Free speech is vital to all Americans. And the test is when you despise what is being said. The limits to free speech, decided in various Supreme Court Cases are:
"incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats."
Everything else is allowed.
As a Jew living in the American diaspora (and vitally interested in a safe and secure Jewish homeland), I am more concerned with upholding free speech than I am with hateful, anti-Semitic rhetoric on college campuses.
The freedom of speech is the bedrock of our Democracy. We must allow people to say what they want to say freely - without being tossed off social media or from other news sources. That said of course there are always repercussions to things we say. The key here is that speech cannot be suppressed by the government either officially or through the threat of some type of sanctions. Speech we don't like is just that - and we always have the right and opportunity to disagree - not to repress. It has been awful for me to see Democrats who have advocated the deletion of comments from FB or X because they disagree - whether it be about Covid policy or Israel or something else. We must preserve our democracy and that means defending the rights of people we disagree with.
The idea that Jews should be afraid on campus because thousands are chanting about the destruction of Israel and encouraging intifadas gets into calls for violence. So, yes, talk about cease fires, talk about settlements, talk about a free Palestinian state. But don’t make Jews have to hide in rooms when you pound on the doors. Don’t engage in intimidation. Don’t engage in bullying. There would be a zero tolerance policy for any student who made black students feel unsafe; comparatively there’s huge tolerance for free speech of Palestinian sympathizers.
I’d be interested in hearing more about what you mean by: “The explosion of DEI was as inevitable as its ultimate failure.” What DEI efforts, measured how?
Free speech is for the first time in my lifetime, at threat of being burned at the stake. It is a great irony that it is the Democratic party that lit the fuse. Thank you for standing up for this bedrock principle when it is unpopular to do so.
I mean, the entire reason we got Trump after Romney and McCain before is that conservatives were tired of playing with one hand behind their back when it came to morality, American ideals, and basic philosophical principles like this. While the left was kind of coming to realize they were unleashing a monster in the summer of 2015, Trump's rise to political fame caused lefties to double-down on speech restriction psychosis.
It's not "hypocrisy" if, after a dozen years of being on the run, you give some payback in a situation when other side is *clearly* (to American independent observers) going beyond the pale. The left *has* to get a taste of its own medicine, *and* realize that it's been at fault for this decade-plus in this area and *truly* do some introspection, or there won't be any lasting change. When major figures on the left (including the institutional left, like NYT and WaPo) start putting out major mea culpas (in the "sorry we didn't post about all these atrocities Saddam Hussein did earlier but we wanted to keep our access" manner from CNN), *then* we can start thinking about calling a truce here.
Hey, that sure sounds like a familiar situation now doesn't it?
Andrew Sullivan isn't the only one of the four 'anti-woke' ppl you first mentioned who has stuck to his free speech principles. Bari Weiss ran a piece in the Free Press specifically saying that speech about the war shouldn't be shut down even if you disagree with it, Glenn Greenwald has talked about the criminalization of pro-Palestinian speech and protests in Europe and the calls for them to be punished here in the US almost every night on his show as well as on Twitter. Tiabbi has also called out the same. If you haven't noticed any of that then you just haven't been paying attention.
Ryan: I haven't followed Bari Weiss' career very closely (or even much at all). I know she is a strong Israel supporter but hadn't realized she has tried to cancel pro-Palestinian activists. That would be quite hypocritical of her. Can you point us to a couple of examples.
In college she tried to get one of her professors fired, later she tried to get another scholar denied tenure at Barnard, she has accused Linda Sarsour of being anti-Semitic, etc etc
Is the Linda Sarsour accusation based on this article (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/opinion/womens-march-progressives-hate.html) or was there more? Because this article seemed pretty on point to me. I don't think it's cancellation or out of bounds when people report on Steve Scalise calling himself "David Duke without the baggage." This column seems pretty similar to that to me.
