| Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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How Free Is Speech?
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:12 AM   
William E. Perry recently sent me (and some other friends) the following thoughtful commentary on the state of free speech in America. I am posting it here with his permission:Paul Hsieh's NoodleFood post Leaving the Country? Pay the Price! about the exit tax contained in the HEART bill has given me serious concerns. It is another measure removing freedoms that was attached to a complex bill with a deceptive name. It is reminiscent of the internet gaming restrictions attached to the safe ports act.
Ayn Rand said that we should continue to fight and attempt to influence events as long as free speech remains. Lately I've been questioning whether we really have free speech in this country.
When the CEO of a major bank is afraid to speak out publicly even though he was forced to sign over part of his company to the government for a bailout that they didn't need, I question whether we really have free speech. That was the case recently with the CEO of Wells Fargo. After the meeting detailed in the linked article, Wells Fargo has made statements about the use of the bailout money, but no statement about why they accepted it, or the pressure that was put on them.
We have speech codes in colleges, although FIRE fights very hard to limit the worst effects of them.
We have limitations on advertisements during elections due to McCain-Feingold. We have state level restrictions on political speech as well. Unrestricted political speech is necessary for a free country.
There is a strong movement toward reinstating the "fairness" doctrine, which is a further limitation on speech.
On the other hand we do have free speech in some contexts. Yaron Brook and the other ARI intellectuals are not stopped from making their statements in media venues. The people on the OActivists list are not stopped from writing Letters to the Editor and op-eds -- and many of them are published.
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) and the Coalition for Secular Government (CSG) have had major successes thanks to the hard and smart work of Lin Zinser, Paul Hsieh, Diana Hsieh, Ari Armstrong, Gina Liggett and others.
So I think that we have free speech to some extent, but it is not a fully robust freedom of speech. At what point do we decide that we don't have freedom of speech to the extent that it is safe to speak?
I'm not advocating leaving the country (to go where?); I'm not advocating setting up some kind of Galt's Gulch. I've even been considering starting a group to deal with a looming issue that is very important to me, and doing advocacy about it with FIRM and the Coalition for Secular Government as models.
Rand famously said, "It's earlier than you think," when asked about some types of advocacy. That has become an overused cliche in some circles. But now I wonder whether it is later than we think. Here's my reply to him, somewhat edited:
I think that your concerns about free speech are very real -- particularly having dealt with some of Colorado's campaign finance laws these past few months. The federal and state governments won't outright ban speech anytime soon, as is happening in Europe and Canada. However, they are increasingly regulating it with campaign finance laws and the like. These laws are so burdensome that most people would rather shut up than attempt to comply with them -- and risk legal action if they do so wrongly.
More generally, my thought from the first serious talk of the financial bailout has been that perhaps we have less than the 20 years that Yaron Brook speculated at OCON to turn around the culture. That's a very scary thought. Unless more Objectivists ramp up their advocacy efforts, we might go down in flames just as we're gaining a real foothold.
Personally, my plan is to (1) finish my dissertation and then (2) speak in every forum open to me, full-time. I do plan to actively fight for free speech, because like you, I think it's in very serious danger. I will have more to say about the burdens of campaign finance laws -- including my own experiences with them -- in future posts.
Basically though, I would say that:
- It's earlier than some might think -- meaning that it's too early for direct political action like running decent political candidates.
- It's later than some might think -- meaning that we have very little time to enact the necessary philosophical revolution.
Time-wise, we're stuck between a political rock and a philosophical hard place. However bad that might be, there's only one way out -- namely fighting for our ideas in public forums of all kinds.Labels: Free Speech
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| Comments on "How Free Is Speech?" |
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 | Friday, November 21, 2008 at 8:52:54 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: John Drake
E-mail: tryreason(at)gmail.com
URL: http://trhome.blogspot.com
I have similar concerns.
I would add this:
Yes advocacy is essential. But as with anything, understanding reality is essential. If your goal is cultural change, it is important to understand how ideas are adopted by individuals in society. Are there any over-arching trends that might help guide your efforts into a more efficient programs of advocacy? For a partial answer to this question, I recommend the book Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers. In Rogers terms, innovations can be technology OR ideas (including philosophic ideas). After 1000s of research projects over many decades looking at many different innovations, some overarching trends are observed as to how ideas and technologies spread through society. Like much research today, the work tends to be highly descriptive, not normative. But there are a few practical applications, such as on page 361, where he very briefly discusses "Strategies for Getting to Critical Mass". I will note that ARI is explicitly pursuing 3 of the 4 strategies.
A couple years ago, I wrote a few notes on Objectivism in relation to Diffusion of Innovation theory - http://trhome.blogspot.com/2006/05/objectivism-diffused.html. (As a disclaimer, I no longer associate with some groups or websites listed in that post...many thanks to Diana for helping me see the light). There is much more I would add today if I could find the time to write about it.
John
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| Friday, November 21, 2008 at 15:26:21 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
"At what point do we decide that we don't have freedom of speech to the extent that it is safe to speak?"
For myself, it will be when I no longer consider it safe to communicate or associate openly with other Objectivists. This is less likely to be due to direct government attack, than it will be from Kristallnacht events directed at us and sympathizers by SA-style elements of the Left and the religious right -- tacitly sanctioned by government in the form of oddly selective policing, and gun confiscation.
Should that happen, we will be done. I will withdraw to a vantage point somewhere, outside of any large cities, and ... watch it all go.
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| Friday, November 21, 2008 at 15:27:27 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
hit submit too soon.
---
The good news is that we are nowhere near that state. The bad news is that IMO we can get there very fast.
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| Friday, November 21, 2008 at 15:53:49 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Kevin Clark
"This is less likely to be due to direct government attack, than it will be from Kristallnacht events directed at us and sympathizers by SA-style elements of the Left and the religious right -- tacitly sanctioned by government in the form of oddly selective policing, and gun confiscation."
Wow, that's almost too terrifying to contemplate but I too feel it is a very real possibility. I often imagine what the cultural reaction will be when Objectivism makes it first big impact (possibly with the 'Atlas' movie). My guess is there will be a vicious hatred directed at Objectivists by the Daily Kos Left and the Cultural Conservative Right. Because we explicitly reject altruism there is no question that we will be hated. I wonder if we might be the Jews of the 21st century.
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| Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 13:07:57 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
"I wonder if we might be the Jews of the 21st century. "
More like the Gypsies, I suspect -- too numerically small to be noticed in the big picture. Rather, I expect that hatred to be directed against individualists of all stripes, as they represent the third side of secular Americanism, the last remaining shard of the Enlightenment, which both the Left and Right want to see disappear.
Independent men will be the scapegoats. Ayn Rand never wrote a novel where the Howard Roarks of the world were actively hunted and persecuted in the manner of Jews in the Third Reich, probably because she hoped things would not come to such a pass. I'd like to prove her right... because the spectacle of an entire culture reaching the point James Taggart did in Atlas -- the point where he lusted after the destruction of John Galt, knowing full well his own would follow -- is horrifying to contemplate.
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| Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 12:51:50 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
In a recent post, Gun Van Horn <http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2008/11/quick-roundup-380.html> quoted a proposal for limiting speech on the internet in South Korea:
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The proposed legislation 1) requires real-name identification system for all who post comments online; 2) mandates portals to delete "malicious entries" within 24 hours of receiving complaints; 3) requires sites with more than 100,000 visitors, rather than the current 300,000, to verify user identities. Violators -- both providers and consumers -- can face jail time and/or substantive monetary fines. And the national police has been deployed to "hunt, arrest, and punish" individuals who upload falsities and pernicious rumors.
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http://www.feer.com/politics/2008/november/Taming-Koreas-Wild-Wild-Web
Outright bans won't work in the US -- not for some time -- but the success of very burdensome campaign finance laws shows that this kind of regulation might just pass muster.
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| Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 12:57:17 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
John -- Thanks for the book recommendation. Do you have any other books on business management that you think those of us interested in spreading ideas should definitely read?
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