Sometimes actions have consequences, and inactions have consequences, and imaginary phantasms have consequences, and when those consequences come in the form of people exercising their free speech, freedom of association, and control over their consumer dollars, the consequences may be bad, or good, but one way or another it isn't anti-free speech because it's just free speech
If you don't like it, well, I guess you can react to bad speech with more speech, and many people react to that bad speech with more bad speech in the form of incoherent attempts to build "free speech norms" that... shockingly... end up being all about trying to use social and economic pressure get people to change their speech!
Because that's how you enforce norms!
Which is all fine if very silly until you decide that protest and boycotts are dire threats to free speech, but lawless detention and threats of prosecution leveled at dissenters by the federal government aren't.
Well yes, that norm of "free speech" doesn't exist to protect the Right from the consequences of saying awful things all the time, because it is too incoherent to exist at all. Instead we have endless epicycles to try to explain why this criticism or boycott or cancellation is opposed to "free speech", while that criticism or boycott or cancellation is an exercise of "free speech"
It's dumb. We can, and should, decline to engage in it
(And yes, it mirrors similar and similarly fruitless debates on the Left about, e.g., "punching down".)
Private speech that serves to punish people by causing them economic and reputational harm is free speech
Saying that arguing in favor of that is the same as arguing that the government should bring charges against people for their speech is bizarrely backwards, like accusing me of violating the Fourth Amendment if I walk up to the sergeant's desk at the local police station without a warrant
“Ha! Where are the people who were arguing against me when I was arguing for limits on free speech *NOW*?” is not as devastating a question as you think.
It actually is because I was, in fact, arguing that criticism, protest, disassociation, and "cancellation" all fell under the umbrella of free speech, and objecting to them on the basis of free speech was incoherent
The Right, all along, has rejected this formulation, especially when it comes to protest, not only defending lethal violence against peaceful protesters, but endorsing it with, e.g., the pardon of Daniel Perry
But the modern face of "free speech absolutism" is all about focusing on the "chilling effects" of other people's speech, while winking at, or, more frequently, outright endorsing, state coercion being used against people whose speech they disagree with
Yeah the real problem, of course, is not that you can find idiots who believe this, or will say it out loud on Newsmax, but that those idiots who will say it out loud on Newsmax hold senior national security positions in the government
In more Free Speech Absolutism news, Sebastian Gorka suggests that supporting due process for people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who have been lawlessly trafficked to El Salvador by the Administration, may be "aiding and abetting terrorism", which is, of course, a crime.
Lest you think I'm just nutpicking Gorka, who is indeed a fringe weirdo idiot, the Administration decided to make this fringe weirdo idiot their senior director of counterterrorism.
To the extent that it holds, it would, I think, matter that the scrubs of the scrubs consistently cheat (by any measure) and that the institutions that should be acting as mediators and referees have consistently failed to hold up their end of the bargain, and instead deflect blame on the team that loses 1 time in 3 to the scrubs, on account of the most egregious cheating from the scrubs didn't affect the outcome of the game in question
For some reason the link I included to a piece he wrote in November endorsing Trump didn't come through
I am not sure any of the comments you left on the piece constituted as "pushback" at all, though viewing it charitably, saying that the Democrats would refuse to learn anything from losing to Trump is perhaps pushback against Koz' closing suggestion that a vote for Trump would be a vote for a restored public trust and a shared sense of American purpose
OTOH you spend a lot of time pressure-testing Chip et al. for pushing back
I am. And every time I do, the response from tons of people, including many commenters here--for 3 out of 3 times--has been to deflect attention from them and onto the supposedly sympathetic views of an imagined member of the public who votes for them, when such a supposedly sympathetic view could only be held by someone who (willfully or through more innocent forms of inattentiveness) could only be held in ignorance
But you never, ever, ever display any interest in stress-testing their ideas
It's one "stress test" for the libs after another, even when the idea in question is something like, "It is bad for fascists to gun down BLM protesters in the street," and there is, of course, always an excuse, whether it's real, a half-truth built on some clips of people with blue hair that Chaya Raichik found on TikTok, or invented out of whole cloth by people who had a meltdown after hearing people speaking another language at the DMV
What is the actual point of having a venue of discussion where people sit around pretending to have reprehensible views in order to ensure that we are scrupulously fair to people who have reprehensible views while also being consistently and contemptuously dismissive of people who don't have reprehensible views?
Yes, Trump got elected because they believed, with some justification, that he was onboard with murdering the American citizens they want to see murdered, or at least with sending them to gulags, too, like he's promised he'll do
sending him there and then asking him back might be (extremely charitably) described as an error, but they have not even asked for him back after admitting they sent him to a gulag by mistake?
why are you not only defending the trump administration for sending people to gulags, but actually repeating its lies?
When an American Citizen gets murdered by an undocumented visitor, we agree that that’s *BAD*, but law enforcement can get involved and we can punish the person who, through no fault of their own, were involved in the kinetic event that resulted in the loss of life of a person.
lol they don't care about american citizens being murdered
All Biden had to do to defuse this issue was leave Trump’s immigration EOs in place and use his bully pulpit to tell would be illegal entrants not to take their chances, and that the expectations of the Mexican government was a continued show of force, including remain in Mexico.
