Anyone with any kind of basic, entry-level knowledge of human rights will tell you that the human right to freedom of speech always has to be balanced against other human rights, such as the human rights to dignity, respect, honor, and non-discrimination. A human rights-based approach to freedom of speech (such as the one found here) emphasizes that speech has to be restricted when it comes into conflict with other human rights. Human rights activists – including the United Nations and human rights groups all over the world – not only believe that hate speech should be outlawed, but that so should cultural appropriation and other forms of speech which violate basic human rights (in the case of cultural appropriation, the right of cultures to retain ownership of their culture and to ensure that their culture is not misused).This is reported to be the "whole world's view," with America as a kind of weird outlier. Of course, 'the whole world' doesn't end up including very much of the world -- not Russia, not China, not Africa, not the Islamic world, and not large parts even of India. I suspect that, if you move away from the question of formalities (e.g., UN treaties or unenforced legislation) and to the realm of lived experience, the number of people who believe this is actually very small.
My opposition to the view is easy enough to explain, so since she asks why Americans oppose her, I'll give it briefly. It starts with her idea that you have a right to honor. I suspect she really means that you have a right to receive honors. You do not. Honor is sacrifice. It is by showing honor, at significant personal cost, that you become deserving of receiving honors. It's not a right.
Neither is respect. Respect must be earned.
Neither is dignity. Dignity can be thrown away, and if you throw it away, you have no right to insist on being given more.
Non-discrimination is a trickier case, but I think that if you strip it down to a generalized claim that no one should discriminate against anyone, it's unworkable and foolish. There are some specific things -- especially race -- that we should not allow to be causes of discrimination. There are lots of other things (for example, a history of felonious behavior) that are perfectly valid causes for discrimination.
So, we can begin our disagreement by simply noting that I dispute that anyone has rights to any of the things you list as rights. Even if we agree that freedom of speech has to deal with conflicting rights, I dispute that any of these are examples of rights. Freedom of speech sometimes conflicts with real rights, in which case we have to work out compromises. We don't have to compromise with rights that don't, and many of which can't, exist.
Also, perhaps you should re-read Orwell.
All human rights groups understand that all governments have an obligation to punish hate speech, and that outlawing hate speech does not interfere with freedom of speech in any way (if anything, it is necessary to outlaw hate speech in order to protect freedom of speech). Amnesty International, for example, has emphasized many, MANY times throughout its long history that hate speech MUST always be outlawed. Here, you can find an explanation from Amnesty International about what freedom of speech REALLY is. Freedom of speech is NOT the right to say whatever you want about whatever you want whenever you want. Freedom of speech – like all freedoms – comes with responsibility. Words have consequences, and your freedom ends when it starts to intefere with the freedoms of others – such as their freedom to live without hatred and oppression....What was going on in Orwell was that words were getting redefined by authority. The Ministry of Truth told lies, but the lies they told were declared to be true by authority, so they were "true" in the new sense of the term. You say that freedom of speech can't conflict with a ban on hate speech, because freedom of speech has been defined by your organizations to exclude hate speech. The reason this strikes your opponents as similar to Orwell is that you are conducting your argument by redefining the terms to mean what you'd like them to mean. Freedom of speech does mean, to many people, freedom to say what you want. You would like to use authority to redefine the terms to exclude what you want excluded, and to use authority to ban your opponents from organizing politically as "far-right parties that pose a threat to freedom and democracy." Do you see what you did there? You endorsed a plan to have government redefine "democracy" as something that would be threatened by allowing people who disagree to organize politically and have their message voted on by the people. That is, "democracy" would be redefined to mean the opposite of what the word means now.
Many have compared my proposals to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. These people do not seem to understand that human rights policies exist to prevent something like what’s described in Orwell’s dystopian world from happening, as they prevent people from advocating totalitarianism and other human rights violations.... Right now, hundreds of human rights groups are leading the charge to enact strong domestic hate speech legislation in Japan, while human rights groups in Europe are working to ban far-right parties that pose a threat to freedom and democracy.
Relying on the authority of these organizations to redefine the terms of the discussion is what your opponents are referring to when they say you sound like Orwell. You do.
There are other problems with the article, such as likening freedom to hold opinions you find bigoted to 'a right to murder,' which shows a hugely tendentious understanding of the harm principle. But we'll leave those for now.
Trying reason with that sort of idiocy is akin to trying to teach a toad to sing. Throw their argument in the try pot, boil it down, and what do you get? Violence Works!
ReplyDeleteOf course, this is confusing to poor uneducated hicks like me, because they always said before, violence never solves anything- so which is it?
The only reason to have free speech recognized in law at all is to protect the right to say something others do not like.
