January/February LD Topic

Rebuttals My stance again: words must be free from regulation; only associated actions may be regulated. This renders Pro’s “Restrictions hamper search for truth” worthless. I agree with his Pinker quote; it has nothing to do with my case. I’m only talking about speech-acts that harm; plus, Pro presents no evidence that my own stance hampers the search for truth. Pro’s “Purpose of the University” and “Marginalized Voices" arguments are similarly neutralized. Pro didn’t expand on “epistemic arrogance” until R3, so I’ll deal with every case of that (including my “numbers” example) in R4. The way I define speech is not the way everyone defines speech. Given that actions are part of speech, there are reasonable restrictions, like the fire example Pro doesn’t contest. Pro says it’s irrelevant because setting someone on fire is “not protected by the constitution”, but this misses the point--it’s good to ban some speech-acts--which Pro never contests. I repeat: Pro conceded that banning certain speech-acts is good. If I show that the principle that justifies this supports more extensive bans, I win. This leaves two of Pro’s points: 1. To argue, we must accept that we have a “right to make exclusive use of [our] physical body”; arguing against free speech is a “performative contradiction” 2. Speech restrictions always restrict speech that should be allowed, because restrictions for “the greater good” give university officials discretion to restrict speech. Performative Contradiction is a Pastry with Seinfeld Between the River, Vote Con #1 is word salad. “A performative contradiction arises when the propositional content of a statement contradicts the presuppositions of asserting it” (1). So, Pro is saying that A. We must accept that we own ourselves to make an argument, and that B. Arguing against Pro’s stance denies this. Two reasons that’s wrong: 1. Even a Wiki article rebuts it: “. . . argumentation ethics conflates the ontological concept of control of one's self with the ethical concept of self-ownership . . . just as someone [may] control one's self, that does not give rise to why another ought to refrain from physically interfering with that control” (2). Hoppe is right that we must have control of ourselves to argue (if you’re a puppet, you’re not really doing the arguing), but the right to self-ownership is different. You can accept you’re not a puppet AND accept that you have no right to set someone on fire even if it’s speech. 2. Hoppe’s “argumentation” is not my “speech”. Hoppe calls arguing an action. I give you freedom to argue anything you like; I just keep you from hurting people. Arguing is a speech-act; it is not all speech-acts. Even if you accept Pro’s point, it only applies to cases of argumentation. Actions like yelling or calling someone a “f*ggot” are NOT this. Spillover? I don’t allow arbitrary restrictions. Recall: “Officials should forbid a speech-act that causes mental harm, if A) the harm greatly outweighs the harm we would do by preventing the speech . . . or B) there is a less harmful . . . but similarly effective way to convey the speech.” Can this wrongfully restrict speech? No. Say someone wants to protest abortion on campus. An official wants to stop them and says A doesn’t apply. B, however, means that they must show that a less harmful way to convey the speech exists, and must permit the act if they cannot. But the official is bad, and only cares about stopping pro-life speech. What stops them from keeping speakers in an empty corner of campus and burning the signs? The mental harm requirement. For the official to do this, they must show that mental harm from the proposed protest exists. If A doesn’t apply, B must be applied in a way that would address the harm shown. This can’t be done in ways that don’t address the harm, because only speech-acts that mentally harm can be prohibited. If chants harm, but signs don’t, you can ban the chants, but you can’t ban the signs. Discretion is impossible. This leaves us with “mental harm”. That’s addressed in “Snyder v. Phelps” below. Incoherence Pro values overall happiness, but attacks my case for things that have nothing to do with that, e.g. “Gates argues that if the popular consensus turns against marginalized groups, they will be stripped of the . . . right to free speech”. In Pro’s framework, this is wonderful if it serves the general interest. Pro needs to show that the things he calls harms of my position harm the general interest, and he doesn’t. He might say a general rule prohibits this, but I can respond to any rule “do x” he makes with “do x, unless y” and the problem is solved. I can rebut his implied “Don’t restrict any constitutional speech” with a better rule by his own framework: “Don’t restrict any constitutional speech, unless [insert my rule here]” Pro’s aside that restrictions weaken the “normative rule” that we need to protect free speech makes no sense in this light, because to really maximize utility, the rule must be “do x, unless a, b, c, etc.” Now, more of my case. Snyder v. Phelps Snyder’s son was killed in Iraq. His funeral was picketed by religious extremists. They held up signs like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”; “Expert witnesses testified that Snyder’s emotional anguish had resulted in severe depression and had exacerbated pre-existing health conditions” (3). SCOTUS found that the case turned on “whether that speech is of public or private concern”, and kept Westboro off the hook. The lone dissenter, Alito, sums up the problem: “The Court now holds that the First Amendment protected respondents’ right to brutalize Mr. Snyder.” His dissent is a good read: https://tinyurl.com.... Apply my rule. Major depression is narrow, leaves no room for discretion (either you have it or you don’t), and is a clear-cut harm. Harms of the same nature on college campuses, when shown, ought to be prohibited. Pro says this is the same as giving a veto power to anyone who reacts strongly to speech, but that’s ridiculous--panic attacks (and depression) are clinical disorders; they’re not conscious choices made by tyrants. Major depression is not the only mental harm that could result in an acceptable rule. But it’s a rule; I’ve worded it this way to avoid the tangential “spillover” dispute. This is content-neutral--while the harms might result partly from a combination of content and how it’s expressed, the rule only deals with empirically verifiable harm; it’s a shift from the current question of “is the content public or private?” to “does the holistic act harm?”. Deep Theory The point about Citizens United was that free speech isn’t a goal; it’s a means to an end. Just like Weintraub wrote that the “money as speech” interpretation gives us too much speech at the cost of democracy, so we balance the competing rights and see CU as bad in the balance. This “balance” is the deep theory. Dworkin writes that in interpretation, we classify something into a practice and establish a framework about the goal of it, and observe what best fits the goal (134-5). E.g. for a constitutional question, we ask, “What’s the purpose of the Constitution?”. These interpretations have correct conclusions once purpose is established (188). The resolution is a constitutional question. The Constitution is meant to protect our rights. It does this because a government “has no moral power . . . unless . . . its policies treat [citizens’] fates as equally important and respect their individual responsibilities . . .”, so, “All political rights are derivative from that fundamental one” (330). We should restrict harmful speech because not doing so denies equal concern for the victims. Choose my framework because it provides a coherent account of our system and a way to reason to the ideal, unlike Pro’s. More on this next round. I reserve the right to rebut anything I missed in Pro's R3. Sources 1. https://tinyurl.com... 2. https://tinyurl.com... 3. https://tinyurl.com... Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin