This subject is an enigma that certainly needs solving. The idea of holding public officials to a higher standard of ethics is a start, perhaps like the Hippocratic Oath. If you’re representing people and committing malfeasance, there has to be accountability. Especially when your words are a direct result of impacting dire consequences to others that prefer an all inclusive civil environment. Teachers teach with ethical standards, as to enlighten one’s mind of growth and knowledge as a tool of self governing power. Some politicians ( and we know who they are) dumb you down to hold on to power. Higher education and lower legislation seems to be a major cog in the enigma. Bring on the Game of Thrones naked walk of shame in Congress, or perhaps the Inglorious Bastards forehead carving for accountability. Practical, no. Deserved, fuck yes!
What's happening in higher education right now...ugh. It actually breaks my heart. I used to hold higher education in great esteem. I still do--when it's actually HIGHER education. What they're doing these days, especially with the introduction of ONLINE GAMBLING, is venal and appalling.
Holy crap, online gambling, that’s a class? How to succeed in business without really trying! At all levels, schools have been cutting art and music education which I feel can be just as important as making a buck for a well rounded education. There should be options for creative outlets and not just ROTE. We’re not all cut from the same cloth, and certainly not all created to be capitalistic robots!
Nov 29, 2022·edited Nov 29, 2022Liked by Stacey Eskelin
I am no philosopher, but I can cluck like a plucked chicken. Ad hominem arguments aren't my bag, but I am acquainted with glory holes and slippery arguments. I walk softly and carry a stick.
Seems to me that the Founding Fathers could not have anticipated that office holders from the President on down would become as degenerate, unprincipled and uncouth as Mr. Trump. They concocted an oath of office that decent men (in those days) could abide by and they expected people in public office to be generally polite. When it came to dealing with miscreants in the highest offices, they sketched out reasons for impeachment and removal from office that were largely dependent on the serious outrage of their fellow legislators and the public over serious transgressions against the State, ie the commonweal.
The protection of Free Speech was embedded in the US constitution during an age when, at least in public life, decency and politeness were normal and expected AND when libel and slander could land a defamer in very serious trouble indeed. The civil and criminal laws that could be invoked against those who libeled or slandered, or engaged in seditious conduct through speech, have been watered down, bit by bit, so that generally it's open season on anyone, especially those in public life.
It is hard to imagine a law coming into force that would state a general principal - Everyone is entitled to freedom of speech - and then list the specific reasons why certain classes of people should have the general right curtailed, including the class of people who inhabit high office, especially if the words they speak do not otherwise constitute permissible libel and slander. How would that go? People holding high office should be decent people? I hear the lawyers dancing.
We are long past the breaking point if we need to pass highly specific laws to govern the behaviour of people who have not been inculcated with civilizing values when they were very small children, or to say they can't hold office if they can't hold their tongue.
I think that all the time--how the Founding Fathers foresaw many problems, but no one saw Trump coming. And now the movement he started has moved on without him. It has, in fact, morphed into something worse.
Musk just reinstated a white supremacist banished by Twitter about a decade ago who claims to hate all women. "They should all be raped, locked up, and killed" is a direct quote.
"But we need to start making distinctions between hate speech and free speech. As in we need to define it legally." That is so true, but I also worry about any system that categorizes speech. I agree that Fox News is "news" in the same way I'm addicted to glory holes, but who gets to set the standards? Better (or worse, depending), who gets to enforce them?
This is such a slippery slope argument. Clearly, we can't continue as we are, but any time we set a marker, we also create the potential for anyone with an agenda to misuse it for their own purposes.
If there's one thing I've learned since Trump descended the escalator in 2015, it's that one can rarely be cynical enough. It's hard to keep up, and it's gets worse with each passing day.
In the final analysis, I fear I'm not nearly smart enough to have an answer to this dilemma.
A SLIPPERY SLOPE. And yet it's done successfully in Northern Europe and a few other places, which gives me hope. Look, the horse is out of the barn. Nothing but the law and enforced consequences of breaking said law will stop it. I'm open to all kinds of suggestions, but we can't not do something. That option, I'm afraid, is no longer on the table.
As a philosopher, I am very suspicious of "truth by dictionary": Define 'socialism'! Define 'fascism'!
Um, no. One can characterize such things, but Aristotle's best efforts leave me convinced that trying to "define" them will only produce catastrophic failures. (The story is told of Diogenes running around with a plucked chicken -- a "featherless biped" -- declaring "here is a man!" A friend and colleague of mine from grad school was born with a mutilated leg, and has been on prosthetics all of her life. She once complained about how people were always so delicate about her pin, and so I bulled forward and asked for the story. When I learned the truth I was so outraged I didn't know whether to slap her or kiss her. To this day I keep telling her she should have an escalating series of ever more ridiculous stories about it to tell her classes (because the students always ask) that begin with that "motorcycle accident" and end with her "time serving in SEAL team 5." Because the truth is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Anyway, non-biped, yet still human. But fails the "definition".)
Another thing ... Most people get the idea of a fallacy wrong. A claim is only a fallacy if it is either false &/or irrelevant. (Formal fallacies are a somewhat different matter.) So the 'ad hominem' is only a fallacy if the accusation is false or irrelevant. But if I say that you should not believe what Fred says because he is an habitual liar, and it is true that Fred is an habitual liar, then I am not committing an 'ad hominem' fallacy, even though my statement fits the *dictionary* definition of an 'ad hominem.' That dictionary definition is fucking *wrong*, because it fails to capture the specifically *logical* issues that identify a claim or an argument as a fallacy. And I don't give a shit if it's the OED, it is fucking wrong. If Fred really is an habitual liar, then you should not believe him.
I would be more inclined to talk about characterizationS of free speech, rather than a plucked-chicken "definition." Wittgenstein, in his later works (his early 'Tractatus' that so many swoon over, I find the most insufferable, repetitious, and argument-void twaddle imaginable) speaks of "family resemblances." Suppose you have a constellation of collections (I also despise the language of set theory):
{A, B, C}, {B, C, D, E}, {C, D, E, F, G}, {D, E, F, G}, {E, F, G, H}
You have a continuous chain of connections between the first collection and the last, yet the first and the last have nothing in common. I suspect that ideas like "socialism," "fascism," "free speech" are rather like this. And this is why "defining" them cannot succeed.
Erin and I have two answers for how we met. Hers (the true version) is that we met online. Mine (the slightly embellished version) is that we met in a Turkish prison. Those who meet us for the first time don't know the "truth." Perhaps I'll come up with a version about the time we combined to save Air Force One from crashing in North Korean waters.
Right there's the entire plotline of Escape from New York, my favorite movie when I was a tween (not to mention Snake Plissken's ... er ... snake. Except that Air Force One went down over NYC and NYC was a penal colony. But hey, so's North Korea.
LOL! "Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Ms. Turner." Well, come on now. Everything Rush does is fabulous.
I can't speak to the Wittgenstein argument because I've never read him, but I do enjoy it when you get het up about philosophy. You are always enjoyable and never boring.
But I'm not interested in "truth by dictionary." I want a legal definition that we can use to enforce civility in our public officials. Unless you have any better ideas. I'm open.
Stacey, outstanding and weighty essay. Thank you! I've not had time to read all the way through yet, as the damn timer keeps going Beep! to tell me it is time to do the next round of timed experiments here in Lab-land. Glad to share on FB, mostly preaching to the choir, but who knows? Someone might be swayed from the other side.
Ooooooh! "Timed experiments" sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you, dear Barbara, and if you're going to blow something up, I'd love to see footage, although I wouldn't like it if what you blew up was you.
Oh, I've lost count of how many times I have had to explain that facing consequences for hateful and/or derogatory speech is not the same as free speech being suppressed. Saying whatever the hell you want and passing lies for truth are not free speech. How is this so hard for some people to comprehend? It's very hard for me to wrap my brain around people purposely being cruel and spreading falsehoods to further their own agenda. That's not how my brain works and being around that type of personality (even just being exposed too much online) saps my energy like nothing else. Unfortunately, I am neither a naïve person nor someone who can stick their head in the sand and pretend these things aren't happening. The last 6 years or so have not been good for my mental health, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
That puts you way ahead of the game, Cheri, the fact that you've been trying to drill down on the distinction between free speech versus hate speech. An intelligent, sensitive soul like you must suffer acutely in times like these. If it's any company, if not consolation, plenty more of us are suffering right alongside you.
I'm totally onboard with your argument, Stacey. Indeed, this is something me and my father have talked about and agreed with for years. It is abundantly obvious that the right to Freedom of Speech has been, and continues, to abused. But here's the kicker; the idea that we have untrammeled FOS in the US is a myth, because there are already limits on some types of speech, that have been upheld or even established, by the Supreme Court. Our limits aren't as hard as some other democratic nations, but they're also not nothing. One example is, you can shout "fire!" in a crowed movie theater, but see what happens if you try to get out of charges by claiming FOS; it ain't working. Another example is that no passenger on an airplane can so much as joke about having a gun, a bomb, or any such thing without facing consequences. Indeed, years ago I witnessed a guy who made an off-handed joke about a bomb while on plane, which was seating passengers. I can attest that that guy did not make that flight, because an attendant heard him make the joke and he was promptly escorted off the plane. Still another example is that the Court has held that certain types of porn can be banned if it violates, "community standards," which basically means at the discretion of those in power who have the ability to decide what is a community standard. Yet another is that the Court has ruled that schools can lawfully ban messages on student's clothing, or columns in school newspapers, if the school determines that these things are objectionable in some way. So clearly there are already recognized limits on FOS. And I agree that to protect our democracy, in the age of social media which something that the fore fathers couldn't have dreamed of, we need to go further still. Crafting rules for elected officials would be a prime place to start for all the reasons you're already detailed. I don't know all the specifics that would need to be determined. I understand that by pursuing this there could be un-intended consequences. But look at the consequences we already have. If we don't disabuse ourselves, progressives included, of this antiquated and erroneously romanticized fetishism for FOS all of this will be moot. If we don't act, we will allow the intolerant to continue to high jack our veneration of tolerance to their advantage, and once they control the levers of power they will have no problem squashing speech that they don't like. This is why we need to act now so that this ugly possibility becomes a remote possibility.
I always love reading your comments, Andrew. "If we don't disabuse ourselves, progressives included, of this antiquated and erroneously romanticized fetishism for FOS, all of this will be moot" perfectly distills it. And if your father is anything like you, he must be a formidable man indeed.
Thank you so much, Stacey, I try! And thanks for complimenting my father is he formidable for his age, which is 87. He manages to stay engaged with the world including politics, pretty well. I enjoy talking to him but sometimes he can be crusty! I admit that I've hung up on him when we've clashed. But these are just bumps in our relationship. I love him and our weekly talks have become a comfortable routine.
This subject is an enigma that certainly needs solving. The idea of holding public officials to a higher standard of ethics is a start, perhaps like the Hippocratic Oath. If you’re representing people and committing malfeasance, there has to be accountability. Especially when your words are a direct result of impacting dire consequences to others that prefer an all inclusive civil environment. Teachers teach with ethical standards, as to enlighten one’s mind of growth and knowledge as a tool of self governing power. Some politicians ( and we know who they are) dumb you down to hold on to power. Higher education and lower legislation seems to be a major cog in the enigma. Bring on the Game of Thrones naked walk of shame in Congress, or perhaps the Inglorious Bastards forehead carving for accountability. Practical, no. Deserved, fuck yes!
What's happening in higher education right now...ugh. It actually breaks my heart. I used to hold higher education in great esteem. I still do--when it's actually HIGHER education. What they're doing these days, especially with the introduction of ONLINE GAMBLING, is venal and appalling.
Holy crap, online gambling, that’s a class? How to succeed in business without really trying! At all levels, schools have been cutting art and music education which I feel can be just as important as making a buck for a well rounded education. There should be options for creative outlets and not just ROTE. We’re not all cut from the same cloth, and certainly not all created to be capitalistic robots!
I am no philosopher, but I can cluck like a plucked chicken. Ad hominem arguments aren't my bag, but I am acquainted with glory holes and slippery arguments. I walk softly and carry a stick.
Seems to me that the Founding Fathers could not have anticipated that office holders from the President on down would become as degenerate, unprincipled and uncouth as Mr. Trump. They concocted an oath of office that decent men (in those days) could abide by and they expected people in public office to be generally polite. When it came to dealing with miscreants in the highest offices, they sketched out reasons for impeachment and removal from office that were largely dependent on the serious outrage of their fellow legislators and the public over serious transgressions against the State, ie the commonweal.
The protection of Free Speech was embedded in the US constitution during an age when, at least in public life, decency and politeness were normal and expected AND when libel and slander could land a defamer in very serious trouble indeed. The civil and criminal laws that could be invoked against those who libeled or slandered, or engaged in seditious conduct through speech, have been watered down, bit by bit, so that generally it's open season on anyone, especially those in public life.
It is hard to imagine a law coming into force that would state a general principal - Everyone is entitled to freedom of speech - and then list the specific reasons why certain classes of people should have the general right curtailed, including the class of people who inhabit high office, especially if the words they speak do not otherwise constitute permissible libel and slander. How would that go? People holding high office should be decent people? I hear the lawyers dancing.
We are long past the breaking point if we need to pass highly specific laws to govern the behaviour of people who have not been inculcated with civilizing values when they were very small children, or to say they can't hold office if they can't hold their tongue.
I think that all the time--how the Founding Fathers foresaw many problems, but no one saw Trump coming. And now the movement he started has moved on without him. It has, in fact, morphed into something worse.
Musk just reinstated a white supremacist banished by Twitter about a decade ago who claims to hate all women. "They should all be raped, locked up, and killed" is a direct quote.
That's where we're at now.
"But we need to start making distinctions between hate speech and free speech. As in we need to define it legally." That is so true, but I also worry about any system that categorizes speech. I agree that Fox News is "news" in the same way I'm addicted to glory holes, but who gets to set the standards? Better (or worse, depending), who gets to enforce them?
This is such a slippery slope argument. Clearly, we can't continue as we are, but any time we set a marker, we also create the potential for anyone with an agenda to misuse it for their own purposes.
If there's one thing I've learned since Trump descended the escalator in 2015, it's that one can rarely be cynical enough. It's hard to keep up, and it's gets worse with each passing day.
In the final analysis, I fear I'm not nearly smart enough to have an answer to this dilemma.
A SLIPPERY SLOPE. And yet it's done successfully in Northern Europe and a few other places, which gives me hope. Look, the horse is out of the barn. Nothing but the law and enforced consequences of breaking said law will stop it. I'm open to all kinds of suggestions, but we can't not do something. That option, I'm afraid, is no longer on the table.
Agreed. Tell the nice lady what she’s won.... 😝
LOLOL! A whooooooolleee buncha nothing.
True. But it’s the thought that counts. 😝❤️
As a philosopher, I am very suspicious of "truth by dictionary": Define 'socialism'! Define 'fascism'!
Um, no. One can characterize such things, but Aristotle's best efforts leave me convinced that trying to "define" them will only produce catastrophic failures. (The story is told of Diogenes running around with a plucked chicken -- a "featherless biped" -- declaring "here is a man!" A friend and colleague of mine from grad school was born with a mutilated leg, and has been on prosthetics all of her life. She once complained about how people were always so delicate about her pin, and so I bulled forward and asked for the story. When I learned the truth I was so outraged I didn't know whether to slap her or kiss her. To this day I keep telling her she should have an escalating series of ever more ridiculous stories about it to tell her classes (because the students always ask) that begin with that "motorcycle accident" and end with her "time serving in SEAL team 5." Because the truth is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Anyway, non-biped, yet still human. But fails the "definition".)
Another thing ... Most people get the idea of a fallacy wrong. A claim is only a fallacy if it is either false &/or irrelevant. (Formal fallacies are a somewhat different matter.) So the 'ad hominem' is only a fallacy if the accusation is false or irrelevant. But if I say that you should not believe what Fred says because he is an habitual liar, and it is true that Fred is an habitual liar, then I am not committing an 'ad hominem' fallacy, even though my statement fits the *dictionary* definition of an 'ad hominem.' That dictionary definition is fucking *wrong*, because it fails to capture the specifically *logical* issues that identify a claim or an argument as a fallacy. And I don't give a shit if it's the OED, it is fucking wrong. If Fred really is an habitual liar, then you should not believe him.
I would be more inclined to talk about characterizationS of free speech, rather than a plucked-chicken "definition." Wittgenstein, in his later works (his early 'Tractatus' that so many swoon over, I find the most insufferable, repetitious, and argument-void twaddle imaginable) speaks of "family resemblances." Suppose you have a constellation of collections (I also despise the language of set theory):
{A, B, C}, {B, C, D, E}, {C, D, E, F, G}, {D, E, F, G}, {E, F, G, H}
You have a continuous chain of connections between the first collection and the last, yet the first and the last have nothing in common. I suspect that ideas like "socialism," "fascism," "free speech" are rather like this. And this is why "defining" them cannot succeed.
All of which brings one of my favorite cinematic moments to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9ojK9Q_ARE
Erin and I have two answers for how we met. Hers (the true version) is that we met online. Mine (the slightly embellished version) is that we met in a Turkish prison. Those who meet us for the first time don't know the "truth." Perhaps I'll come up with a version about the time we combined to save Air Force One from crashing in North Korean waters.
