy at midnight?
So the argument is just adolescent babble that is impossible to implement at all. And it assumes that an idea causes harm rather than educating the person listening by letting them experience and analyze proposals.
Gessen’s proposal would be right in line with the puritan religeons, dont allow thoughts outside the canon of the faith.
Post a Comment