This is interesting....
https://quillette.com/2018/07/04/the-new-york-times-comes-out-against-free-speech/
Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that, for the last 50 years or so, a free speech absolutist position has been uncontroversial and nonideological, one of the areas where Democrats and Republicans could often (not always) agree. But that seems to be changing. The interesting thing about the Times article is that it says that the Republicans, or conservatives, are making free speech into a controversial issue. But this doesn’t hold water. If Republicans are simply standing by the free speech absolutism that characterized mainstream thought on both sides of the aisle for a couple of generations, it implies that people such as Kagan who find such absolutism to be a “weaponizing” of the First Amendment are the ones who are making free speech ideological.
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“The libertarian position has become dominant on the right on First Amendment issues,” said Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the Cato Institute. “It simply means that we should be skeptical of government attempts to regulate speech. That used to be an uncontroversial and nonideological point. What’s now being called the libertarian position on speech was in the 1960s the liberal position on speech.”
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“Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful,” she wrote. “Legally, what was, toward the beginning of the 20th century, a shield for radicals, artists and activists, socialists and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers and corporations buying elections.”
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The notion that people who attack American traditions of free speech and First Amendment are liberal, of all things, is patently absurd. If you are skeptical of free speech absolutism, then you are not a liberal for that reason alone: what is more essential to American liberalism than a strong commitment to free speech?
https://quillette.com/2018/07/04/the-new-york-times-comes-out-against-free-speech/
Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that, for the last 50 years or so, a free speech absolutist position has been uncontroversial and nonideological, one of the areas where Democrats and Republicans could often (not always) agree. But that seems to be changing. The interesting thing about the Times article is that it says that the Republicans, or conservatives, are making free speech into a controversial issue. But this doesn’t hold water. If Republicans are simply standing by the free speech absolutism that characterized mainstream thought on both sides of the aisle for a couple of generations, it implies that people such as Kagan who find such absolutism to be a “weaponizing” of the First Amendment are the ones who are making free speech ideological.
...................
“The libertarian position has become dominant on the right on First Amendment issues,” said Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the Cato Institute. “It simply means that we should be skeptical of government attempts to regulate speech. That used to be an uncontroversial and nonideological point. What’s now being called the libertarian position on speech was in the 1960s the liberal position on speech.”
...................
“Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful,” she wrote. “Legally, what was, toward the beginning of the 20th century, a shield for radicals, artists and activists, socialists and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers and corporations buying elections.”
..................
The notion that people who attack American traditions of free speech and First Amendment are liberal, of all things, is patently absurd. If you are skeptical of free speech absolutism, then you are not a liberal for that reason alone: what is more essential to American liberalism than a strong commitment to free speech?
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