That Harpers Open Letter

[_EAllusion]

The argument isn't with the value an individual assigns to debating a subject. It is over the fundamental value of protecting the right to expression of views with which one might not agree.

Ya, well, that's not a right that is in any danger here so what are you whining about? People have the right to express wrong opinions. People already have the right to express anything they want aside from hate speech. People with functioning brains choosing to dismiss them out of hand does not equate to people being stripped of their rights.

There's "free speech" in the sense of freedom from government using force against you for expressing opinions and there's "free speech" in the sense of a displaying robust tolerance for disagreeable views. People like to conflate these, and the latter feeds a culture that bolsters the former.

It is bad when a group of leftists try to napalm someone's life for saying anything that crosses the bounds of what they consider offensive. it's important to inculcate a culture where people feel free to say things that might be wrong as sometimes iconoclastic opinions are right and need a chance to win out. It's also important to give people a chance to change and there needs to be a statute of limitations on this.

That's the "bailey" in this argument. The "motte" is subsequently arguing that any forms of social disapproval and distancing for any type of offensive speech are bad.

"Cancel culture" is the latest iteration of feverish complaints about PC liberals that have been happening since I was a child. And like ever other iteration of this occasional panic, it can refer to overzealous leftists enforcing group-think on people that is too intolerant of disagreement, but more often is just a pejorative of bad faith actors who are actually concerned about feeling shamed or ostracized for expressing their personal prejudices while hypocritically having their own taboos.

I think you combat this by being clear as possible about what's good about free speech and why it needs defending. That's why I think joining hand-in-hand with people who don't have that message to share is potentially bad strategy.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

How did we get the KKK out of this letter, EA? For example, I just wiki'd Elliot Ackerman's name and this came up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Ackerman

The man has an impressive literary and career resume. Also here:

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/event ... ront-lines

"Elliot Ack­er­man served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the recip­i­ent of the Sil­ver Star, the Bronze Star for Val­or, and the Pur­ple Heart. A for­mer White House Fel­low, his essays and fic­tion have appeared in The New York­er, The Atlantic, The New Repub­lic, and Eco­tone, among oth­ers. Green on Blue is his debut nov­el. He cur­rent­ly lives in Istan­bul and writes on the Syr­i­an Civ­il War."

By introducing the KKK to this open letter, when it's signed by someone like Ackerman, I have to wonder what's going on with your line of reasoning?

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

I have explained my line of reasoning multiple times. Pointing out whichever example of a good person whose primary interest is in defending free speech you'd like is just ignoring my point that their message is confused when its presented with Bari Weiss and company whose primary interest is not that.

Bringing up the KKK is, again, attempting to point out that you can advocate for the free speech rights of a group without joining that group in a letter that can be interpreted to mean endorsing their bad faith arguments in favor of their free speech rights. The KKK doesn't actually believe in free speech. In fact, they're quite hostile to it. When they talk about free speech, they are using liberal tolerance as a weapon against it. The modern online term for this behavior is "concern trolling." You don't need to join the concern trolls in a unified message to have something good to say about free speech. If you do, you risk convincing people that your arguments are in kind.

When the ACLU defends the KKK, it doesn't march in the streets with them. This distinction is important as a matter of public persuasion.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

The next one down the list is Saladin Ambar, explains why he signed the letter:

https://Twitter.com/BBCScotNine/status/ ... 5157688320

It's worth a listen.

- Doc

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Here's Martin Amis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Amis

If you read through his wiki entry you see he holds deep convictions that sometimes run smoothly with, say, current Leftist thought, and then he veers hard Right when it comes to Islamists and their terrifying ease with death to impose their way of life on others. How does one like him find a place in a world that wants to make him a pariah for his unpopular views on Islamists simply because he holds them in low regard? From his wiki entry, he's clearly a thoughtful and intelligent contributor to cultural and political thought, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn he'd be a persona non-grata for many publishers in 2020. As an aside from the wiki entry, "...at the age of 27 became literary editor of the New Statesman, where he met Christopher Hitchens, then a feature writer for The Observer, who became his best friend until Hitchens died, in 2011."

