pleasureman
Footballguy
Speech has always involved consequences, but in the past these consequences were primarily local and involved direct social relationships. Scale changed everything, and meant that any organized group anywhere could target and harass speakers it didn't like. At the same time a new media-generated consensus evolved and was managed by a group of elites who effectively controlled mainstream political speech. If you control what people hear you control what they think and therefore control what they will say.
Control of speech was in effect privatized, so that, beyond control of the range of views that you could hear without bouncing through seven proxies, there is now aggressive private control of speech through campus speech codes, targeted boycotts of advertisers, control of marketable goods, and organized campaigns to punish private citizens. Again, the noteworthy thing about much of this is that control of your speech comes from people who have nothing to do with you--you can't vote against them, move away, or return the favor. You have no actual relationship to them, so there are no social rules moderating this interaction. (This is what can be termed social anarchy.)
There are two casualities here: the development of strongly shared values within communities, and vital, open debate. Both of these were reasons for incorporating the first amendment into the United States Constitution, therefore it is perverse to argue that one can be in accordance with this amendment while actively and aggressively thwarting the ends it sought to achieve. To be for free speech means to protect the right to debate the best form of society, or else it means nothing at all. Debate of course does not involve forms of coercion such as economic sanction, loss of job, or legal harassment.
But while liberal hypocrisy about speech is glaring, and while liberals maintain control of media institutions, anti-speech arises from such a bleak and mentally tormented outlook that its control is always unstable. It is in its nature to provoke dissent by narrowing constraints at the same time as it makes people too unhappy to live within them; the most familiar relief from unhappiness is humor, which is the most difficult form of speech to suppress.
The vulnerability of mass media is its massness--it must make billions of dollars or die, so it is reliant on a large customer base (it has in fact acquired an obsession with international scope to protect itself). This vulnerability has not yet been fully exploited, although we've seen hints of how it might work.
While completely removing this cloud over democracy relies on changing fundamental characteristics of the environment, counter-attacking liberal attacks on speech is possible. More than possible, it is gaining strength, advantage, and effectiveness. Society in whatever form is an ecosystem--imbalances of power will always provoke actions that restore balance.
Control of speech was in effect privatized, so that, beyond control of the range of views that you could hear without bouncing through seven proxies, there is now aggressive private control of speech through campus speech codes, targeted boycotts of advertisers, control of marketable goods, and organized campaigns to punish private citizens. Again, the noteworthy thing about much of this is that control of your speech comes from people who have nothing to do with you--you can't vote against them, move away, or return the favor. You have no actual relationship to them, so there are no social rules moderating this interaction. (This is what can be termed social anarchy.)
There are two casualities here: the development of strongly shared values within communities, and vital, open debate. Both of these were reasons for incorporating the first amendment into the United States Constitution, therefore it is perverse to argue that one can be in accordance with this amendment while actively and aggressively thwarting the ends it sought to achieve. To be for free speech means to protect the right to debate the best form of society, or else it means nothing at all. Debate of course does not involve forms of coercion such as economic sanction, loss of job, or legal harassment.
But while liberal hypocrisy about speech is glaring, and while liberals maintain control of media institutions, anti-speech arises from such a bleak and mentally tormented outlook that its control is always unstable. It is in its nature to provoke dissent by narrowing constraints at the same time as it makes people too unhappy to live within them; the most familiar relief from unhappiness is humor, which is the most difficult form of speech to suppress.
The vulnerability of mass media is its massness--it must make billions of dollars or die, so it is reliant on a large customer base (it has in fact acquired an obsession with international scope to protect itself). This vulnerability has not yet been fully exploited, although we've seen hints of how it might work.
While completely removing this cloud over democracy relies on changing fundamental characteristics of the environment, counter-attacking liberal attacks on speech is possible. More than possible, it is gaining strength, advantage, and effectiveness. Society in whatever form is an ecosystem--imbalances of power will always provoke actions that restore balance.