As for the college professors, I think of cancellation as trying to get someone like Chomsky fired from his position at MIT because of his political activities (which are completely separate from his work as a linguist). But if you fundamentally disagree with someone's work in their actual field, opposing giving them tenure or even firing them seems entirely appropriate to me. If I found out that a Professor of Middle Eastern history at my university was arguing that Israel has a biblical right to Judea and Samaria and should expel all Palestinians from the West Bank, I would want them denied tenure and fired.
Well, if the other two are of the same calibre as Linda Sarsour, then Bari Weiss was not attempting to cancel them for opinions, but for inflammatory rhetoric.
I'm not saying she isn't a major Zionist or has changed her stance but since this war kicked off she has at least ran pieces advocating speech as well as pieces by Palestinians in The Free Press.
What a lot of people seem not to understand is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a war, and one that is now a serious threat to world peace. The question of proportionality is literally beside the point. What matters is that the war ends, not that it goes on forever in multigenerational tit-for-tat violence that some outside observers deem "proportional."
For perspective here: to end the Pacific War, the Americans burned all the cities of Japan, killed a million civilians and blockaded the entire country so that the living could get neither food nor fuel from the outside. Was anyone talking about this as a "disproportionate response" for the 3,000 or so military deaths at Pearl Harbor? The participants would see this as a total irrelevancy. The Japanese Imperial regime, like Hamas, was a genocidal death cult and a dire threat to world peace. The only relevant metric was whether this stupendous level of violence was going to end the war faster. Because the Americans ended the war this way, it became possible for Japan to become the peaceful, prosperous nation and good world citizen that it is today. And many millions of Japanese are alive today because we did that.
If the war ends now, the grandchildren of the Palestinian survivors might indeed be able to live freely between the river and the sea, beside and in peace with their Jewish neighbors. But the war has to end first. After the events of this month, do you see any other pathway for that?
This is thoughtful. It raises the question for me, however, that while free speech should be protected, I am comfortable with there being certain consequences for speech that is particularly irresponsible or hateful.
I am not uncomfortable, for example, with a potential employer holding a law student responsible for their comments and choosing not to hire them. That approach seems consistent with free speech - the speech is protected, but for practical and other reasons, I don’t have to hire the person at my firm or company.
I am concerned with the “bus doxxing” behavior too, but I don’t think you’re saying it shouldn’t be permitted, though it creates safety issues for those individuals.
In sum, free speech can be protected, but speakers cannot be expected to be free from consequences associated with their speech.
I care. But I do think there is also a spectrum here. Here's how I come out on the various controversies and questions:
- I think any restrictions on the ability to protest against Israel or for Palestinians (or even Hamas) are wrong. Clear first amendment freedoms.
- Don't think anyone's immigration status should be affected by their political beliefs either.
- Think the firing over the Onion article was utterly ridiculous and the ArtForum one was wrong as well.
- While had I been the decision maker at the 92nd Street Y, I would not have postponed the lecture. Having said that, I don't have a significant problem with the decision either. I think it's legitimate for a Jewish organization to decide that now is the not the time it wants to honor and/or highlight folks who are critical of Israel. Similarly, I think it would legit for a Muslim org to make a similar decision about someone calling for support of Israel's actions in Gaza.
- Thought the mobile billboard and Ackerman's call for a list of names are wrong. Having said that, while I generally believe that people's politics should not affect their jobs (unless politics are an important component of that job), I do think there are lines. I would have concerns about my company hiring or keeping on someone who signed a petition defending the KKK or Timothy McVeigh, and I think defending Hamas is on that same moral plane. So while I don't think we should be seeking out the names of college students in the orgs that signed some of those statements (many of whom likely had no idea about the statements), if someone intentionally supports organizations like Hamas, the KKK, Hezbollah, or the Proud Boys, I think that's probably fair ground to be considered in employment decisions.
