Has mediating access to information been the defining tool of control for civilizations? Maybe in tyrannical, despotic societies that is true, but those don't allow Twitter today via firewalls, so that's mostly a moot point in this thread.
I'd say the sword and the coin have both been far more controlling than limited information spread.
What of free society? Is the government of the USA, UK, or other "enlightened" societies throughout history relying upon censorship and denial of information? I think they're moreso allowing moneyed interests and plutocracy to have lobbying and backdoor dealings, they can easily ignore the public square most of the time. I just don't see Twitter piercing the armor of entrenched interests that well.
In contrast, I do see it degrading and toxifying democratic discourse, making us less resilient and more divided. That's anti-thetical to a free society in my view.
> What of free society? Is the government of the USA, UK, or other "enlightened" societies throughout history relying upon censorship and denial of information? I think they're moreso allowing moneyed interests and plutocracy to have lobbying and backdoor dealings, they can easily ignore the public square most of the time.
This is definitely part of the picture. To add to this, I'll refer to Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. "Propaganda" does still exist in modern "free societies," but it isn't overt like a 20th-century dictatorship would have been. Subtle manipulation of corporate media by monied interests to sway public opinion, combined with lobbying and corporate capture of government institutions, is more than enough to maintain the hegemony of certain narratives and power structures. I find it fascinating, and unsettling, to learn about.
So in a nutshell, controlling information and mainstream media narratives is important for the modern ruling class, but it's much more subtle than overt censorship like a dictatorship would have. Which, in my view, makes it much more advanced and insidious.
I disagree that "enlightened" societies don't rely on mediating access to information as the defining tool of control; our difference of opinion is perhaps that you think of this purely as limiting information spread, where I think of it also as shaping the information for their own ends. The governments of the UK and the USA, to state two examples you mentioned, have used these tools effectively as propaganda channels repeatedly to sell their vision of armed conflict. The second Iraq war wasn't that long ago.
I'll make a tangentially related argument: Starting with the printing press, and through the advent of telephone, radio, television, and now the Internet (mainly via the Web), controlling messaging via these media (or controlling these media directly at times) has been as much a tool of control for those in power in democratic societies as in autocratic ones.
Congress shall make no law /.../ abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
And while it talks about the Congress, it is clear why the founders considered it to be necessary - the principal value of the free and unabridged speech to forming a free society is tremendous.
True, in an armed conflict, speech has been used as a weapon, and it is also true that the reality of US government has often fallen short of the noble ideals laying at its foundation. But until recently, it has been a widely recognized principle that unmediated and un-gated access to speech and expression - be it audio, printed, electronic or any other means of speech - is a vital cornerstone of a modern free society. Unfortunately, recently certain part of political and cultural establishment decided they want to "move past" these antiquated ideas of equality and appoint themselves as gatekeepers of speech - "for our common benefit and the benefit of the society", of which they are but selfless servants, to be sure.
The new Twitter CEO is, unfortunately, one of these people, and has unashamedly promoted this approach personally. Thus, we can expect only redoubling of effort from his side to suppress and remove speech that he considers "harmful" and discussion of topics he considers not up for discussion. Fortunately, there's an easy way to deal with it. As David Chappelle noted recently, "twitter is not a real place" - and doesn't need to be elevated to the position of society's gatekeeper, but rather demoted to society's cesspool. They proved themselves not up to the task to maintain robust free discourse platform - let them rot in their own bubble.
>As David Chappelle noted recently, "twitter is not a real place" - and doesn't need to be elevated to the position of society's gatekeeper, but rather demoted to society's cesspool. They proved themselves not up to the task to maintain robust free discourse platform - let them rot in their own bubble.
Agreed. Part of that is the 'hot take' represented by the limited characters of a tweet are inimical to nuance. So much of it is just people taking turns 'dunking' on each other, and it gets increasingly heated and rage inducing. Add to that an inflammatory algorithm, where outrage drives interaction, and of course you have a cesspit.
Part of the good thing about the old internet is when you have to construct a blog to share your thoughts, you have to be driven to actually, y'know, build something. It also has the added benefit of being relatively closed off. Now everyone has easy access to an empty field with which to yell into the void... and it turns out with that low bar and high inter-connectedness comes a lot of yelling.
Over George Mason's (among others) protest the convention decided not to include a bill of rights in the constitution. There are a few reasons for this, one of the two more traditionally held is that it was seen as unnecessary given that many states already had their own bills of rights. The other reason supported by the historical record is that many of the delegates were concerned about giving the appearance of those being the only rights guaranteed to the people.
