Free speech is about the state dictating what is or is not acceptable, not about free people freely expressing contempt for contemptible behaviour.
– Commenter Counting Cats
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Samizdata quote of the dayNovember 3rd, 2008 |
 22 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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uhmmm… Looks like a slip of the Keyboard. I guess countingcats meant Censorship rather than Free Speech. Sometimes the lack of an edit function on previously posted comments causes everyone to accidentally say some strange things.
It IS pretty funny though…
True, but there is still something to be said for living in a tolerant intellectual atmosphere. The leftwing groupthink at universities come to mind.
Not really because I think it is obvious that the meaning of what is written is that THE ISSUE of free speech is about the state dictating what is or is not acceptable.
Hence me banning someone or deleting their comments from Samizdata is not an issue of ‘free speech’ because I am not the state. The issue in that case would be property rights (this blog is my property) and the only one with any property rights here is me 🙂
However if the state tries to interfere with what gets said on samizdata, then the issue becomes one of free speech. The quote makes perfect sense as written.
The quote makes perfect sense as written.
I go along with Perry on this one, but then I would, wouldn’t I?
As far as free speech in Britain is concerned, it seems it’s an antiquity known only from the history books nowadays:
“The burden of proof is to be placed on the individuals concerned by demanding that they refute accusations made against them by publicly denouncing or retracting their reported views. At present the Home Office has to provide evidence that the individual holds the views ascribed to them. Individuals may have to make a statement of their attachment to democratic values to prove their change of heart is genuine.”
“Smith said yesterday the strengthened rules would give the Home Office the power to name individuals stopped from entering Britain. At present they are banned from naming those involved in individual cases who remain anonymous unless they choose to fight the ban and name themselves. This would also enable their names to be shared with other countries and placed on British port “watchlists” to ensure that any future visa application did not slip through the net.”
“He said an individual who claimed to show that they had repudiated previous extremist views or actions would have to publicly retract them.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/28/jacqui-smith-extremists-home-office
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7694408.stm
Perry,
What about non-state actors? Or quasi-state actors? An example that springs to mind is the drug compnay (forget which one) that did it’s utmost to silence the research that demonstrated that a great many stomach ulcers are the result of Helicobacter Pylori (sp?) infection because they made Zantac and were making a mint from it. It isn’t just the state though admittedly the state is much harder to fight.
Nick, it would depend on the means they are using. It is legitimate to buy people’s silence with money (or equivalent), but it is not legitimate to threaten them with violence. I know this is morally and practically problematic, but I see no way around this.
I see! I think did a poor job parsing the original quotation. Having reread it it makes much more sense (I think)
If I understand correctly, Countingcats (and Perry De Haviland) are saying that while I might have a perfect right to spout off about Zionist conspiracies or deny the holocaust, they are under no legal obligation to tolerate such anti-semitic drivel on their property.
If that is the argument I agree completely. Sorry for being obtuse!
Now I have a question for you. Is the muddying of the distinction between genuinely public places (Hyde Park) and private places open to the public at the owners discretion (my local pub, the Samizdata blog) the result of muddy thinking or is it a quite deliberate effort to conflate the two categories so as to being the latter under collectivist control?
I almost never hear this distinction made by British media or politicians. I can only conclude that either they aren’t aware of the distinction or don’t think it particularly important.
One person’s right is another person’s responsibility.
One left winger may want to preach Marxism; a second may prefer the Trotskyite vision; a third left winger may be enthralled with National Socialism. The rest of us grant them their ‘right’ of free speech by accepting the ‘responsibility’ for defending their having the opportunity to talk — but we have no responsibility for listening to their twaddle.
Equally, ordinary Brits have no responsibility to pay vastly inflated BBC salaries to juvenile talk show hosts who simply want to spout potty-talk.
And potty-talk is a long way from political ‘free speech’ anyway.
Alice: Actually I think in Britain especially, the kind of crudeness we are talking about is very political. What BBC types mean when they talk about their commitment to ‘challenging’ television that ‘pushes the boundaries’ is really a commitment to making shows that offend the sensibilities of old fashioned white people. Socially conservative whitefolk are the only politically permissible target for contempt, and mocking their foibles, tastes and standards of decency as meanspiritedly as possible is progressive and therefore right by definition.