If we end up in a big shooting war with Iran and possibly China in the next weeks or months, all these parsed opinions about free speech are going to be out the window. Speech in favor of our enemies and against our allies will then be, not free speech, but sedition and obstruction of the war effort. Social media posts could become presumptive tickets to preventive detention. You may say we don't do those things in America, but look it up - we already have. Those laws are still on the books.
Contra Noah Smith (who I generally like and agree with), I don't think a shooting war with China is likely soon.
As for hostilities with Iran, that could certainly happen, but the U.S. has obviously been through wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria over the last 20 years and still allowed plenty of anti-war protesters to say mean things about us and our allies with few if any arrests for sedition or obstruction. Thankfully hope and expect that record to continue, even if war with Iran broke out.
I disagree with your analogy. Those wars did not involve mobilization (i.e. a draft). Iran has almost 90 million people, twice as many as Iraq, and we would have to fight there effectively without allies. The need for a draft is distinctly possible. The Espionage Act has severe criminal penalties for encouragement of disloyalty or obstruction of enlistment. In time of war, there will be no tolerance for the kind of protests we've been seeing. It's not a matter of whether the speech is mean, it's a matter of what action it encourages, in the opinion of very unsympathetic judges. A gloomy reflection, I admit.
"War" with Iran is certainly not going to require a draft. It's not going to be a land war (there is exactly zero chance we invade Iran), and it will be fought by the Air Force, Navy, and whoever is responsible for drones.
Meanwhile, there obviously was a draft during Vietnam, and there were tons of protests then as well.
The Proud Boys are the odd one out in your list above. They are not Nazis, KKK , racists or extremists. They were formed with the sole purpose of defending Conservatives from AntiFa attacks.
I admit that I'm no expert on the Proud Boys. Was just looking for some hate group on the right that people might have heard of. That said, if they were about defending Conservatives from Antifa, why were they so involved with January 6th?
Sorry Ross. Your empathy is laudable but your reasoning is so deeply flawed as to be laughable. Someone once said "kindness to the cruel inevitably ends in cruelty to the kind."
Nobody disputes that innocent Palestinians died and will die. That's one of Hamas's goals; to lure the weak minded and illogical thinkers to their side.
The difference in this war is simple. One side targets civilians. One side doesn't. One side gleefully boasts of its inhumanity and genocidal goals. The other is reluctantly engaged in a war is doesn't want, but has no option except to pursue.
If you don't understand the difference, you might belong to the group noted above.
The eradication of Hamas is a gift to Israelis, Palestinians and the world.
Free speech actually does encompass hate speech. That's what free speech is about. Now a hate CRIME - is a wholly different story. But speech, all kinds, is protected by the First Amendment. Of course our courts have weighed in on inciting riots - etc through actions...but on balance, even if you disagree or consider something hate speech, it is protected by the First Amendment. Think of it this way - better that it's out in the open and you can identify it - than if it was repressed and underground where it would eventually express itself one way or the other.
I just had this conversation with someone. Would you please weigh in? Is it hate speech to say that one does not like gays because… would that not be considered free speech?
vs: I think we should commit violence against or kill a certain group?
I guess it's in the mind of the beholder, but to me hate speech as simply speech that is a direct incitement to violent hatred of someone or some group. As with incitement to riot, I see it as a form of (proscribed) action and so not protected. This seems simple to me, and rules out 95% of what people shout about when they use the term.
Thank you for your response. The person I had the conversation with felt that by saying I dislike-pick any group-that was hate speech and the same as “ inciting violence against a group. Was the first ‘political’ discussion I’ve had with this person in a decade. She did not stalk off in anger. Baby steps-but sometimes there is no meeting of the minds.
Free speech is vital to all Americans. And the test is when you despise what is being said. The limits to free speech, decided in various Supreme Court Cases are:
"incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats."
Everything else is allowed.
As a Jew living in the American diaspora (and vitally interested in a safe and secure Jewish homeland), I am more concerned with upholding free speech than I am with hateful, anti-Semitic rhetoric on college campuses.