And the other edge of that sword is this- maybe someone will act against the one who tries to shut them up, rather than the one who speaks.
Ah, Tanya Cohen. An Oberlin graduate. A shining example of what has gone wrong with universities in general.
ReplyDeletethe human right to freedom of speech always has to be balanced against other human rights, such as the human rights to dignity, respect, honor, and non-discrimination.
ReplyDeleteThe linked-to argument proceeds from a false premise. [D]ignity, respect, honor, and non-discrimination aren't human rights, they're civil rights created legislatively in an attempt to concretize and enforce human rights--like free speech--and as such they are entirely lesser than our human rights. Or Grim's view of honor and dignity--still not, as he notes, human rights. The rest of her argument becomes irrelevant from this failure.
reported to be the "whole world's view," with America as a kind of weird outlier. Of course, 'the whole world' doesn't end up including very much of the world
Well, that would be part of what makes us exceptional--and in a good way, not the way the Greeks are exceptional, or the Brits, or....
Eric Hines
Part of the reason our founders recognized precious few rights was because they realized that the more rights you have, the more conflict you'll have- by definition of what she uses to support her position- your rights stop where my nose begins (except she's including her feelings and mores). Pushing the 'human rights agenda' is really an effort to create more conflict, not to lessen it.
ReplyDeleteI am always suspicious of anybody whose core argument relies on re-defining a thing into something it isn't.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of that kind of re-definition is often to divert the discussion into some kind of triviality instead of ever reaching the actual subject.
Here you have someone whose purpose is to negate the right of free speech, and the first step is to re-define human rights.
Valerie
". . . the human right to freedom of speech always has to be balanced against other human rights, such as the human rights to dignity, respect, honor, and non-discrimination."
ReplyDeleteYeah, that doesn't work for me at all. It's totally workable as a personal code for social interaction, but lousy as a basis for state power, because there's no possible way we should be letting the state decide whom or what we should respect or honor.
We already do balance freedom of speech against some important competing rights, such as the right not to be defrauded, or the right to impose secrecy by contract or by security obligations. We have laws against conspiracies to commit crimes, where the only overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy is to communicate by speech. But I can't even imagine how it would work to have free speech limited by "the human rights to dignity, respect, honor, and non-discrimination." Might as well say we have free speech as long as the speech never communicates anything the state disapproves of, which will include "disrespect" shown to whatever groups is approved this week. (We can be sure it will be A-OK to show disrespect to rich white Christian Republican heterosexual men.)
This whole business of not permitting people to speak if they're going to insist on showing disrespect to sacred cows is kind of the whole point. "Say what you like, as long as you don't diss the King and, er, his buddies and their priests and whoever else is in favor at Court this year." Not a long step to "we'll behead you if you bring disrepute on Islam."
These people are SO sure no reasonable person could disagree with them about certain basics, so squelching speech on those subjects must be harmless. Alternatively, they're SO terrified that anyone hearing an opposing view will cast aside their self-evident truths and be instantly converted to the dark side. Not much faith in their self-evident truths, apparently.
I am always suspicious of anybody whose core argument relies on re-defining a thing into something it isn't.... Here you have someone whose purpose is to negate the right of free speech, and the first step is to re-define human rights.
ReplyDeleteIt is vitally important to force you to speak the language their way, and to destroy any resistance to the new definitions. The whole affair hangs on that: if we can make everyone use "democracy" in the new way, then of course opposition parties are enemies of democracy. If "freedom of speech" is defined to exclude what you want to control, then of course you're defending free speech by controlling speech.
You're exactly right: when someone comes to you and says that a long-used concept actually means something totally different from what it has always meant, you should reach for your Buck knife.
It is vitally important to force you to speak the language their way, and to destroy any resistance to the new definitions.
ReplyDeleteWho are you to talk about their way of use, you think they are free men and women operating on their will in their own self interest. If it is in their self interest to make you think as they do, what right do you have to resist with a knife.
You should consider reaching for your Logic, not your knife. Unless logic is unnecessary for such.
The knife is metaphorical, as well as a reference to the late Edward Abbey. I suppose you don't know the quote.
ReplyDelete"When I hear the words "phenomenology" or "structuralism", I reach for my buck knife."
He was making a point about the dangers of academic philosophy to practical philosophy. His point was that you need to bring things back to the reality in front of you, and not to the worlds invented by academic jargon.
So too where you find people changing the very meaning of language, so that it twists and reverses under you.
Logic, though, is of limited use in political philosophy -- academic or practical. It's good for identifying fallacious arguments. However, logical objects don't exist in practical reality. Ethics and political thought are analogical, not logical.