How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

> Freedom of speech is just the easiest way to have plausible deniability when directly or indirectly defending otherwise indefensible positions.

The idea that it's somehow suspicious to be in favor of free speech has got to be one of the worst developments in American politics.

And, for whatever it's worth, every vocal "free speech person" I know doesn't like the current administation. Some people actually just have principles!

>Anecdotally I've noticed these sorts of people much less often, at least on here as of late. Methinks their deniability isn't so plausible any more.

They don't need to do any denials anymore because they have won. That was part of arguing in bad faith, they never actually believed the arguments. Nothing being discussed on a message board is going to change that

I know it's not your intention, but don't allow these people to control your perception of free speech advocates such that you're making blanket statements about them that might in turn color someone else's perception. They're hiding behind real free speech advocates, and powerful people are counting on stochastic comments like this one to help confuse the public.

> Anecdotally I've noticed these sorts of people much less often, at least on here as of late. Methinks their deniability isn't so plausible any more.

Been a lot more hysterical on here as of late. Methinks there's less reason to discuss political things now.

Most of them seem more like "freedom to fraud" or "freedom to incite violence" and speech is just the medium they need to do it.

I don't think it fits completely, but for the sake of it, I am a free speech absolutist. I live in Europe for context.

Your insinuations isn't really a good faith argument either but I gladly join that group of "these sorts of people" because they are obviously more sensible than the others.

The current administration does not support free speech for everyone. It's actively punishing free speech.

You're right -- many people who claim to support free speech really mean they favor "free speech for me, not for thee." And typically these people want to be able to say controversial things without consequence. But how people respond to speech is orthogonal to whether or not we are allowed to exercise our rights to it.

The ACLU did "free speech absolutism" right back in the 90's and 00's. They defended everyone's speech, no matter the politics, no matter how socially right or wrong it was [1]. They'd step up to bat for Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Atheists, and Satanists. Your views didn't matter. Defending the rights we all share was the point. Because when someone else's rights are degraded and not defended, it means everyone's rights are up for attack.

Unfortunately the ACLU doesn't hold these same views today. They're batting for one team only.

[1] They defended Westboro Baptist Church and NAMBLA, FFS. I definitely hate both of these organizations, but free speech is free speech. By defending even the most reprehensible speech, it ensures that mine remains free regardless of how the political pendulum swings. That's how it should be, anyway.

I don't think anyone identifies as "free speech absolutists" in the first place, except for Elon Musk one famous time. Strong free speech advocates remain about as common as they've always been, as far as I can tell - I suspect you just don't notice so much during times when the strongest threats to free speech are people and groups you're already inclined to oppose.

I wonder what any of those have to do with a USA constitutional matter?

I agree, but I think these countries don’t actually have free speech. I don’t care if I disagree with these positions. I will protest to defend their right to say it, otherwise I will lose mine as well.

Then the center-left Democrat progressives need to stop discussing the term "free speech absolutism" because it conceptually muddies the water. Leftists believe in free speech, freedom of inquiry, freedom of the press, even "burden of proof beyond doubt"--these are all liberal ideas. There's a mainstream pseudo-left that has decided to dispense with all nuance of these basic liberal values, and that is far worse in the long run, because that is happening inside the house, in service of Democrat elites. It's like internalized oppression: the fascists and reactionaries are so bad, that we've decided to forget our own principles.

Interesting you call it a "brand". People picked up the term because it was meant to be an insult and that is quite relevant to understand the current political situation and why Trump can sell himself as free speech defender while doing the opposite.

Bascially because his opposition is that much slower...

RFA is funded by USAGM a independent agency of the US federal government. Do you argue against the idea of an independent agency? Are you saying its dismantlement was legal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Agency_for_Global_Media

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un...

When the government's reason for defunding a media organization is based on that organization's viewpoint, then it is absolutely an attack on freedom of the press. I'm not sure about Radio Free Asia, but Trump has specifically cited his objections to the viewpoints of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as the reason for destroying them.

They started this tactic of "They're bad dudes trust us don't need a trial" during the Bush administration and many many people pointed out this would come to our shores soon, and it did and it's here again.

Venezuela claims zero were members fwiw

> Venezuela's Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on Friday that none of the hundreds of Venezuelans deported by the U.S. to a Salvadoran prison is a member of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua criminal gang, the reason Washington gave for expelling them.

> "I believe with absolute responsibility that not a single one appears on the organizational chart of the now-extinct Tren de Aragua organization, not a single one," Cabello said on a podcast, saying he had names of the deportees from U.S. media and his own source.

> Venezuela says Tren de Aragua was effectively wiped out in 2023, and that the idea that it still exists is based on a claim from the country's political opposition.

Of course.

This is what happens when “rule of law” is subverted on the generational scale — eg, by enabling illicit mass migration opposed by the majority of the people. They eventually feel that appeals to “rule of law” are merely emotional manipulation used against them and stop caring in pursuit of a solution to what they perceive as a problem.