Pretty sure I said this here before: most people do not have principles; rather, they have in-group loyalties.
A government that bases rights on race is apartheid. One that bases it on religion is a theocracy. Both are, in all cases, bad.
The freedom of speech is the bedrock of our Democracy. We must allow people to say what they want to say freely - without being tossed off social media or from other news sources. That said of course there are always repercussions to things we say. The key here is that speech cannot be suppressed by the government either officially or through the threat of some type of sanctions. Speech we don't like is just that - and we always have the right and opportunity to disagree - not to repress. It has been awful for me to see Democrats who have advocated the deletion of comments from FB or X because they disagree - whether it be about Covid policy or Israel or something else. We must preserve our democracy and that means defending the rights of people we disagree with.
The idea that Jews should be afraid on campus because thousands are chanting about the destruction of Israel and encouraging intifadas gets into calls for violence. So, yes, talk about cease fires, talk about settlements, talk about a free Palestinian state. But don’t make Jews have to hide in rooms when you pound on the doors. Don’t engage in intimidation. Don’t engage in bullying. There would be a zero tolerance policy for any student who made black students feel unsafe; comparatively there’s huge tolerance for free speech of Palestinian sympathizers.
I’d be interested in hearing more about what you mean by: “The explosion of DEI was as inevitable as its ultimate failure.” What DEI efforts, measured how?
Free speech is for the first time in my lifetime, at threat of being burned at the stake. It is a great irony that it is the Democratic party that lit the fuse. Thank you for standing up for this bedrock principle when it is unpopular to do so.
I mean, the entire reason we got Trump after Romney and McCain before is that conservatives were tired of playing with one hand behind their back when it came to morality, American ideals, and basic philosophical principles like this. While the left was kind of coming to realize they were unleashing a monster in the summer of 2015, Trump's rise to political fame caused lefties to double-down on speech restriction psychosis.
It's not "hypocrisy" if, after a dozen years of being on the run, you give some payback in a situation when other side is *clearly* (to American independent observers) going beyond the pale. The left *has* to get a taste of its own medicine, *and* realize that it's been at fault for this decade-plus in this area and *truly* do some introspection, or there won't be any lasting change. When major figures on the left (including the institutional left, like NYT and WaPo) start putting out major mea culpas (in the "sorry we didn't post about all these atrocities Saddam Hussein did earlier but we wanted to keep our access" manner from CNN), *then* we can start thinking about calling a truce here.
Hey, that sure sounds like a familiar situation now doesn't it?
Andrew Sullivan isn't the only one of the four 'anti-woke' ppl you first mentioned who has stuck to his free speech principles. Bari Weiss ran a piece in the Free Press specifically saying that speech about the war shouldn't be shut down even if you disagree with it, Glenn Greenwald has talked about the criminalization of pro-Palestinian speech and protests in Europe and the calls for them to be punished here in the US almost every night on his show as well as on Twitter. Tiabbi has also called out the same. If you haven't noticed any of that then you just haven't been paying attention.
Bari Weiss has spent her entire career trying to cancel pro-Palestinian activists lol
Ryan: I haven't followed Bari Weiss' career very closely (or even much at all). I know she is a strong Israel supporter but hadn't realized she has tried to cancel pro-Palestinian activists. That would be quite hypocritical of her. Can you point us to a couple of examples.
In college she tried to get one of her professors fired, later she tried to get another scholar denied tenure at Barnard, she has accused Linda Sarsour of being anti-Semitic, etc etc
Thanks.
Is the Linda Sarsour accusation based on this article (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/opinion/womens-march-progressives-hate.html) or was there more? Because this article seemed pretty on point to me. I don't think it's cancellation or out of bounds when people report on Steve Scalise calling himself "David Duke without the baggage." This column seems pretty similar to that to me.
