What Idiot Thinks We're Safer And Better Off Having No Idea What Other People Think?
Somebody said this at a recent dinner for FIRE that I went to. And they're right. As I put the same idea, "Why would anyone think we're safer if ugly views are shoved underground? They're still there. We just can't see or debate them."
A woman, Dinah Silverstein, presumably Jewish, blogs (idiotically) at the Times of Israel, using the (sadly) increasingly popular notion that shutting down speech keeps us safer, claiming, "America Desperately Needs a Hate Speech Law."
Hey, Dinah! Today others' speech is prosecuted; tomorrow yours is. Silverstein writes:
Freedom of speech is something that always has to be balanced against other peoples' human rights. America needs to take a human rights-based approach to freedom of speech, balancing freedom of speech against human dignity, civility, and respect, and the US needs to outlaw all ideas which have no place in a modern democracy with basic human rights. In Canada, each state has its own Human Rights Tribunal to prosecute people for hate speech and other human rights abuses. The US needs to set up similar Human Rights Tribunals in each state to prosecute people for hate speech on a state level, along with a federal American Human Rights Commission (like the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission) to prosecute people for hate speech on a federal level. If the US does indeed disapprove of hatred and bigotry, then it has absolutely no reason to allow the open expression of hatred and bigotry. Hate speech is not free speech, and it's time for America to finally recognize this. Freedom of speech should never be something that hurts people. Freedom of speech is a right that must be used responsibly, and hate speech is a clear abuse of that right. It's time for America to finally bring itself up to date on its international human rights obligations, and it can start doing that by finally passing a law against all forms of hate speech. This is something that human rights groups around the world have been telling America for decades.
So the hell what?
The First Amendment is the "Welcome, Assholes!" Amendment, and I love the fuck out of this country for having it. It's one of the things (along with our other rights and freedoms) that makes me feel great about being American; makes me feel there is no other country in the world I would rather be a citizen of.
And this from Silverstein is idiotically hilarious:
Human rights groups in America need to bring the fight for hate speech protections to the US, as America is the last advanced country in the world without any kind of legal protections against hate speech - and, by failing to protect against hate speech, the US is explicitly violating international human rights law. America will never be up to international human rights standards until it makes protecting the basic human dignity of its citizens a top priority.
It's your job to protect your dignity, not a thing to have a law about.
And didn't your mom lecture you against the "monkey-see/monkey-do" thing. As Mark Humphreys points out:
As of 2010, the UN "Human Rights" Council includes the "Not Free" countries of: Angola, Cameroon, Libya, the Maldives, China, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Cuba.
Yeah, let's be more like Saudi Arabia, where Coptic Christians are regularly killed but you'll go to jail or be killed for saying anything slightly critical against Mohammed or anybody in power.
On a side note, Antonin Pribetic fact-checks her ass:
@APribetic
@amyalkon @MoonMetropolis @TheFIREorg Bah! Misattributing the quote to Voltaire and omitting "falsely" in the Holmes quote in Schenck.
via @MoonMetropolis
Totally agree - I would much rather know that someone is an idiot instead than having him hide somewhere.
Also, what folks like this author don't realize is that once you make some speech illegal then it won't be long before your speech is illegal because someone somewhere is going to consider what you say to be "against my rights."
Case in point, I find it to be against my dignity to suggest that I need the government to protect it - so arrest that idiot!
charles at March 8, 2015 7:52 AM
Oh the stupidity!
In the source article, Silverstein says, incredibly, "Freedom of speech should never be a license to insult, offend, disrespect, oppose human rights, undermine progress, or incite hatred. Racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, climate change denial, vaccine denial, anti-feminism, cultural appropriation, xenophobia, ableism, anti-multiculturalism, transphobia, and all other forms of bigotry are not 'thoughts' or 'opinions.' They are crimes, and all civilized countries already treat them as such."
In plain language: "It should be a crime for you to disagree with me. There oughta be a law!"
This kind of grandiosity is a key feature of narcissistic personality disorder.
DrPinWV at March 8, 2015 7:59 AM
The really unsettling thing is that there are an increasing number of people who think this way: that everyone's speech and writing must be constantly monitored, and that there should be tribunals to punish those many millions of people who say something which offends or disagrees with someone else's views. Does Canada really have these things? If so, all the progress made by the Enlightenment is in danger of being destroyed, and from within.
Do they teach the Constitution any more in schools? The Founding Fathers were well aware of the ways in which government could squelch and punish free speech, so they put rights of free speech and free press in the very first Amendment. There have always been people and institutions who want to take these rights away. They always sententiously claim it is for the better good; to protect against heretics, witches, popery, seditionists, communists. Now they've got a whole bunch more targets, all conveniently labeled for easy disposal. It is a bitterly ironic aspect of human nature that so many people who fight for free expression of their own ideas, are eager to punish others for saying things that they disagree with.
William at March 8, 2015 11:46 AM
>In other cases, the United States Supreme Court has actually allowed neo-Nazis to march through a town where many Holocaust survivors lived and has even allowed homophobes to directly picket funerals with homophobic picket signs.