What did people expect to happen?

> It probably wouldn’t have seemed plausible to them

Or more like there is no solution to this besides telling people to be vigilant about protecting their democracies.

Not entirely true, they did consider that possibility, and their solution was the electoral college: the only reason for its existence is as a safeguard against installing a populist president that would corrupt the system.

Is your argument that when a political party hold all major branches of government that it is implicitly corrupt? Or are you arguing that one side is corrupt and the other is not?

Is there a theoretical situation where a single party gaining control is simply the will of the voters? That appears to be a potential valid outcome.

At the same time, some ideas were great but scales of economy and population ruined them. e.g. The house of represenatives should probably number over 1000 today to properly work as structured in the founding papers. But we somewhat arbitrarily capped it at 435 100 years ago. now while that's way too many people per rep, most political scientists don't really suggest that we should have 1200 reps in the House. proposals end up more around 700.

some reverence may simply be patriotism. I suppose it's no different than any other kinds of celebrity style of worship. people like a role model.

I don’t feel demoralized.

It has started. The Posobiec book (foreword by Steve Bannon) makes the case that anyone to the left of Mussolini is a "secret communist revolutionary" and rationalizes doing anything to "crush" us.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/unhumans

This is a popular book. I found my own mother reading it. I took the title at face value at first and found the skull disturbing but not threatening what with not being a communist or anything close to it. But then I started reading and I realized that it's not a matter of if they pull the trigger but when, and when they pull the trigger that they would be completely comfortable calling my mild liberal beliefs communist, and that my mother would probably believe them as they stripped me of citizenship and sent me to a labor camp in El Salvador.

Direct link to video for those who hit the Slate paywall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuFIs7OkzYY

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Food for thought: elimination of basic rights impacts all citizens regardless of their political affiliation.

Which bits do you think are wrong?

If a different party did the same thing it would be the same.

While I’m with you on attention economy I think it’s simplification of what’s going on:

– we had very dysfunctional legislature for last 20+ years

– quality of life is falling for majority of people

This contributes to feeling of unfairness in the society which pushes authoritarian and populist ideas.

> One thing I don't see mentioned a lot but Trump has made being a victim a fairly central part of his politics (him thinking all elections are rigged against him is a simple example of this) so this all makes sense as a sort of retribution.

Imagined victimhood and a persecution complex are core, foundational pillars of MAGA. The whole movement is about how they are all the victims of the elite, persecuted by the media, harassed for their beliefs, and that the whole world is against them. Then, the minute they got power, their first priority was griefing others and cruelty to all of their favorite out-groups. There really is nothing more to it than pretend victimhood, leading to retribution.

Trump isn’t the source of that, but a manifestation of it.

People are tired of, eg, systemic discrimination being forced on them by elites (euphemized “DIE”) or courts which have outspoken activists refusing to enforce the law against career criminals.

They want it to stop — and since elites refused to onboard that correction, they rallied behind a strongman to punish them.

It used to be that you had to mingle with people, and if you had a particularly crazy take on reality there was a dynamic where 80% of people around you IRL would not really take you seriously because respected people didn’t—especially if you were otherwise not appearing to be a socially well-integrated and productive person. This had a chilling effect on extreme views and helped somewhat bring the outliers in, so to speak. Now, even if you never leave your house, cannot hold a job or a relationship, you can find any number of people who share your extreme views, and the more extreme the views the tighter the community (due to justified exclusion IRL).

Naturally, it did not take too long for other people exploit that newly found dynamic in context of democracy and use tech to manipulate such people with fringe views for own short-term gains.

Hot take: it's a failure of democratic competition. The US doesn't have proportional representation, and it's long maintained a duopoly of two electable parties, and a first-past-the-post system that makes any vote for a 3rd party a waste. This, coupled with the Democrats not fronting up a reformist candidate when they could have (Sanders shot down twice), permitted the only anti-establishment candidate to win, and that happened to be a callous individual that aligns with minds as cruel as his own. (By his own admission, 'the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them'.) It's hard to believe that even die-hard Republican politicians are totally on-board with this reformist agenda that's going to completely decimate the economy, but most certainly, if anyone is winning by the end of it, it will be them.

That said, if there's ever another free and fair US election, the Democrats have a real opportunity to put a candidate that can actually deliver remaking the country, but in a way that lifts all boats, and without throwing out hard-won democratic freedoms. But I'm pretty certain they'll just front up another establishment candidate with a progressive face.

Actually Steve Jobs, in an interview, strongly argued against a wild west internet and called for "authoritative news organs" iirc. It was on YT a few years ago, may still be there.

And treating politics like team sports is the root of the problem

As far as I can see nobody is sticking by the F1 students who are being deported.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he will use the military on the "enemy from within". Protests could end up looking like what we see in Belarus and Russia - masked "police" shows up and they beat them up and / or take them away.

No, that is obviously not "just free speech". Sheesh. C'mon, man.

