If you are old enough to remember the 1990’s or earlier, then you remember when the Left was the free speech side of the debate. If you are a Baby Boomer then you probably remember the Free Speech Movement. It is an odd thing that has happened in the last ten years or so where the poles have reversed on many things, but none more so than the issue of speech. It is what the left-wing crazies call the “far-right” that upholds the old liberal traditions on speech, not the Left.
In 1978, the ACLU came to the aid of a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie. The area was mostly Jewish, which is why the group wanted to march through their neighborhood. The ACLU made clear that they thought the group was full of terrible people but they had a right to march wherever marching was permitted. Young people were taught in school about this because it was supposed to be a great example of the free speech principle.
There is no way the ACLU would do this today. Instead, they would be on the other side trying to ruin the lives of anyone who dared speak up for the group. The ACLU, like all of the legacy civil rights groups from last century, opposes the basic civil rights of white Americans on the grounds of race. It is a good corollary to Robert Conquest’s second law of politics. Any organization that does business with leftists eventually is consumed by or destroyed by leftists.
The interesting thing about speech and the so-called far-right is that many who claim to be far-right also oppose Western liberalism. You have people who want an authoritarian state, but also say they want free speech. Free expression is inextricably bound up in liberal governance. You cannot have a liberal society in the Western sense without free expression and you cannot have illiberal government with it. Free expression is the cornerstone of the liberal society.
It is why the Antifa types are anti-speech. They are illiberal and authoritarian. These are people who make various claims to communism, Marxism and even anarchism, but embrace the unfettered use of corporate power to suppress speech. It is fair to say that the anti-speech movement in America is the expression of corporate power. Of course, what passes for the Left these days operates from the HR departments of global enterprise and free speech is antithetic to the corporate state.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- 00:00: Opening
- 03:00: The War On Speech
- 23:00: The Benefit of Speech
- 43:00: The Harm of Speech
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Full Show On Spreaker
Full Show On Odysee
Heh. Me and the wife will listen to the show later, but concerning free speech:
When I was younger, it seemed to make sense to me; but this was when both sides could at least act in good faith toward one another. Think about monetary policy, for example, as something that two sides could present pretty oppositional ideas, but still shake hands at the end of it. Then again, perhaps monetary policy is a bad example. But the subject being discussed plays a part, as it may be fashionable (climate hysteria) or not (techniques in synthetic aperture RADAR). Fashionable subjects are always politicized and hence real debate becomes rather difficult.
As I grew up I reasoned about what I thought I would like in a society – and more so now that I have a family of my own. Do I really want degenerate Pride marches because ‘free speech’? Or a murder of Antifa marching about how bad whites are? Or a group of men marching for their rights to diddle little boys? The examples seem over the top… yet we see this all the time. It became obvious that if ‘free speech’ were to be tolerate at all, it ought to pose no obvious threat.
In short: we can probably never have it. It will always be subverted. Only a homogenous and responsible populace (likely Christian) can handle it, and even then it is open to subversion. To stop it becomes even harder as a society scales and diversifies.
I don’t really like the idea of authoritarianism as I’ve grown up with the pleasures of liberal democracy. But to be honest, if I could restore the social capital that we once had at the cost of some of my ‘freedoms’, I would. Oddly enough, when finding God again, and realizing that we’re all The Christ’s servants anyhow, it made me care less and less about free speech.
7
“In short: we can probably never have it. It will always be subverted.”
But we DID have it. For more than two centuries. And, yes, it was (((subverted))). No getting around THAT.
We used to have *adults* in the general population. But Talmudic mind-f**kery has infantilized everything and almost everybody. And it took very little time.
Being an adult implies and *requires* the ability to make sound judgments.
2
1
The list of speech in which you could not publicly engage in the first two centuries of US history was quite long, and mostly administered locally. Meanwhile the sorts of speech in which one could engage then, but not now — prayer in schools, religious monuments on public grounds, fot example was also remarkable.
7
The societal standard used to include a concept called, “the closet,” for many good reasons.
5
“a murder of Antifa”
Positively Shakespearean!
“You have people who want an authoritarian state, but also say they want free speech. Free expression is inextricably bound up in liberal governance. You cannot have a liberal society in the Western sense without free expression and you cannot have illiberal government with it. Free expression is the cornerstone of the liberal society.”
Stop!
Free speech and “free expression” are *not* the same things.
We know that because we remember how the term “free expression” was used by (((plaintiffs))) in lawsuits to get the courts to prevent communities–all communities everywhere–from protecting public morality in their own midst.
(((The lawyers))) successfully argued that free *speech* and free *expression* are one and the same. That opened the door to nude pole-dancing in public places, and to vulgarities and even obscenities of every kind on public airwaves, the argument there having been that the airwaves belong to the public, which, in practice, meant (((the public))).
I was there.
Yes, we remember (((Lenny Bruce))). We remember *precisely* what he meant by “free speech.” There are probably You Tube vids for those too young to remember that (((turd))).
Conflating “free speech” with “free expression” opened to door to further lawsuits that made blasphemy laws “unconstitutional.”