Right there's the entire plotline of Escape from New York, my favorite movie when I was a tween (not to mention Snake Plissken's ... er ... snake. Except that Air Force One went down over NYC and NYC was a penal colony. But hey, so's North Korea.
LOL! "Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Ms. Turner." Well, come on now. Everything Rush does is fabulous.
I can't speak to the Wittgenstein argument because I've never read him, but I do enjoy it when you get het up about philosophy. You are always enjoyable and never boring.
But I'm not interested in "truth by dictionary." I want a legal definition that we can use to enforce civility in our public officials. Unless you have any better ideas. I'm open.
Stacey, outstanding and weighty essay. Thank you! I've not had time to read all the way through yet, as the damn timer keeps going Beep! to tell me it is time to do the next round of timed experiments here in Lab-land. Glad to share on FB, mostly preaching to the choir, but who knows? Someone might be swayed from the other side.
Ooooooh! "Timed experiments" sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you, dear Barbara, and if you're going to blow something up, I'd love to see footage, although I wouldn't like it if what you blew up was you.
Oh, I've lost count of how many times I have had to explain that facing consequences for hateful and/or derogatory speech is not the same as free speech being suppressed. Saying whatever the hell you want and passing lies for truth are not free speech. How is this so hard for some people to comprehend? It's very hard for me to wrap my brain around people purposely being cruel and spreading falsehoods to further their own agenda. That's not how my brain works and being around that type of personality (even just being exposed too much online) saps my energy like nothing else. Unfortunately, I am neither a naïve person nor someone who can stick their head in the sand and pretend these things aren't happening. The last 6 years or so have not been good for my mental health, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
That puts you way ahead of the game, Cheri, the fact that you've been trying to drill down on the distinction between free speech versus hate speech. An intelligent, sensitive soul like you must suffer acutely in times like these. If it's any company, if not consolation, plenty more of us are suffering right alongside you.
I'm totally onboard with your argument, Stacey. Indeed, this is something me and my father have talked about and agreed with for years. It is abundantly obvious that the right to Freedom of Speech has been, and continues, to abused. But here's the kicker; the idea that we have untrammeled FOS in the US is a myth, because there are already limits on some types of speech, that have been upheld or even established, by the Supreme Court. Our limits aren't as hard as some other democratic nations, but they're also not nothing. One example is, you can shout "fire!" in a crowed movie theater, but see what happens if you try to get out of charges by claiming FOS; it ain't working. Another example is that no passenger on an airplane can so much as joke about having a gun, a bomb, or any such thing without facing consequences. Indeed, years ago I witnessed a guy who made an off-handed joke about a bomb while on plane, which was seating passengers. I can attest that that guy did not make that flight, because an attendant heard him make the joke and he was promptly escorted off the plane. Still another example is that the Court has held that certain types of porn can be banned if it violates, "community standards," which basically means at the discretion of those in power who have the ability to decide what is a community standard. Yet another is that the Court has ruled that schools can lawfully ban messages on student's clothing, or columns in school newspapers, if the school determines that these things are objectionable in some way. So clearly there are already recognized limits on FOS. And I agree that to protect our democracy, in the age of social media which something that the fore fathers couldn't have dreamed of, we need to go further still. Crafting rules for elected officials would be a prime place to start for all the reasons you're already detailed. I don't know all the specifics that would need to be determined. I understand that by pursuing this there could be un-intended consequences. But look at the consequences we already have. If we don't disabuse ourselves, progressives included, of this antiquated and erroneously romanticized fetishism for FOS all of this will be moot. If we don't act, we will allow the intolerant to continue to high jack our veneration of tolerance to their advantage, and once they control the levers of power they will have no problem squashing speech that they don't like. This is why we need to act now so that this ugly possibility becomes a remote possibility.
I always love reading your comments, Andrew. "If we don't disabuse ourselves, progressives included, of this antiquated and erroneously romanticized fetishism for FOS, all of this will be moot" perfectly distills it. And if your father is anything like you, he must be a formidable man indeed.
Thank you so much, Stacey, I try! And thanks for complimenting my father is he formidable for his age, which is 87. He manages to stay engaged with the world including politics, pretty well. I enjoy talking to him but sometimes he can be crusty! I admit that I've hung up on him when we've clashed. But these are just bumps in our relationship. I love him and our weekly talks have become a comfortable routine.