America is the ultimate target for scorn because it is largely made up of and run by such people.
Nick M,
Regarding non-state actors, I agree. My favourite way of saying it was in Mill.
J. S. Mill, On Liberty.
I think it’s not so much the state, but external forces without property rights or delegated authority from those with the property rights. Thus, Perry can ban me from here, but the rest of you can’t require that he ban me. The BBC have the right to sack Ross and Brand, but the Daily Mail readers don’t. Andrew Sachs can block their number since he owns his phone line, but can’t shut down their show, because he doesn’t own that.
To cite my other example again, since the state never made it illegal for newspapers to republish the Motoons – it was not the state that ensured most people never saw them. Since it was every media outlet’s own choice not to publish, by this definition of free speech there was clearly “no burka on free speech”, as the logo has it. The Motoons was never an issue of free speech in the West. Or even freedom.
But I’m clearly not persuading anyone much, so I think I’ll give up at this point. I’m depressed now.
Shall we expect soon that commentators will soon commentate, or will that be reserved to commentors?
I think Countingcats is talking about a concept here in Australia called hate speech. So long as you aren’t using hate speech, you can have free speech. The courts will, and do, decide if you are using hate speech. It’s quite simple- you can speak on any subject you like, so long as you like to talk about subjects that the government likes. What could be fairer?
Nick G,
What I was talking about was Pa Annoyed apparently conflating criticism on this site of Brand and Ross being tossers with arguments for suppression of their freedom of speech. I was simply making the point that it was no such thing.
People should, under law, be entitled to express any opinion they wish. There is, however, no reason not to allow anyone else to express revulsion if the opinions expressed are repulsive. In fact, to do otherwise would be an infringement of their freedom of expression.
In terms of the BBC, well, I don’t think many here would disagree with “he who pays the piper calls the tune”, and the license payer, everyone with a TV in fact, pays the piper. Sacking B & R does not infringe their freedom in the least.
As for hate speech legislation? It is found everywhere these days. And everywhere is selectively applied.
while I might have a perfect right to spout off about Zionist conspiracies or deny the holocaust, they are under no legal obligation to tolerate such anti-semitic drivel on their property.
Not just on my property, in public spaces as well. Even on your property I would be inclined to express my opinion of your opinion – and then leave of course. There is no way I could stay on your property after doing that.
The one thing I can’t do is use force to silence you, although I am entitled to use force to eject you from my property.
The point I’d make regarding the discussion on Sachsgate or Phonegate or whatever it’s called is, that I think everybody’s a bit missed the point. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and to express it, but joining in this absurd moral panic is playing into the hands of The Enemy.
Point is, the howling mob denouncing the elderly teenagers aren’t on Our Side, whatever that is. They don’t want free speech or to close down the BBC. They want the BBC to rule the airwaves but acting as it did in the past, a conservative Reithian no “winter drawers on” jokes. They want to use the power of the state to make sure nobody can say rude words or show tits and bums on the telly. They’re our very antithesis. Spouting off nonsense about how awful Ross and Brand are and how rude and it’s the end of the universe because they said “He fucked your grandaughter” is just encouraging the Back-To-The-Fifties Brigade.
Now I know people might say, “but haha, that doesn’t matter, anything that attacks the BBC is good for us, we must be as sly as toads and our enemy’s enemy is our friend” in a kind of bootleggers and baptists kind of way, but that’s wrong. Bootleggers and baptists both want state intervention. To use a real world example, the hard left feminist/hard religious conservative coalition that kept Britain so spectacularly censored both wanted the same thing; state intervention, and got it, too. Anything we do to help any such groups and, yes, that includes joining the torch weilding mob outside Brand’s home attempting to set his extravagant tresses on fire, or at least shouting about it on the web, does the same thing.
These are not free speech people, and this is not a moral panic about free speech or abolishing the BBC. It’s more miserable puritans, that’s all, and they want a big state funded BBC that only makes Terry And June and The Light Programme.
Calm down. Two elderly teenagers acted like tits. It happens. Moral outrage from libertarians about it helps libertarianism not at all. It just adds to the argument that the government needs to do more censoring. In the name of common decency, for our own protection, of course.
Did I mention they’re gearing up to nationalising Nominet, the UK’s internets domain name system? That’s something we really need to be fighting. Fuck Ross and Brand.