And so on.
But until that time, “free speech” had been understood to mean *political* speech, the idea being that one could publicly oppose one’s government, although obscenity and even commonplace vulgarity was *not* permitted because people were not confused about the plain meaning of words or about correct behavior in public.
And while one was perfectly free to speak openly against the government, slander was a punishable offense. People in those days were not confused by talmudic arguments. There was a *strong* tradition that ordinary people understood, and they understood the *proper* use and *intent* of “free speech.”
Until the 1960s, Americans had been quite free–we even FELT free–although local laws forbade the recently popular “slut-walks” and blasphemy, and on-stage nudity and vulgarity of innumerable kinds on TV, on stages, and in public venues like night clubs and others.
It is *not* true that free expression is the same thing at free speech. Those of us who lived through all of that–and who now behold the fruits of conflating speech with “expression”–know that quite well.
To quote Samuel Adams: “How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words!”
And every tyrant has his (((tools))). I myself have seen it and lived through it. I know exactly how we got to where we are today.
“Expression” does *not* mean “speech” exclusively.
9
If you listen to the show, you will see that I address this. Splitting hairs between free expression and free speech is a fool’s errand. What matters is the limits and the clarity of those limits. If I post a rule here that says you cannot use a list of racial epithets or their equivalents, that is a clear rule that everyone can respect. You cannot use the N-word or some novel spelling of it is easy to understand.
What this does is put limits on both the speaker and the censor. The speaker knows what is not permitted and the censor knows what he can suppress. The only question is who decides the limits. The rule here is has always been community standards, which naturally excludes corporate actors from the process. Speech limits are set by the people through custom and their lawful representatives in the state.
6
Damn, Z. You posted my comment for me. Admittedly, you’re more clear and concise, but it’s the same idea.
Freedom of speech as enshrined in the Constitution was simply a writing down of the cultural values of the Anglo-Saxons who settled in America.
All law flows from the cultural values of the community and culture, of course, flows from biology. Normie Cons don’t understand this. They think that the Constitution has magical powers, the power to permanently change the cultures of other ethnic and racial groups to the American Anglo-Saxon culture and the power to defend itself against any group that wants to impose its cultural values on the United States.
Normie Cons don’t understand community standards because they – like the Left – believe that humans are malleable lumps of clay that can be transformed into anything with the right cultural indoctrination. Therefore, community standards follow the law, not the other way around, in their minds.
6
“Splitting hairs between free expression and free speech is a fool’s errand.”
I have to disagree b/c that is *precisely* the legal argument used–successfully–to destroy the entire tradition of free speech.
Thank you for your reply.
1
It worked because it is a distraction. The issue to focus on is the limits and who decides those limits. Getting into Talmudic arguments about the difference between speech and expression allowed the bad guys to answer those two questions.
3
In essence, who runs the show.
Heritage Americans forgot the purpose of the law, which is to make explicit the cultural values of the community – the ruling community. They thought that the law could change the culture of the new arrivals.
They were wrong.
3
One of the tools the left used to destroy American culture was conflating action with speech. As in free speech became free expression. So burning a flag – which is an action – was protected as free speech. Of course burning a pile of leaves was not so protected, even if the person doing so was motivated by some by protesting something, because reasons – shut up.
The inverse of that conflation is now being used by the left to attack American culture. When actions are conflated with speech, it intuitively follows that speech is conflated with actions. So hateful speech become a tort every bit as much as battery – unwanted touching. And from there it’s a short step to banning such ‘hate speech’ for the same reasons that assault and battery are crimes.
And so, Expanding the definition of speech inexorably led to restricting free speech.
7
“Expanding the definition of speech inexorably led to restricting free speech.”
And that is precisely how (((they))) did it.
And yes, it *was* (((they))).
Every step of the way–from start to finish.
2
This has been taken to the illogical and absurd extreme by the modern leftists in the form of “Your speech is VIOLENCE.”— Umm, WTF? No, me smashing your face into hamburger is violence.
When you completely muddy the relationship between speech & expression (action) then making such Orwellian claims just gets that much easier. I believe this war largely by design if we follow The Infant Phenom’s initial line of reasoning.
Our violence is free expression! (Free speech, to include burning down cities, assault, looting, and even murder)
–Your– speech is violence!
Jooish subversion & trickery at its finest and the useful idiots eat it up like seed corn.
3
So if I burn Lenny Bruce in effigy, is that free expression, or free speech?
Free Speech as a corner stone of a free society has always largely been a con job. Every society, including America at every point in history, has some topics and phrases that are verboten in all but the most intimate settings. In earlier points of time in America the range of such topics was narrower than in other places and now. But it still existed.
The push to expand “free speech” in the 1960s was an element in the then left’s design to destroy America as it existed at the time. They used the same lever to do so as they used with racial relations ie claiming to fight the hypocrisy.
Everyone, always falls short of their ideals. The point of have ideals is to work towards something, not achieve it. So yes America at the time fell short of the ideals of equality and freedom, but was still better than any comparable society. But the left turned all that on its head by claiming to fight the hypocrisy of falling short of ideals. And did so by pushing the implementation to ridiculous extremes.
