tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post646223247744239533..comments2024-03-27T23:28:20.274-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Fight SCOTUS pick on populist grounds, ignore abortion; and SCOTUS picks of disjunctive presidentsagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-39673042952123467492018-07-11T00:22:02.391-04:002018-07-11T00:22:02.391-04:00This seems as good a place for this as any...
The...This seems as good a place for this as any...<br /><br />The New Yorker recently had an article about changing trends in free speech -arguing that free speech should be rolled back because of trolling by far-right groups - for instance, those people who used to protest at the funerals of soldiers, arguing that it was God's punishment for gay marriage.<br /><br />The article off-handedly mentioned that the Supreme Court has expanded free speech absolutism over the past 50 years. Hmmm... what other trend do we associate with the past 40 years? The implication is that free speech absolutism correlates with rising inequality and status-striving.<br /><br />Indeed, the writer explains how, in the mid-century, there were legally much greater constraints on free speech. There was a landmark case in 1940 where the Supreme Court upheld the jailing of a man who called a policeman a "fascist". Sort of like how you're not allowed to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.<br /><br />"The boundaries can and do shift. In 1940, a New Hampshire man was jailed for calling a city marshal “a damned Fascist.” The Supreme Court upheld the conviction, ruling that the words were not protected by the First Amendment, because they were “fighting words,” which “by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”<br /><br />https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/how-social-media-trolls-turned-uc-berkeley-into-a-free-speech-circus<br /><br /><br />Why would status-striver support free speech absolutism to such a great extent? They see the world as dog-eat-dog, where you should be allowed to dominate public spaces through intimidation and harassment. Conversely, egalitarians try to get along with each other, therefore are better at policing harassment.<br /><br />https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/how-social-media-trolls-turned-uc-berkeley-into-a-free-speech-circusCurtisnoreply@blogger.com