Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty advocates want?
I don't have any power to fire someone from their job; I'm not their boss. But I do have the right to make my views about them freely known. That's my right to free speech. And I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not. That's my right to economic freedom - to not be in an authoritarian society where the government tells me what I have to spend my money on. And their boss has the right to decide whether to employ them or not. That's the boss's economic freedom and at-will employment.
If I'm threatening the boss with physical harm (violating the NAP, as some would say), then I'm clearly in the wrong. But if I'm making my opinion known, and their boss agrees, isn't that the intended effect of discourse? What is the point of free speech if there isn't the possibility that people might be influenced by listening to that speech?
I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
(In any case, in the article at hand, "Twitter mobs" isn't a fully accurate descriptor. The quoted tweet was from an alum. The ability for alumni to contact their university and make their opinions known - and have their opinions be taken with more weight than those of the general public - has existed long before Twitter and will exist long after.)
> Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty advocates want?
No. The main consequence of speech that is being opposed should be… speech, not action to get that speaker's speech curtailed, whether by speech or other means.
> I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not
These people didn't have to turn up to the talk. That's not the same as cancelling a talk because someone said they don't want it to happen.
> And their boss has the right to decide whether to employ them or not
> …
> But if I'm making my opinion known, and their boss agrees, isn't that the intended effect of discourse?
Did MIT change its decision to host the speaker because of a well-reasoned argument - as you point out, one of the intended consequences aimed for via free speech - or was it due to some other kind of pressure?
This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more. I agree that it's bad form to lobby the university directly, but it's their right to do so, and the university has a right to change which speakers it invites. Having it any other way would be an attack on free speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The purpose of free speech is to prevent the government from punishing people for their views. A similar imposition on citizens would violate their 1st amendment rights.
Free speech is an ideal where you are judged by what you do and not by what thoughts you express. USA named one of its laws after that ideal, but the American law isn't what the ideal is. The ideal would be that the first amendment applied to everyone, so nobody could punish anyone for views they express. But that is in no way enforceable so it doesn't exist.
It means that a guy can say X. Then twitter mobs can say that guy X is an idiot and should get fired. Both of those are fine. But firing the guy because he said X is where the free speech line is crossed. As long as it all just remains speech it is fine.
> What do I do about {contrived example X}?
What does the government do? The government does a ton of stuff, like hire people, fire people, run a lot of organizations etc. If they can do it without violating the ideal of free speech then so can you.
I disagree that free speech is/ought to be free from other people judging you on the contents of that speech.
I openly and intentionally judge people based on their speech/thoughts they express. Say smart, curiosity-invoking things and I think more highly of you. Say closed-minded, racist things, and I think less highly of you. I find it hard to imagine that most other people don't do exactly the same thing (possibly with a different fitness function, but updating their opinion of someone based on thoughts expressed nonetheless).
If I say something that makes you think I'm an asshole, I think you should update your opinion of me in that direction without waiting for me to make some physical action to that effect.
The government, by definition, holds the monopoly on legal violence. This is the fundamental difference. It isn't a big corporation.
But firing the guy because he said X is where the free speech line is crossed.
There are people who argue employers have the right to fire anyone for any reason because of their own rights. The current reality in the US is that people are routinely fired for even mentioning the concept of a union in the workplace. I agree that is against the ideal of free speech, but not the law as it exists.
The thing I have noticed over the past year is that many of the same people who think it's great to fire people for collective action suddenly get very imaginative about free speech when it happens to people they agree with.
There's free speech in legal term as coded in US constitution which have nothing to do with Non-US citizen like me. Then there's free speech as in universal value that every member of civilized modern society should uphold. I think GP is talking about the later.
> "Free speech protects us from government retribution."
It is so embarrassing to hear fellow Americans quote the First Amendment as being the definition of freedom of speech when even a casual perusal of history points to the First Amendment being inspired from the more general principle of freedom of speech originating in the Enlightenment. We really need to have better education in this country.
I’m not American nor do I live in the US nor am I subject to US law - is free speech impossible for me and all the billions of others in the world who are also in this same group, or is it perhaps you that has misunderstood and misrepresented what free speech is by conflating it with a legal provision in one jurisdiction, designed to help protect it from one entity?
>This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more
This may be the case de jure, but de facto, the spirit of the concept of free speech, and why it is important enough to enshrine in amendment, transcends the relationship between the government and the governed. A society where speech is effectively no longer free because of authoritarian-like control of discourse by non-governmental bodies requires the same protections that it would against the government to remain free from authoritarianism. Particularly when censorious or retributive measures by these ostensibly apolitical actors almost all tend to align with the machinations of one political party.
So the fact that social media platforms (and cloud hosts and credit card companies, etc) effectively collude to control the modern, digital public square to preferentially suppress the political views of about 50% of the country is just as much of a threat as government censorship, since the outcome is the same.
> I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
An invited speaker could require a signed contract before accepting the invite. At a fairly small expense, some free speech advocate/org could have a contract drawn up that would protect invitees to some degree, pay to have a third party audit the contract (is contract auditing a thing?) to raise the chance that orgs with teams of lawyers find it acceptable, promote and market it, and then make it freely available to all.
That might or might not work, but there are many more ideas in the wings that could be tried.
No institution is going to sign a contract like that. There are more people who would be happy to speak at events like this than speaking slots. If you demand a contract that says "you can't disinvite me," they're just going to move to the next person on the list.
I don't disagree with your premise (as a libertarian)
But re:
> I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
You'll see many people here are suggesting that we just don't listen to the "mob". That would be a way to "cancel" them that is completely compatible with liberty.
One doesn't need to run to tell a teacher every time another kid is mean to them. This is exactly the same. The solutions isn't always interventionist, I don't see why that is funny. Do you really expect someone to step in and settle all your disputes for you?
The libertarian approach absolutely does lead to progressivism because people, broadly defined, want progressivism. You have to take a narrow subset of society for the libertarian approach to be genuinely popular, or you have to abandon the pretense that you're optimizing for the good of all people. Don't take my word for it, listen to one of the most successful libertarians in recent history:
> The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron. [...]
> The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country[...]
Thiel goes on to detail how his only hope of accomplishing libertarian ideals is by escaping to either cyberspace, outer space, or the sea, leaving behind all those people who if asked by libertarian means would reject his ideals. (And he's gone on to invest in companies like SpaceX that are working on bringing this plan to fruition.)
The whole reason you get articles like this is because libertarianism can't survive on the merits, and so (apart from Thiel's approach of escape) they have to argue that people aren't playing by the rules, that somehow universities do not have the liberty to rescind invitations or that if they do it's because they're bad people. But they are playing by the rules and they're exercising their liberties.
I don't have any power to fire someone from their job; I'm not their boss. But I do have the right to make my views about them freely known. That's my right to free speech. And I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not. That's my right to economic freedom - to not be in an authoritarian society where the government tells me what I have to spend my money on. And their boss has the right to decide whether to employ them or not. That's the boss's economic freedom and at-will employment.
If I'm threatening the boss with physical harm (violating the NAP, as some would say), then I'm clearly in the wrong. But if I'm making my opinion known, and their boss agrees, isn't that the intended effect of discourse? What is the point of free speech if there isn't the possibility that people might be influenced by listening to that speech?
I don't see any way to cancel Twitter mobs that doesn't itself uphold cancel culture and destroy liberty.
(In any case, in the article at hand, "Twitter mobs" isn't a fully accurate descriptor. The quoted tweet was from an alum. The ability for alumni to contact their university and make their opinions known - and have their opinions be taken with more weight than those of the general public - has existed long before Twitter and will exist long after.)