> Free Palestine protesters have been shutting down roads with their protests, this is illegal.

If someone does something illegal, they can be charged with a crime and the legal process (access to a lawyer, courts, etc). It's not complicated and should not have any exceptions.

You are taking large movements with at least tens of thousands of participants and cherry-picking actions of a few people, you are contributing to the free speech problem by making false associations.

If someone is breaking the law, they should be charged with a crime.

How are we at the point where that statement is a partisan issue?

Most Tesla protests have been peaceful. There have been THOUSANDS of them the past few months in cities across the US. You’re cherry-picking the violent ones that get much louder reporting.

writing an oped isn't illegal. why is that grounds for being detained?

> Free Palestine protesters have been shutting down roads with their protests, this is illegal.

Yeah, and so? Is shutting down roads a "threat to US national security" and therefore warranting arrest without due process and green card revocation? The protesters should be charged with whatever city laws (certainly it's not a federal offense) they broke, and fined or whatever.

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... Excuse me sir, could I interest you into what happened on January 6 of 2020?

J6 wasn't a protest

Is that even legal for a CA based company?

Doing something is better than nothing.

We have no idea about YCombinator's retention of IP addresses and logs.

> Even being a US site they have to be compliant for EU users.

Why? What happens if not? EU-wide DNS ban? I haven't seen that yet...

Comments are not personal data. You can't publish a book and then GDPR your publisher to stop publishing it.

I don't think it's accidental either but the way to understand why it's happening is to ask who benefits from it. In most cases it would seem to be, Putin. He benefits from diminishing US, from stopping US support for democracy all over the world.

If the whole world is governed by say 3 dictators they can easily make peace with each other and share the spoils. But they won't because wars will increase their domestic support. Orwell wrote about this.

It wasn’t the MAGA movement that started dismantling Western culture in the US.

That’s been happening from Leftist criticism for generations.

I'd think peace after WWII lasted for 77 years (between 1945-2022 until the ukraine war broke out which appears to be the beginning of a new hot war).

> Both peace settlements following the wars were widely criticized as unstable and unlikely to last, and they didn't.

Do you mean that "the" post-WWII peace settlement didn't last? It seems to have worked very well.

> It wasn’t America's principles that made it the world leader at the time—it was the fact that, unlike other major powers, it emerged from the world wars largely unscathed.

That certainly played a big role. Also, American principles that created a post-war order based on univeral human rights, the rule of law, and free-market capitalism (including free trade). Those principles led to treatment of the losing powers in that image, rather than in retribution, cruelty or oppression (compare to the USSR in Eastern Europe). In fact, Japan surrendered when they did mainly in order to surrender to the US and not to the USSR - those principles had very significant effects. They also led to the Marshall Plan in Europe.

The principles and the resulting actions created 'soft power' which may be unmatched in history. The general alliance with European powers has lasted over 80 years; the NATO military alliance, of mutual self-defense, has lasted almost as long - has there been anything like it?

People around the world fought and struggled for the vision of American freedom. I've spoken to people from different countries who, even in the first Trump administration, still had the American dream; they still saw the 'city on the hill'.

Beyond a doubt, the US also has done plenty of awful things. But what has distingiushed it, beyond every great power in history, are those principles.

Absolutely, but they reject those things now, by following the Enlightenment principles - except for the people attacking the Enlightenment institutions, who are embracing these old prejudices and hatred and oppression.

Reading _First Principles_ by Thomas Ricks a few years ago was an eye opener -- the founding fathers and national civic culture definitely drew deeply from enlightenment thinking and further back classical civics and philosophy.

Towards the end of his book, Ricks notes the populist / religious backlash to enlightenment thinking that was already underway by the early 19th century.

It's strange to realize the post WWII America most of us have lived may really be exceptional, and how many either don't understand how big a part the liberal order has played in making America great since FDR, or have a different vision of greatness that requires tearing much of what we've enjoyed down.

Read some Adam Smith (1776 -- Wealth of Nations). How highly he talks about America back then. It was always leading economically.

I think we are severely underestimating what Democrats are up against here.

A recent episode of This American Life Ten Things I Don't Want to Hate About You[0] gives just a absolutely mind bending look at just how bad the situation is with a subset of the American public.

The synopsis is that the father in this family has been so taken by conspiracy theories that it's breaking apart a family. To settle things, he makes a $10k bet with his son over a series of 10 events he believes will absolutely happen in 2024. As the clock ticks over to 2025 and not a single prediction came true, he simply moves the goal posts and does not admit any wrong, even as his wife divorces him and his daughter becomes estranged.

It's a showcase of how absolutely lost in the flood of actual fake news some Americans have become and it's scary because these folks that are divorced from reality are typically the highly motivated voter that actually goes out there and votes.

My point here is that if you listen to this and think "Democrats have an opportunity", then you may not understand just how bad it is and that democracy is up against a cult.

[0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/854/ten-things-i-dont-want-...