There is a third popular opinion, which is that the convention had been a hot, contentious affair that dragged on for months and everyone wanted to go home so they tabled the bill of rights for a later date.
You will note that none of these reasons is that anyone objected to the principles in the bill of rights. More importantly, many of the rights guaranteed in the first 10 amendments are directly targeted at the causes of the revolution. This lends significant credence to the "it's important but let's not do it now" argument, and undercuts rather dramatically the idea that the country was not founded on those ideals.
They didn't indeed. And you know why? There was a big discussion, between the fraction that said you have to spell out the most important rights so that nobody would think that it's ok to violate them, and the one that said "we already said the government has this set of very restricted functions, if we start spelling out the specific rights, people would think these are the only rights that should be protected, and others are not important and the government is OK to expand their function and violate those rights, just because we didn't include them in the list! We can't have that!" After a while, it ended up looking like it does now.
Of course, both of them turned out to be wrong. Not only people think that rights that are not explicitly enumerated do not deserve protection, not only the idea of limited government bound by constitutional limits is completely dead and buried, now people think that explicitly named rights too can be violated at will. Maybe because they have been spelled out a bit later, so they can't be that important. After all, First Amendment isn't something that's very important, that's why they made it the first one. Like the trial one, we'll do some silly stuff first, to warm up, and then we'll get to really important things.
The "founders" were not a monolithic entity with a single opinion. The history of the Bill of Rights makes it quite clear that there were many founders in favor of those amendments.
The Constitution was ratified in June of 1788. The 1st Congress convened in March of 1789, and the Bill of Rights was introduced in June of 1789. I think it is quite reasonable to consider the Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights as part of the foundational principles of the nation.
Yes, one possible explanation is that in a country where so many people take christian scripture seriously you can kind of see that they might not see the intellectual absurdity of treating the constitution as if it were some sort of sacred text. The problem, as ever, is that it's hard to have conversations about modern western humans being rational if we are obliged to be polite about their childish religious superstitions.
We don't have slaves anymore. At least not in Western societies. So I am not sure how it's relevant - sure, people in the past had got a lot of things wrong. They thought diseases come from bad smells, eating arsenic can cure you, and yes - some of them also thought owning slaves is ok. Now we know better about these things. We don't have slavery anymore - at least in the West (curiously, nobody seems to give a tweet about it still existing in other parts of the world?)
That doesn't mean they got everything wrong - some things they did get right, even though they came short in implementing them - just as we do. They were imperfect people - just as we are. It doesn't mean because there was slavery in the past we can't have free speech now - that makes no sense. It's just a collection of non-sequiturs - "founders were imperfect by our ideals 250 years forward, we should reject literally everything that was done" - and what?
> Public discourse has been dominated by white, rich men since the inception of the US, and history is full of examples of active suppression of speech by women and minorities.
And to fix that, we need more active suppression of speech, surely? Makes total sense, right? Because if rich, white men suppressed speech, and it was bad, then if we have now rich people, a small number of whom would be not white, not male and one or two maybe even non-binary transgender - if those people would be actively suppressing speech, then of course it'd be great. What a bunch of nonsense!
> I just really don't wanna go "back to the good old times" either.
Nobody wants that. Where would you get the idea? Of course people that want free speech don't mean they want to give up antibiotics and painkillers, stop driving cars, forgo electricity, never have a proper dental work, and do any other things that were done 250 years ago that we don't do anymore. Why would they? They just want to speak freely and discuss the ideas freely. It's not and never been the package deal - either we have slavery and free speech, or we have neither. In fact, it is the opposite - of course, if we have slavery, we can't have full freedom, as you correctly noted, free speech has to be free for everybody - any gender, any race, any societal stature. Big Tech is completely opposed to this.
It is absolutely not a coincidence that immediately after the passage of the 13th amendment, the incarceration of people of color skyrocketed following the passage of numerous racially-targeted "black codes". It's also not a coincidence that the majority of the current incarcerated population are people of color, it's a direct legacy of that system. Sure, you can't explicitly write racially targeted laws anymore, but applying an ounce of critical theory shows how the laws can be enforced along racial lines.
>And to fix that, we need more active suppression of speech, surely?
Note that no one actually suggested this as the solution.
It's always very telling that when someone of privilege is told that society has not, actually, been equitable in its supposed ideals (in this case free speech) the first reaction is always, "So instead you want to oppress and censor me??" instead of attempting to engage with the idea that maybe we should be structuring things so they're not oppressing anyone.
The best explanation I've seen of this phenomenon is that when someone has lived in an privileged and elevated position for their whole life, any calls for equity seem like an attack on your position.