I'm so old, I remember when it was a point of pride of many American Jews that the ACLU defended the neo-Nazis.
jerry at March 8, 2015 12:18 PM
Why don't we all just become mute and never leave our homes for any reason on the off chance we may encounter someone and offend them.
BunnyGirl at March 8, 2015 12:52 PM
"Dinah Silverstein" doesn't exist. A reverse image search links to Nancy Goldstein, someone who is actually an activist and columnist. Seems like this is Tonya Cohen all over again.
Tim Cushing at March 8, 2015 2:10 PM
Nice catch Tim.
I had noticed that Dinah had no twitter account and thought that was very very strange for
a) a columnist
b) a social justice warrior
jerry at March 8, 2015 2:34 PM
I hadn't read most of her article, I tend to skip articles after a certain length of idiocy, but I would hope the article is a troll or a poe.
> This is a principle that the United States completely fails to understand. In a civilized country with basic human rights, people like Donald Sterling, Brendan Eich, Phil Robertson, Paula Deen, Justine Sacco, Gavin McInnes, and so forth would not only be fired from their jobs, but they would also be taken before government Human Rights Commissions and fined or imprisoned for inciting hatred and violence against vulnerable and marginalized minorities, and for holding ideas which have no place in a modern democratic society with fundamental human rights.
jerry at March 8, 2015 2:40 PM
Ah, yes, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
The group that ruled it was an inhumane violation of a womans rights to require she wash her hands between taking a shit and preparing food at a McDonalds
lujlp at March 8, 2015 4:28 PM
"Yeah, let's be more like Saudi Arabia, where Coptic Christians are regularly killed but you'll go to jail or be killed for saying anything slightly critical against Mohammed or anybody in power."
Really? Coptic Christians are regularly killed in Saudi Arabia? Don't you mean Egypt? I have a hard time taking you seriously when you can't differentiate between these countries. Just because they are both predominately Muslim doesn't make them the same.
Before you get too high on your horse, I have spent considerable time in both Egypt and Saudi. Neither is a place I would want to raise a family but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME! Take a little more time and continue your education. Or not...I am sure in your head the science is settled because you once read something about each of these places and, by jiminy, there is no reason to learn anything else.
causticf at March 8, 2015 6:33 PM
Freedom of speech is something that always has to be balanced against other peoples' human rights.
There's your problem. That statement is fundamentally wrong, and continues its wrong-ness on so many, many levels.
"Human" rights don't exist, children. That's a bullshit, made-up "PC" euphemism from your first-world sense of entitlement. Your rights to not be offended don't supersede my rights to tell you to go pull your knickers out of your arse.
DrCos at March 9, 2015 3:50 AM
These kind of censorious people are morons. The kind of repression that you end up with by censoring speech will result in guillotines on the White House lawn. And as soon as it looks like the wind is blowing that way, I'll be first in line to run the things. Why? Because I'll last much longer than others, and make sure that the idiots that proposed that sort of censorship lose their heads over it.
spqr2008 at March 9, 2015 5:54 AM
"In Canada, each state has its own Human Rights Tribunal to prosecute people for hate speech and other human rights abuses." A little problem with the fact-checking - Canada doesn't have "states" - we have "provinces."
Tim webster at March 9, 2015 2:00 PM
It bears repeating: People who want the government to have dictatorial powers always assume that they will get to be the dictator.
Cousin Dave at March 9, 2015 2:11 PM
Tim, was Tonya Cohen a fake as well? I always suspected it was a parody but never saw anything conclusive.
Mike at March 9, 2015 2:17 PM
Cousin Dave: "People who want the government to have dictatorial powers always assume that they will get to be the dictator."
LOL! Cousin Dave, that is so true! They really do think that their way of thinking is the only "reasonable" way and that everyone else is just plain wrong. And that everyone else needs to be adjusted to them.
charles at March 9, 2015 6:12 PM
The post has been taken down.
silverpie at March 9, 2015 7:25 PM
So, a Canadian feminist living in the US wants to school us on what it means to be civilized and what human rights are.
Marvelous.
Notice she names only enemies of left-wing, populist causes? Some of the folks she named were scum, some were momentary idiots, and some were just exercising their rights to speak freely and to participate in the political process (a process she is attempting to criminalize).
Note the irony, also, that in a "civilized" country, people would be fired or jailed for holding ideas - i.e., for thought crimes.
Earlier in her rant, she maintains that the Holocaust was incited by hate speech. The Holocaust was deliberately started and covertly conducted by the Nazi government; it was not the hot-tempered act of a incited crowd of people running amok in the Tiergarten.
In fact, the lack of free speech in Nazi Germany meant no one could argue for the Jews.
She also, in an almost libelous argument, blames Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin for Jared Lee Loughner shooting Gabby Giffords - willfully ignoring Loughner's left-wing political views before he succumbed to 9/11 Truther conspiracy views and became obsessed with an anti-Christian, anti-American and anti-capitalist conspiracy video.
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"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself … she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them." ~ Thomas Jefferson (1786)
Conan the Grammarian at March 10, 2015 10:34 AM
> Nice catch Tim.
Anybody remember Elisabeth Irwin over at Seipp's?
I feel for that hook, line, and sinker.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 10, 2015 4:46 PM
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