As for the college professors, I think of cancellation as trying to get someone like Chomsky fired from his position at MIT because of his political activities (which are completely separate from his work as a linguist). But if you fundamentally disagree with someone's work in their actual field, opposing giving them tenure or even firing them seems entirely appropriate to me. If I found out that a Professor of Middle Eastern history at my university was arguing that Israel has a biblical right to Judea and Samaria and should expel all Palestinians from the West Bank, I would want them denied tenure and fired.
Well, if the other two are of the same calibre as Linda Sarsour, then Bari Weiss was not attempting to cancel them for opinions, but for inflammatory rhetoric.
I’ll give you a moment to think about how little sense that made
There is a difference between holding an opinion and being a raving demagogue like Windbag Farfour.
I'm not saying she isn't a major Zionist or has changed her stance but since this war kicked off she has at least ran pieces advocating speech as well as pieces by Palestinians in The Free Press.
To clarify: the pieces weren't written by her, but were published in her outlet.
What a lot of people seem not to understand is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a war, and one that is now a serious threat to world peace. The question of proportionality is literally beside the point. What matters is that the war ends, not that it goes on forever in multigenerational tit-for-tat violence that some outside observers deem "proportional."
For perspective here: to end the Pacific War, the Americans burned all the cities of Japan, killed a million civilians and blockaded the entire country so that the living could get neither food nor fuel from the outside. Was anyone talking about this as a "disproportionate response" for the 3,000 or so military deaths at Pearl Harbor? The participants would see this as a total irrelevancy. The Japanese Imperial regime, like Hamas, was a genocidal death cult and a dire threat to world peace. The only relevant metric was whether this stupendous level of violence was going to end the war faster. Because the Americans ended the war this way, it became possible for Japan to become the peaceful, prosperous nation and good world citizen that it is today. And many millions of Japanese are alive today because we did that.
If the war ends now, the grandchildren of the Palestinian survivors might indeed be able to live freely between the river and the sea, beside and in peace with their Jewish neighbors. But the war has to end first. After the events of this month, do you see any other pathway for that?
This is thoughtful. It raises the question for me, however, that while free speech should be protected, I am comfortable with there being certain consequences for speech that is particularly irresponsible or hateful.
I am not uncomfortable, for example, with a potential employer holding a law student responsible for their comments and choosing not to hire them. That approach seems consistent with free speech - the speech is protected, but for practical and other reasons, I don’t have to hire the person at my firm or company.
I am concerned with the “bus doxxing” behavior too, but I don’t think you’re saying it shouldn’t be permitted, though it creates safety issues for those individuals.
In sum, free speech can be protected, but speakers cannot be expected to be free from consequences associated with their speech.
I care. But I do think there is also a spectrum here. Here's how I come out on the various controversies and questions:
- I think any restrictions on the ability to protest against Israel or for Palestinians (or even Hamas) are wrong. Clear first amendment freedoms.
- Don't think anyone's immigration status should be affected by their political beliefs either.
- Think the firing over the Onion article was utterly ridiculous and the ArtForum one was wrong as well.
- While had I been the decision maker at the 92nd Street Y, I would not have postponed the lecture. Having said that, I don't have a significant problem with the decision either. I think it's legitimate for a Jewish organization to decide that now is the not the time it wants to honor and/or highlight folks who are critical of Israel. Similarly, I think it would legit for a Muslim org to make a similar decision about someone calling for support of Israel's actions in Gaza.
- Thought the mobile billboard and Ackerman's call for a list of names are wrong. Having said that, while I generally believe that people's politics should not affect their jobs (unless politics are an important component of that job), I do think there are lines. I would have concerns about my company hiring or keeping on someone who signed a petition defending the KKK or Timothy McVeigh, and I think defending Hamas is on that same moral plane. So while I don't think we should be seeking out the names of college students in the orgs that signed some of those statements (many of whom likely had no idea about the statements), if someone intentionally supports organizations like Hamas, the KKK, Hezbollah, or the Proud Boys, I think that's probably fair ground to be considered in employment decisions.