Are Daily Mail readers exempt from the licence fee? As Daily Mail readers I agree they have no right to interfere in the running of the BBC, but as licence fee payers they are entitled to call the corporation to account over its use of their money. Other fee payers are equally entitled to state their approval, and those running the BBC to decide between two conflicting messages.
Don’t know about Woss, but doesn’t Brand already claim everyone has?
Well, I’ve no idea what Counting Cats meant. He doesn’t sound terrible interesting. But there is a sense in which he is arguably right about the state dictating what is and is not acceptable.
The great German jurist Carl Schmitt put forward the now very influential concept of Decisionism, whereby it is a properly constituted authority which determines morality. The National Socialists of his time, the neocons and, of course, the radical left have all lived by this rule. And, of course, religious authorities the world over have always lived by it.
Schmitt was not a pure philosopher, so the routes of morality in evolutionary choices were not of interest to him (as they were, say, to Schopenhauer a century earlier). One can easily adduce that authority wilfully denies to Man both his individualism and his wider kinship (only one of those understood here, of course), and will always thereby place itself in opposition to those over whom it governs.
The problem, then, inevitably becomes one not of the legal constitution of authority, as Schmitt held, but of its moral nature.
But that’s probably not quite what Counting Cats was getting at!
One can easily adduce that authority wilfully denies to Man both his individualism and his wider kinship (only one of those understood here, of course)
I don’t believe you could be more wrong. This is a misrepresentation attributed to individualists and libertarians time and again. In fact, I would argue that a recognition of a wider kinship is the basis of the widespread individual altruism we see in free societies.
The problem, then, inevitably becomes one not of the legal constitution of authority, as Schmitt held, but of its moral nature.
And the moral nature of authority is fundamental to the issues under discussion. It permeates the site.
Individual interest is one (and the lesser) of the two groups of interest which inform human life. Actually, the entire political and philosophical universe in which we move is nominally dedicated to Individual interest. But because the dedication is only nominal and not thoroughgoing, libertarianism is a dissident form.
The real problem lies with the other group of human interests: kinship. Of course you are right that altruism is an evolved form of establishing trust, hence its classical reciprocity. But all morality refers to adaptive life choices (ie fitness gain). It is all predicated on the evolutionary process.
And that’s where the problems come in, because under the “properly constituted authority” since around 1945, the beneficiary of these evolved behaviours – family, tribe, race – has been expunged from the conversation of “decent men”. At least, in the West. Not in any other place in the world, naturally.
Libertarians, to my mind, do well with their ire against the traitors of liberalism. They are, however, ideologically indisposed, shall we say, from arguing for kinship without it slipping over into the officially mandated morality of universalism and fundamental human equality.
Still, one should be willing to accept what little sustenance the table bears.
All these comments taking another comment out of context and discussing its multiple potential implications in contradictory ways… It’s damn near Talmudic.
Anyway, I don’t know where Ian B gets his deep resevoirs of knowledge about the inner motivations of those complaining about Brand, but I don’t see anything particularly wrong with people who would prefer the BBC, so long as it exists, to be a force for not against civilized existence.
Similarly, though I think government spending on education is currently far too high and should be slashed, I think that if the money should be spent on Latin textbooks and not useless crap like P.S.E., citizenship lessons, fornication education and foot massages. I don’t mind being a Libertarian catechumen if this is what it entails.
Countingcats,
“What I was talking about was Pa Annoyed apparently conflating criticism on this site of Brand and Ross being tossers with arguments for suppression of their freedom of speech.”
I’ve got no problem with criticism of them being tossers. What I was twitching about was the idea being put forward that this was a good reason to shut down the BBC.
(There are good reasons, I don’t consider this one of them.)
I don’t care about Ross or Brand. I expect both of them are laughing all the way to the bank over it – they’ll certainly not starve in penury. What I worry about is the message sent to the media – don’t offend anyone, or you’ll be fired. Don’t offend anyone, or your organisation will be destroyed by an outraged mob, and the bits sold of. Don’t let anything get out that a bunch of people are going to write in and complain about. And indeed the general idea in society – that there is a speech code to which we should all conform, and that losing your livelihood is a perfectly reasonable punishment for saying the wrong thing.