So freedom of association had to go to push equality. And sensible restrictions on speech such as pornography or advocating the destruction of the system likewise had to go. Same with the common law brake on libel and slander. Neutering those turned the lefts’ “journalism” organs into powerful weapons damaging society.
Now sixty years on, the left has overwhelming won. And so, the tools they used to achieve that victory are a threat to them and will destroyed.
12
I play a lot of guitar and sing in bars, and that usually involves some complimentary drinks as well as audience-encouraged beers to pump up sales. I learned early on that while performing, I can have max two beers before I notice a degradation in my memory and crisp fingering (that’s what she said) – I save my house drinks for after and usually have the bartender comp me beers instead of actually drinking the audience-purchased beers.
5
i was a busboy in a restaurant with an active bar, that had live performers Thurs – Sun. and those guys scored like crazy. shooting fish in a barrel had a lower success rate.
1
I will exercise my free speech and eulogize the death of Clintonista Madeleine Albright.
To paraphrase Bette Davis:
One should not speak bad of the dead, only good.
Madeline Albright is dead.
Good.
18
Swiss Guard: Or, as I emailed my husband when I first read of her death, “Not sad.”
5
Best guess on what circle of hell she’ll inhabit?
1
I vote for Bolgia, the 8th circle, for fraudulent counselors. Though, on further pondering, that 9th ring is mighty appealing!
Free speech as currently understood is a chimera and I oppose both this faulty concept and its progenitor of Western ‘liberalism’. I do support limited authoritarianism, up to a point, because there is no other way to cleanse a people immersed in decades of falsehood and debauchery. And if I were ever to live in a White ethnostate, I would want those inclined to believe in sexual perversion and inversions of reality muzzled. Ideally, such creatures would have no audience and/or would be roundly mocked, but there will always be weak-minded people and those who want to break rules or push boundaries. There must be limits placed on the inherent destructiveness of man’s fallen nature.
7
it’s not a simple straight forward issue. nothing is, where people are involved.
1
Because of emotions. We aren’t Vulcans and never will be. The rational, scientific society is a unicorn.
1
As far as the ACLU and Skokie they weren’t being noble free speech advocates by supporting the nazis right to protest. It was in their best interest to let these cartoon characters march through the streets like the idiots they were.
George Carlin being oh so bold and brave fighting for the seven words. He never did a follow up on diversity epithets, wonder why.
5
In Carlin’s defense, in his later years, he expressed disdain for what he labeled the “left-wing paternalism” of political correctness. I would call it maternalism myself. Nevertheless, whatever his faults, Carlin was a consistent defender of free speech.
1
“It is why the Antifa types are anti-speech. They are illiberal and authoritarian. These are people who make various claims to communism, Marxism and even anarchism, but embrace the unfettered use of corporate power to suppress speech.”
Something I and likely many others have noticed is that internet anarchists are extremely pro-establishment power, there is a bunch of non-sense like Anarcho-Capitalism, Anarcho-Zionism or even Anarcho-NATOism (anarchist who love NATO?!). The feeling I get is that the Anarchist movement like Antifa is heavily astroturfed by the alphabet soup agencies to hurt real alternatives movements from both Left and Right to gain more adderance among the young.
5
All the self-identified anarchists that I’ve ever met have been utter morons. Morons who indulge in their fantastical ideology as the nearest cell mast relays the latest Facebook group update, the sewer treatment system goes to work on their recently flushed turd, and the global financial transaction network allows them to swipe their watch and buy their next craft brew.
1
“Any organization that does business with leftists eventually is consumed by or destroyed by leftists.”
Remember this and take heart every time you see a blackface advertisement or get cancelled for being white.
Also, the free speech movement is one of those things I’m aware of but can’t wrap my head around, so completely victorious it must’ve been.
In a perverse way, the censorship today’s essay describes is, perhaps, one logical endpoint of largely unfettered capitalism. It’s important to note that monopoly was often defended by paleo-conservatives, libertarians and other small-government advocates. Government meddling in private affairs, including the market, was to be minimized. But what about corporate meddling in government responsibilities to a free society? Quasi-monopolies of information, publishing and even many types of commerce enjoy freedoms of action forbidden to government. For authoritarians in government (mostly of the leftist flavor, but as our host notes, abridgement of rights is abridgement of rights, no matter which extreme of politics it emanates from) and super-rich individuals and their corporations, that is nearly ideal. The government claims it’s not crimping anyone’s rights, while the corporations need merely point to their terms of service.
1
Z-man said: “Any organization that does business with leftists eventually is consumed by or destroyed by leftists.”
This is true.
And now that All significant institutions are ‘converged’ (i.e. Leftist) this means that the state bureaucracy, law, tax, finance, media, police, large/ medium-sized corporations etc. are all Leftist.
Therefore; since all organizations cannot help but interact with at least some of these in order to survive and function: All Organizations Are Now Leftist… and becoming more Leftist – just to varying degrees.
There is no significant organization outside The System; and The System is Leftist.
That is what ‘totalitarianism’ means.