If we end up in a big shooting war with Iran and possibly China in the next weeks or months, all these parsed opinions about free speech are going to be out the window. Speech in favor of our enemies and against our allies will then be, not free speech, but sedition and obstruction of the war effort. Social media posts could become presumptive tickets to preventive detention. You may say we don't do those things in America, but look it up - we already have. Those laws are still on the books.
Contra Noah Smith (who I generally like and agree with), I don't think a shooting war with China is likely soon.
As for hostilities with Iran, that could certainly happen, but the U.S. has obviously been through wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria over the last 20 years and still allowed plenty of anti-war protesters to say mean things about us and our allies with few if any arrests for sedition or obstruction. Thankfully hope and expect that record to continue, even if war with Iran broke out.
I disagree with your analogy. Those wars did not involve mobilization (i.e. a draft). Iran has almost 90 million people, twice as many as Iraq, and we would have to fight there effectively without allies. The need for a draft is distinctly possible. The Espionage Act has severe criminal penalties for encouragement of disloyalty or obstruction of enlistment. In time of war, there will be no tolerance for the kind of protests we've been seeing. It's not a matter of whether the speech is mean, it's a matter of what action it encourages, in the opinion of very unsympathetic judges. A gloomy reflection, I admit.
"War" with Iran is certainly not going to require a draft. It's not going to be a land war (there is exactly zero chance we invade Iran), and it will be fought by the Air Force, Navy, and whoever is responsible for drones.
Meanwhile, there obviously was a draft during Vietnam, and there were tons of protests then as well.
The Proud Boys are the odd one out in your list above. They are not Nazis, KKK , racists or extremists. They were formed with the sole purpose of defending Conservatives from AntiFa attacks.
I admit that I'm no expert on the Proud Boys. Was just looking for some hate group on the right that people might have heard of. That said, if they were about defending Conservatives from Antifa, why were they so involved with January 6th?
Disproportionate Response?
Sorry Ross. Your empathy is laudable but your reasoning is so deeply flawed as to be laughable. Someone once said "kindness to the cruel inevitably ends in cruelty to the kind."
Nobody disputes that innocent Palestinians died and will die. That's one of Hamas's goals; to lure the weak minded and illogical thinkers to their side.
The difference in this war is simple. One side targets civilians. One side doesn't. One side gleefully boasts of its inhumanity and genocidal goals. The other is reluctantly engaged in a war is doesn't want, but has no option except to pursue.
If you don't understand the difference, you might belong to the group noted above.
The eradication of Hamas is a gift to Israelis, Palestinians and the world.
Hamas actually wants to start WW III. They are seriously evil and insane, and a threat to the whole world.
I’m sorry you do not know the difference between free speech and hate speech.
Free speech actually does encompass hate speech. That's what free speech is about. Now a hate CRIME - is a wholly different story. But speech, all kinds, is protected by the First Amendment. Of course our courts have weighed in on inciting riots - etc through actions...but on balance, even if you disagree or consider something hate speech, it is protected by the First Amendment. Think of it this way - better that it's out in the open and you can identify it - than if it was repressed and underground where it would eventually express itself one way or the other.
I just had this conversation with someone. Would you please weigh in? Is it hate speech to say that one does not like gays because… would that not be considered free speech?
vs: I think we should commit violence against or kill a certain group?
I guess it's in the mind of the beholder, but to me hate speech as simply speech that is a direct incitement to violent hatred of someone or some group. As with incitement to riot, I see it as a form of (proscribed) action and so not protected. This seems simple to me, and rules out 95% of what people shout about when they use the term.
Thank you for your response. The person I had the conversation with felt that by saying I dislike-pick any group-that was hate speech and the same as “ inciting violence against a group. Was the first ‘political’ discussion I’ve had with this person in a decade. She did not stalk off in anger. Baby steps-but sometimes there is no meeting of the minds.
This is a principled article. Good stuff RB.
good piece.
Thanks for this....