> The best explanation I've seen of this phenomenon is that when someone has lived in an privileged and elevated position for their whole life, any calls for equity seem like an attack on your position.
Ah yes, the old “there can’t possibly be a flaw in my idea, it’s just your own insecurity” argument.
Penal labor and slavery are two very different things, and confusing them doesn't make any sense. Both have nothing to do with free speech - it looks like you're just grasping for arguments to say "US is bad". What's the point?
> applying an ounce of critical theory shows how the laws can be enforced along racial lines.
Laws certainly can be applied in a racist way - though you don't need any "critical theory" (which in most instances is a bunch of insane pseudo-scientific drivel anyway) to know that. Of course people can be racist and apply laws in racist ways, and there should be safeguards against that, as against any other abuse of law for purposes the law is not intended for. There's no contradiction with free speech.
> Note that no one actually suggested this as the solution.
That's patently false - a REAL LOT of people - including prominent politicians (lately one Hillary Clinton, for example), business tycoons, CEOs and C* of major companies, prominent press and culture figures, professors and government functionaries - are suggesting exactly that as a solution. And not just suggesting - implementing. Thorough and comprehensive speech suppression and censorship, in the name of correcting some past wrongs and preventing some future ones, real or invented. It is not ever about equal enforcement - nobody objects to equal enforcement of laws, but the solution they are pushing is not equality, it's censorship and suppression.
> the first reaction is always, "So instead you want to oppress and censor me??"
Because they DO want to oppress and censor me, and they are not hiding it either - they are saying it openly and boldly. They call for censorship and speech suppression all the time - and not only calling for it, they has been doing it for years, with much success and they aren't going to stop. It's not something I imagine might be happening in some distant future, it's something that has been already happening for decades. All major social media platforms are strictly censored now, all academia research is censored now, all mainstream news and entertainment is censored right now. The only reason the government is not censoring directly is the First Amendment does not let them, but they work around it by just asking their operatives in Big Tech to do it for them, and those are glad to oblige. Most of the political, academia, big tech, entertainment and press establishment are 100% in on censorship. There are some resistance to it, but those are outside mainstream, the mainstream is all censorship, all the time, and more of it.
> The best explanation I've seen of this phenomenon is that when someone has lived in an privileged and elevated position for their whole life, any calls for equity seem like an attack on your position.
That's one of the example of insane drivel I referred to above. Every time some argument is challenged, the response is "oh, you're just saying that because your privilege is attacked". You know nothing about me, you know nothing about my experience, your argument contradicts basic facts and makes no logical sense - but all that is irrelevant, because you always have this mega-argument - just say "privileged" and everything you say is automatically right and everything the "privileged" say is automatically wrong, no logic or connection to facts is needed.
> maybe we should be structuring things so they're not oppressing anyone.
Yeah, maybe we shouldn't have censorship, for example? Try to convince somebody in Big Tech of that... So far I see not much progress on this.
In what ways are you oppressed and censored? Actually, let's be more specific in that question, based on an axiom we've already agreed on:
>free speech has to be free for everybody - any gender, any race, any societal stature
Specifically, in what ways are you oppressed and censored based on your "gender, race, or societal stature"?
Because the only topics I see getting censored (by "big tech") are:
a) Rhetoric that negatively targets others based on their gender, race, or societal stature
b) Information spread with the intent of spreading harm to others
So white supremacists are censored, people calling for violence and harm are censored, and yes, people spreading counter-scientific information which would harm public health are censored.
> just say "privileged" and everything you say is automatically right and everything the "privileged" say is automatically wrong, no logic or connection to facts is needed.
Privilege doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means you lack the perspective of being discriminated against based on certain factors.
But beyond that, you haven't provided anything in the way of evidence, your logic is shaky, and when one of your "facts" get called out you simply question its relevance.
>You know nothing about me, you know nothing about my experience
I can infer pretty easily from what you've said that you're very likely white, male, and lean heavily to the political right - conservative (or possibly "libertarian"). Am I incorrect?
>The only reason the government is not censoring directly is the First Amendment does not let them
The "government" is actually censoring people - but not through some shadowy "operatives in Big Tech" (what?) but through legislation. Nine Republican states have recently directly passed laws restricting free speech. But I assume you're not angry about those, for reasons you might want to re-examine.
And just so you don't miss it, I'll repeat:
Specifically, in what ways are you oppressed and censored based on your "gender, race, or societal stature"?