- Doc

[_honorentheos]

So what makes Jesse Singal abhorrent? Until you said his name above I had not heard of him. A Google search offered clues to why you might assign him qualities of the KKK but I'd rather let you spell it out.

And yeah, I think you demonstrate uncomfortable traits in common with what gave rise to the Reign of Terror. Not hiding that at all.

I'm not saying Jesse Singal is literally the KKK. You're being an idiot. I'm saying the fact that you find the KKK, but not him abhorrent is irrelevant.

Jesus, I didn't say that either. Just point out what it is you think makes this name off the list of signatories a bad person to associate with while expressing concern over illiberalism.

"How dare you bring up the KKK to illustrate a point about defense of free speech?" said no one who has ever paid any attention to free speech discussions before.

You use it as a way of marking people who signed the letter as, to stick with the prior point, Q.

Your quibbles with the letter are content itself is minimal from what you've said. Your issues are with the signatories. And what are those issues? Some people on the list have said things that received outrage responses so their decision to sign seems to be self-serving rather than our of broad concern for freedom of expression says you. Not withstanding much of that past expression has been embattled about the issue.

But because some signatories don't share your orthodoxy and represent a range of views on multiple issues who came together over this one, you then leverage a purity test to undermine the strength of having a diverse group of signatories with a range of views...which is exactly the issue being warned of in the letter when taken farther to seeking to have people fired or the like.

The KKK analogy is just an example of the P/Q argument but it also functions as accomplishing the thing being discussed. No one wants to be associated with Nazis, and the KKK is the next step down from them but avoids a Goodwin's Law violation. It was a board toss example.

[Guest]

All I can say, honor, is that you aren't being the champion to free speech you think you are here.

If you want to debate something, another thing to value might be actually considering what other people say before jumping on it. I've seen three instances of you responding to me in this thread alone where I thought, "He basically ignored what I just said."

But sure, you can say whatever the hell you want. I suppose in your mind, that means not even having the same conversation.

Schmo, you began your point saying the OP was pointless because of a reason. I disagreed with that reason. You said, Nope. So I went on the offensive to point out why the nope was wrong.

You say I'm ignoring you. What did I ignore when I was replying to your claim that freedom of expression was undermined by people not sharing the same views on issues?

Where did I ignore what you were saying?

[_EAllusion]

I own two Martin Amis books. He's was a talented critic. To reduce the issue with Amis's Islamophobic comments to a concern over Islamist imposition of cultural mores is flat out misleading. Do better. Amis might not be as hot as he was on the early 2000's, but he hasn't exactly been silenced. He is a good example of someone on the list who seems there primarily because he's a well-known for having faced backlash for making prejudiced comments.

If publishers would prefer to use their limited resources to give someone else a chance to publish, then why not? Is Martin Amis so valuable that no other worthy contribution can be found? Why does he deserve publishing resources from all publishers and why is it a problem that he is denied them?

By the way, Amis has published 3 books since the controversy over his comments on Muslims and has one on the way this year. He's in his 70's. His cancellation doesn't seem to have cancelled him yet. He might be a bit of a has-been, but he sure as heck hasn't been removed from public life, much less had his life destroyed.

If "what happened to Martin Amis" is what we're supposed to be concerned about here, then why should we be concerned? Is this what not respecting free speech means? Because I, a hardcore free speech advocate, don't have a problem with it. His free speech has not been imposed upon. He is not Rushdie.

[_honorentheos]

I wonder if the people who think of me as a free speech zealot will get a kick out of seeing me compared to Robespierre for offering mild criticism of the Harper's letter that agrees with the sentiment by questions its effectiveness as a persuasive document.

I question the existance of anyone who fits this self-serving rewrite of your own virtue. A very Robespierre-like thing to do, in fact.

[_moksha]

One good thing about the right is that they don't use a lot of intellectual verbiage. When they want to do bad they just do it. The left on the other hand likes to overthink things and self-recriminate. Trump is able to get a simple message out to the public, while others put up a wall of sound that tends to be garbled. Too intellectual.