When someone says '"This is not about free speech" it's about free speech.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Similar to "it's not about the money" which is usually a dead giveaway that it's about the money.

When someone wants to censor, muzzle, persecute or otherwise fuck with expression they don't like it usually starts with a claim that whatever is being discussed is not free speech.

How refreshing it would be if folks would just say, "Y'know... I don't support free speech." It wouldn't be an earth-shaking pronouncement. Most people don't support free speech.

The free-speech-is-about-things-I-approve-of mode of "supporting" free speech is related to Republican opposition to torture. "Torture is illegal/evil/unacceptable except in certain extreme cases, like known terrorists." That sentence is too long because all it is really saying is "Torture is good."

As some commentator once said, we do not need the U.S. Constitution to tell us not to torture Doris Day. The entire point of banning torture is that it not be used in extreme cases!

The First Amendment only protects objectionable behavior. Think it through... behavior nobody objects too doesn't need protection. Something no one objects to never makes it into a court room. Something no one objects to is never made against the law. To say I support something nobody objects to isn't a position, it's a given.

Sometimes the "This isn't about free speech..." it is preceded by the "nobody" construction:

"Nobody supports/opposes/cares about x more than I do, but..."

When you hear this construction in any context the person is usually lying or deluded. There are always extant people who wouldn't follow the clause with "but" because they support/oppose/care about x a lot more than the person posing himself as the world's greatest non-racist, supporter of free speech, friend of wild-life, etc..

[dorkulon]

1. K&R

Good post.

[Better Today]

2. So when Rachel Maddow says consistently, things to the effect,

"it isn't about free speech, I think free speech is great, we wouldn't be who we are without all the pros and cons of political history. It's about using speech to incite, it's about lying and being held accountable for those lies."

You think she's lying?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. Not consciously, but deluded or confused... she is not making a true statement

She should admit that she does not support free speech, but rather supports a benign censorship regime run by reasonable people like her.

That is what all self-styled "sensible" censors, right and left, believe.

Lying is most assuredly free speech, for instance. She seems to think there is a distinction there that doesn't exist.

I love Rachel Maddow but she is part of the post-liberal left and her thinking about rights is confused.

[paulsby]

5. very well put

i find many people on DU (probably most, by the post count) do NOT support free speech, at least not the free speech as protected by us case law/constitution

see: brandenburg standard.

i also find few , if anybody , will express that they believe our standard in the US (no hate speech laws) is better to more restrictive codes such as those found in the UK, canada, etc. that ban hate speech

i beieve in very expansive free speech rights

[NaturalHigh]

9. Agreed.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. I'm sort of a 1st Amendment absolutist. Who comes from a Jewish family and grew up near Skokie.

I remember when the Nazis marched. I rememeber how that affected holocaust survivors.

But the principle of free speech- even offensive, outrageous, yes-you're-an-asshole free speech- is antithetical to everything the Nazis were about. Which is why letting even them have their free speech is so important.

[paulsby]

14. i agree

and of course by banning certain kind of speech, you give them a tacit legitimacy "see, we are speaking the truth the govt. doesn't want you to hear."

and few things are more arbitrary (and arbitrary law is ALWAYS bad law) than what is and isn't "hate speech."

[BzaDem]

4. What about Citizens United?

[gratuitous]

6. Thank you Prof. Fish

But nobody here is Congress. I get to object to any speech I find objectionable, and since I can't pass a law against objectionable speech (not being Congress), my expression objecting to speech I find objectionable is . . . merely speech. So, even though your point is inapposite bordering on asinine, all this post amounts to is speech. Nobody's been censored, there's no law or criminal sanction for it.

So, this post isn't about free speech.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

7. Your name is well chosen

Seldom have I read a more gratuitous and irrelevant post.

I don't recall saying in the OP that anyone here needs their comments challenged in court on the presumption that the First Amendment limits them.

Is this a hobby? Wasting time correcting people on points they didn't make with tedious statements of the obvious?

And I didn't say anyone on DU was being censored. In fact, you might even note that the OP says nothing specific about people on DU at all.

Yet you seem to have taken this OP quite personally. (But not so personally that you bothered to read it, apparently.)

In any event, your inapposite reply does not border on asinine. It is, in fact, asinine.

[NaturalHigh]

8. Great post, and I agree completely.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. If we could just capture all the energy of folks obsessed with banning pictures of adults fucking.

There's an untapped, renewable resource of pearl-clutching, anti-sex, self-appointed censorship nannies- I just know it!

[NaturalHigh]

11. I don't understand it.

We're always told "if you don't like abortion, don't have one." Wouldn't it be logical, then, to say "if you don't like porn, don't watch it"? Many of the radical anti-porn types don't seem to get that.

By the way, I don't like porn and don't watch it.

[Warren DeMontague]

12. Some people just seem to really need to tell other people what to do.

I don't get it, either.