I can not publicly speak on any controversial topic (at least taking the position not approved by the orthodoxy) without risk of being fired, and myself and my family attacked. In fact, merely using my true legal name instead of a pseudonym is a very risky thing right now, which has cost many people their livelihoods, their careers and sometimes their very safety. I can not publish any controversial opinion, disagreeing with government-approved policy, on any of the major social networks. I can not share information that is deemed "harmful" by the same social networks - and by "harmful" I mean politically inconvenient to them. That sounds pretty oppressive to me.
> Specifically, in what ways are you oppressed and censored based on your "gender, race, or societal stature"?
I am not claiming I am oppressed based on my race - though I know if I weren't white, speaking unorthodox thoughts would likely carry less risk for me. But the threat, of course, comes not from the race angle itself, but from the heresy. The race and social stature just changes the amount of danger the heresy leads to. But the censorship is not based on race, it's based on speaking the things that the censors do not want to be spoken.
> Because the only topics I see getting censored (by "big tech") are:
That's because you choose not to see what does not fit your predetermined conclusion. It is not possible to convince the person that something exists if the person declared upfront they wouldn't see it. There's just no way to do it.
> So white supremacists are censored
No, it works the other way - people who are censored are declared white supremacists. Including, hilariously, people like Larry Elder, Candace Owens and Winsome Sears (if you're not in the know, all these people are black), and many others like them. "White supremacist" has become a generic pejorative that the left applies to anybody they want to censor, and they no longer even bother to make it sound plausible.
> it just means you lack the perspective of being discriminated against based on certain factors.
Again, you assume a lot about people you do not know. Hint: black people aren't the only group who faced prejudice and discrimination in human history. But my personal history here is completely irrelevant, since "oppression olympics" is the most stupid game known to man. You don't need to be oppressed to be right, and "privilege" is just an attempt to silence people who you can't find an argument against. If there was some "perspective", it would have been possible to explain it without claiming "you can't possibly understand this because your skin is of a wrong color and the bits between your legs are of a wrong shape". But there's never any explanation, only "shut up, you privileged!"
> I can infer pretty easily from what you've said that you're very likely white, male
And that tells you everything you need to know about me. As a true "anti-racist" (you're an anti-racist, aren't you?), once you know person's race and maybe gender, there's nothing more you need to know to know everything about them, right?
> Specifically, in what ways are you oppressed and censored based on your "gender, race, or societal stature"?
You seem to be confused. From the fact that there's censorship, and the fact that I declared nobody should be censored, regardless of their race, etc. you somehow got to the conclusion that I claim the censorship that exists is based on race, etc. No, it's not based on race - though, given that it is largely performed by "anti-racists" - of whom many are hardcore racists, that consider race the most - and sometimes the only - defining characteristics of a person - there may be certain racial angles in their actions, but the ultimate goal has nothing to do with it. It is always about suppressing the information and the opinion that diverges from the orthodoxy.
>Is the government of the USA, UK, or other "enlightened" societies throughout history
That sentence piques my interest, do people see the USA and UK that way? I think of Switzerland and Canada that way, for example, but my knowledge is all based on stereotypes. Maybe it depends where you're from, as the stereotypes must differ among regions.
But almost all countries are more liberal than those two. My question isn't if the US and UK are the least enlightened countries in the world, but rather, if people see them as particularly enlightened among countries. Ie compared to any other random liberal country like Mexico or Czech Republic.
I understand OP's point, just curious whether the examples used reflect a common perception. To me when thinking of stereotypically enlightened societies, I think of Iceland or Canada or something. The US I think of more as a business+war society, and UK seems somewhere in the middle, but much lower than the rest of Europe.
This is based on nothing objective, just wondering what other people's perceptions of these places are
I understood "enlightened" to mean "espousing modern values of enlightenment" - basically fostering a belief in science and reason and trying to push mankind further in terms of technological and moral progress.
In this regard, both of those countries would be considered B-tier at worst.
The point of the original quote was about people with too much control over others already. In which case, a few strokes of a pen could condemn thousands to misery or death. In that sense, there was no need to be aiming a bow at a single individual.
The original quote wasn't about speech, it was about excessive control.
I'd say the sword and the coin have both been far more controlling than limited information spread.
What of free society? Is the government of the USA, UK, or other "enlightened" societies throughout history relying upon censorship and denial of information? I think they're moreso allowing moneyed interests and plutocracy to have lobbying and backdoor dealings, they can easily ignore the public square most of the time. I just don't see Twitter piercing the armor of entrenched interests that well.
In contrast, I do see it degrading and toxifying democratic discourse, making us less resilient and more divided. That's anti-thetical to a free society in my view.