by mrandish | 2025-05-13 03:19:02+00:00
<... cont from above >

I think perhaps you default to trusting your local police, courts and judges to enforce a "hate speech" law clearly and consistently far more than I do, or at least enough to think they'll make a difference beyond merely having a law on the books as a form cultural virtue signaling. Based on my experiences, perhaps I distrust the competence of local and state police and courts too much. I sincerely doubt they have the skills to consistently interpret a hate speech law with enough nuance that it does much good (and, please, "Hitler did nothing wrong" isn't an instructive example. Where such laws fail is when things get a little more challenging like deciding if "Gaza is Genocide" or "Trans-Women Are Not Females" qualify as jailable hate speech). I fear that any such law, after the first dozen court cases and appeals, will boil down to a list of "23 Words and Phrases You Can't Say" or, in the other extreme, remain so broadly vague no one is quite sure what might get them arrested, leading to lots of local abuse and endless court cases which fund lawyer's golf club memberships for decades. While the 'broadly vague' option might actually trip up the occasional mini-tyrant who isn't quite careful enough, it'll also effectively silence many other speakers who merely fear the uncertainty and choose to self-censor (as has already been shown to occur under well-intentioned but misguided campus "speech codes" https://www.thefire.org/).

So that's what I trust less than I think you do. On the other hand, what I think I trust more than you do, is my fellow citizens. I was raised in a raucous, fractious, combative, Darwinian marketplace of ideas where everyone is assumed to be completely full of shit unless they can conclusively prove otherwise (and sometimes not even then) and no one gets any respect unless they earn it (which is also only... maybe). Do you remember the movie "Fight Club"? I grew up in a culture that's "Speech Club." The first rule of Speech Club is you don't go whining to Daddy government because someone said something wrong, naughty or mean. You stand up and hit them back with twice as much speech. You eviscerate their stupid arguments with facts and expose what a fucking moron they are in front of everyone. You don't silence them under threat of imprisonment. You beg them to please never stop being so fucking stupid because it's pure comedy gold and mama needs those sweet TikTok clicks. And that's where the trust comes in. While I disagree with my fellow citizens about many things and suspect maybe up to 10%-15% of them are idiots, I've also learned that, on average, most of the rest of them are pretty good at sorting better ideas from worse ideas and spotting nuggets of truth amidst a sea of bullshit. Sure, sometimes they get fooled or swayed by emotion for a minute but, when things get real, eventually they tend to be pretty decent people who don't want to do wrong by others or side with evil. That sense of trust in the underlying good faith and common sense of my average, aggregate fellow citizen is why I feel no need to silence bad, evil, hateful, wrong ideas. Those who strongly feel society must decide which words are too dangerous, too unsafe for "average citizens" to even hear for fear it will corrupt their weak minds, don't think much of their fellow citizens (and must think themselves well above average to assume the role of arbiter of ideas). That feels uncomfortably elitest. Acting afraid of bad ideas is also granting a lot of power to those words and ideas, instead of dismissing them as more random bullshit or just laughing at them when needed.

Finally, if certain ideas are so clearly wrong that speaking them out loud must be stopped by legal force, aren't they also clearly wrong enough for the average person to tell they are wrong? Why can you so easily determine they are wrong yet fear others can't? Logically, it seems the answer must be you know you are smarter than most other people. Or, perhaps you feel you are only average, and thus support allowing those with greater intellectual capacity than you to determine for you which ideas are "hate speech". If so, how will you feel when your intellectual superiors decide an idea is "hate speech" when you are quite sure it's merely controversial? Or, if choosing our collective arbiters of truth by IQ score is too problematic perhaps the only fair way is majority vote? I suspect this is why anyone arguing for "hate speech" laws uses "Hitler/Nazis" as an example, instead of something, you know, hard. The problem becomes clearer with something like "Trans-Women Are Not Female." That's definitely controversial but, depending on exact wording, more than a third of the population feel that's a valid topic reasonable people should be able to at least discuss BUT another (approximate) third are certain it's "hate speech" (note: personally, I have no strong opinion on this one at the moment). In other countries, the percentages swing to over 50% and, depending on which country, it can swing to a majority either way. How do we decide if it should be hate speech in tough, rapidly evolving situations? Should we make it legal or illegal country by country? Or should we ignore it because it's not a slam dunk like Hitler/Nazis? (Sorry trans-friends!) From definitions to enforcement to lack of meaningful impact to unintentional consequences to abuse of power, when I look at the idea of "hate speech" laws, I see nothing but good intentions in concept but thorny problems when put into practice across broad populations and over time.

All that said, you've articulated your points very well. I think I understand your point of view and the foundational assumptions behind it. I doubt we're going to suddenly find common ground, although not for lack of trying! We simply interpret the world through different assumptions based on different experiences and arrive at different conclusions. And further discussion probably won't be productive in changing either of our viewpoints. Fortunately, it's clear we both ultimately want to same thing, a fair and sustainable civil society with equal justice for all. Our differences are in what we choose to prioritize as the best way to achieve that goal. Hopefully, I've conveyed my viewpoint, reasoning and foundational assumptions well enough for you to at least see why I think about this the way I do (despite, obviously, not agreeing with all my assumptions). Not everyone who supports strong free speech rights is a closet Nazi sympathizer (I'm still hurt you went there... such a cheap shot! :-). For my part, I never thought your support for hate speech laws was unprincipled or less than well-intentioned. My goal wasn't to change your mind, just to plant a suspicion there might be a well-grounded position against hate speech laws which, although wrong in your view, is at least sincere, self-consistent and principled. I hope for both our sake that, as the future unfolds, hate speech laws are abused less than I fear and strong first amendment speech protections protect democracy better than you fear.