All Biden had to do was make zero mistakes and he probably would have been elected except maybe not because of COVID backlash
And because he didn't make zero mistakes, it's his fault Trump was reelected, and certainly not the Republican Party that nominated him (twice!), the Republicans in Congress who voted to acquit him for committing high crimes and misdemeanors (twice!) or the Supreme Court who ruled that his crimes don't actually count as crimes (only once, small mercies)
Anyway, one of the problems with the appeal to Law and Order is the whole perceived “but we’re not orderly” problem.
Yup. For instance, somebody might argue the State of Texas should officially endorse neo-Naz!s murdering law-abiding BLM protesters in the street because a DA decided not to prosecute shoplifters
There were always be a lack of "Law and Order" somewhere to justify Republican fascism, and if there isn't, Republicans will simply invent some ("They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats.")
Cruelty and being vindictive will not play well, especially when it is so trivially easy to trot out the most sympathetic cases on the wrong side of it (and Garcia isn’t even one of those).
So aren't the Republicans who engaged in that vindictiveness and cruelty during Trump 1.0, and thus created a public opinion backlash that Dems (incorrectly) interpreted as a mandate for lax immigration enforcement partly responsible for the backlash and the Democratic misread of same?
Because early signals are strong that Trump 2.0's deportation policies are courting a similar backlash
One out of two major parties is not going to be able to consistently persevere liberal democracy if the other one is ideologically committed to fascism, and willing to use every procedural mechanism available to bring it about, because purely electoral mechanisms have long been understood by, like, literally everyone to be insufficient on their own to prevent tyranny
The Democatic Party is, of course, unequal to this challenge because it is an institution that was built for well over a century to operate in an environment where black bagging people on the street for Constitutionally protected speech was regarded as a massive defection against lawful governance, and the Democrats winning a Presidential election wasn't
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
Pre-meditated murder is not, generally speaking, the kind of conduct one should engage in if one does not want to get the death penalty
"
Sometimes actions have consequences, and inactions have consequences, and imaginary phantasms have consequences, and when those consequences come in the form of people exercising their free speech, freedom of association, and control over their consumer dollars, the consequences may be bad, or good, but one way or another it isn't anti-free speech because it's just free speech
If you don't like it, well, I guess you can react to bad speech with more speech, and many people react to that bad speech with more bad speech in the form of incoherent attempts to build "free speech norms" that... shockingly... end up being all about trying to use social and economic pressure get people to change their speech!
Because that's how you enforce norms!
Which is all fine if very silly until you decide that protest and boycotts are dire threats to free speech, but lawless detention and threats of prosecution leveled at dissenters by the federal government aren't.
"
As a bellwether, I think it's a bit less shocking than David Brooks calling for a general strike in The New York Times.
He suggests, at the end, that we have "nothing to lose but our chains".
David Brooks.
"
I'm not the one who argues that free speech has to have limits here, dude
"
I never for a second believed that my question would be anything but rhetorical when the day came
"
Well yes, that norm of "free speech" doesn't exist to protect the Right from the consequences of saying awful things all the time, because it is too incoherent to exist at all. Instead we have endless epicycles to try to explain why this criticism or boycott or cancellation is opposed to "free speech", while that criticism or boycott or cancellation is an exercise of "free speech"
It's dumb. We can, and should, decline to engage in it
(And yes, it mirrors similar and similarly fruitless debates on the Left about, e.g., "punching down".)
"
Private speech that serves to punish people by causing them economic and reputational harm is free speech
Saying that arguing in favor of that is the same as arguing that the government should bring charges against people for their speech is bizarrely backwards, like accusing me of violating the Fourth Amendment if I walk up to the sergeant's desk at the local police station without a warrant
"
“Ha! Where are the people who were arguing against me when I was arguing for limits on free speech *NOW*?” is not as devastating a question as you think.
It actually is because I was, in fact, arguing that criticism, protest, disassociation, and "cancellation" all fell under the umbrella of free speech, and objecting to them on the basis of free speech was incoherent
The Right, all along, has rejected this formulation, especially when it comes to protest, not only defending lethal violence against peaceful protesters, but endorsing it with, e.g., the pardon of Daniel Perry
But the modern face of "free speech absolutism" is all about focusing on the "chilling effects" of other people's speech, while winking at, or, more frequently, outright endorsing, state coercion being used against people whose speech they disagree with
"
Yeah the real problem, of course, is not that you can find idiots who believe this, or will say it out loud on Newsmax, but that those idiots who will say it out loud on Newsmax hold senior national security positions in the government
"
In more Free Speech Absolutism news, Sebastian Gorka suggests that supporting due process for people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who have been lawlessly trafficked to El Salvador by the Administration, may be "aiding and abetting terrorism", which is, of course, a crime.
Lest you think I'm just nutpicking Gorka, who is indeed a fringe weirdo idiot, the Administration decided to make this fringe weirdo idiot their senior director of counterterrorism.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-trump-official-claims-defending-due-process-is-aiding-terrorists/
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
I think the sports metaphor is a very bad one
To the extent that it holds, it would, I think, matter that the scrubs of the scrubs consistently cheat (by any measure) and that the institutions that should be acting as mediators and referees have consistently failed to hold up their end of the bargain, and instead deflect blame on the team that loses 1 time in 3 to the scrubs, on account of the most egregious cheating from the scrubs didn't affect the outcome of the game in question
"
For some reason the link I included to a piece he wrote in November endorsing Trump didn't come through
I am not sure any of the comments you left on the piece constituted as "pushback" at all, though viewing it charitably, saying that the Democrats would refuse to learn anything from losing to Trump is perhaps pushback against Koz' closing suggestion that a vote for Trump would be a vote for a restored public trust and a shared sense of American purpose
OTOH you spend a lot of time pressure-testing Chip et al. for pushing back
"
Koz Freamon would have been a nice start
"
And look at these people we’re up against.
I am. And every time I do, the response from tons of people, including many commenters here--for 3 out of 3 times--has been to deflect attention from them and onto the supposedly sympathetic views of an imagined member of the public who votes for them, when such a supposedly sympathetic view could only be held by someone who (willfully or through more innocent forms of inattentiveness) could only be held in ignorance
"
But you never, ever, ever display any interest in stress-testing their ideas
It's one "stress test" for the libs after another, even when the idea in question is something like, "It is bad for fascists to gun down BLM protesters in the street," and there is, of course, always an excuse, whether it's real, a half-truth built on some clips of people with blue hair that Chaya Raichik found on TikTok, or invented out of whole cloth by people who had a meltdown after hearing people speaking another language at the DMV
"
Why should I care about their point of view?
Why are you deferring to their belief that I'm lying, and dismissing my belief that they're lying?
"
What is the actual point of having a venue of discussion where people sit around pretending to have reprehensible views in order to ensure that we are scrupulously fair to people who have reprehensible views while also being consistently and contemptuously dismissive of people who don't have reprehensible views?
"
you literally are
because that's what you do when you present things from the (alleged) perspective of lying fascist scum
"
Yes, Trump got elected because they believed, with some justification, that he was onboard with murdering the American citizens they want to see murdered, or at least with sending them to gulags, too, like he's promised he'll do
"
this isn't an "error rate"
sending him there and then asking him back might be (extremely charitably) described as an error, but they have not even asked for him back after admitting they sent him to a gulag by mistake?
why are you not only defending the trump administration for sending people to gulags, but actually repeating its lies?
"
When an American Citizen gets murdered by an undocumented visitor, we agree that that’s *BAD*, but law enforcement can get involved and we can punish the person who, through no fault of their own, were involved in the kinetic event that resulted in the loss of life of a person.
lol they don't care about american citizens being murdered
who do you think you're fooling with this
"
All Biden had to do to defuse this issue was leave Trump’s immigration EOs in place and use his bully pulpit to tell would be illegal entrants not to take their chances, and that the expectations of the Mexican government was a continued show of force, including remain in Mexico.
All Biden had to do was make zero mistakes and he probably would have been elected except maybe not because of COVID backlash
And because he didn't make zero mistakes, it's his fault Trump was reelected, and certainly not the Republican Party that nominated him (twice!), the Republicans in Congress who voted to acquit him for committing high crimes and misdemeanors (twice!) or the Supreme Court who ruled that his crimes don't actually count as crimes (only once, small mercies)
"
Anyway, one of the problems with the appeal to Law and Order is the whole perceived “but we’re not orderly” problem.
Yup. For instance, somebody might argue the State of Texas should officially endorse neo-Naz!s murdering law-abiding BLM protesters in the street because a DA decided not to prosecute shoplifters
There were always be a lack of "Law and Order" somewhere to justify Republican fascism, and if there isn't, Republicans will simply invent some ("They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats.")
"
Cruelty and being vindictive will not play well, especially when it is so trivially easy to trot out the most sympathetic cases on the wrong side of it (and Garcia isn’t even one of those).
So aren't the Republicans who engaged in that vindictiveness and cruelty during Trump 1.0, and thus created a public opinion backlash that Dems (incorrectly) interpreted as a mandate for lax immigration enforcement partly responsible for the backlash and the Democratic misread of same?
Because early signals are strong that Trump 2.0's deportation policies are courting a similar backlash
"
One out of two major parties is not going to be able to consistently persevere liberal democracy if the other one is ideologically committed to fascism, and willing to use every procedural mechanism available to bring it about, because purely electoral mechanisms have long been understood by, like, literally everyone to be insufficient on their own to prevent tyranny
The Democatic Party is, of course, unequal to this challenge because it is an institution that was built for well over a century to operate in an environment where black bagging people on the street for Constitutionally protected speech was regarded as a massive defection against lawful governance, and the Democrats winning a Presidential election wasn't
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.