Is it a real problem in practice? but sure nothing is perfect or infallible. The USA system can get stuck with a bunch of political appointees on the supreme court interpreting a centuries old piece of paper.

We're talking about challenging claims of fact now more than hate speech but of course I accept that the USA can move in the slightly less free speech direction. The democratic issue is down to where the arguments hold sway within the systems. In the UK we can elect/chuck out MPs based on their views and actions on these issues. In the USA you have to change the constitution!

The trouble with 75% majorities is that they are effectively impossible on most issues where progress just about never makes such leaps. Brexit is a red herring as we're absolutely not talking about deciding these things by referendums - can you imagine how it's going to go when you lot have to update the constitution??

Sin of omission. Reading Chez’s post and responses provided me, within the space of less than three minutes, a whole plethora of Monty Python sketches. I submit this one just for fun.


BBC TV Studio- The talking head is Male.

BBC talking head: We are interviewing Mr. Kittle a sheepherder from the Lake District, to allow the common folk to have their views aired on national TV. I understand Mr. Kittle that you disbelieve America put men on the Moon.

UK sheepherder: "That’s right, the US did not land on the Moon it was all faked."

BBC talking head: "NASA has actual videos taken during the first moon landing in 1969."

UK sheepherder: That could be easily faked; and everyone knows America was in a race with Russian to the Moon so they just faked it so they could spike the ball in the end zone so to speak and claim a victory. Plus all Americans are liars. In addition they know nothing about real football anyway.

BBC talking head: That’s an interesting perspective and many people belief it I think. Let’s move on to your views on climate change and your sheep pastures now having extra grass for your sheep - And the wool being of better quality.

UK sheepherder: All true, during the last ten years my sheep have been extra fat and healthy and have produced so much wool that added so much extra income that I was able to go the local pub every day of the week instead of just Saturday evening.

BBC talking head: That is very interesting information on this even if just anecdotal evidence. I’m happy that your income has improved. Have you upgraded to a more quality drink while at the Pub?

UK sheepherder: “Nah, I just stick to the local brew, that’s good enough for me.”

[Red lights flashing in studio – The BBC Talking head is physically removed from his desks by uniformed policemen and replaced by a female robot with red hair, who announces in a voice reminiscent of Money Penny] :

“The BBC has arrested the previous host for not challenging enough all the patently ridiculous claims of Mr. Kittle, including not upgrading to a more wholesome beverage at the pub.”

[The robot then produces a hand gun and shoots Mr. Kittle in the head. The body is removed by two husky guards in uniforms sporting the BBC logo.]

The Robot makes an additional statement:

“Per recent UK laws that the BBC must adhere to, Mr. Kittle has been removed from society for believing and promoting absurd claims to a wide audience and disseminating information that calls into question the official view of the UK parliament, established government agencies, and the Royal Society. God Save the Queen.

“This program is now officially terminated; the movie Clockwork Orange will now be shown to fill in time until the next scheduled program officially sanctioned by the EU.” God Save the EU. “


****************

In the interval before the Movie begins the BBC is required to have music:

What's wrong with local beer? I recommend Twickenham Fine ale and Surrey Hills but Youngs at a pinch or even Fullers on good day.

Plus we have lots of local smaller breweries. Had a wonderful pint of pressure drop the other day in a pub in Wanstead - how local does the brewery have to be?

We've amended the constitution many times, so obviously it is not effectively impossible. Many of our most important social changes were caused by or caused constitutional amendments - voting rights for women and minorities, presidential term limits, prohibition, direct election of Senators, income taxes, abolishing slavery, etc. Seems to me that having a political system benefits from the stability that comes from requiring a supermajority to change some core citizenship rights. I don't want a mere majority of democratically elected representatives to have the power to take away basic human rights.

Yes I know it has been amended mostly a very long time ago in a different world. That doesn't make it plausible that it can be amended on issues such as free speech in any manner that reacts to the merit of the case.

This isn't just about human rights. There's no human rights issue about the BBC being regulated and being told they have to challenge claims of fact on climate change. Can we at least agree on that?

I agree with OriPosition; and the US constitution was amended with the Bill of Rights not long after it was adopted. It has provided bedrock liberties that have stood the test of time.

I think there is just a fundamental disagreement with Chez that runs rather deep into political territory. So be it. I think the debate is useful but begins to sour when the bare fundamentals are so at odds.

Vermeer was a better painter than Goya.

Well so has the UK system and for a lot longer.

Both have had many problems and are creeking a bit these days but at least ours can adapt - I appreciate some of you see that ability to adapt as the problem.

The 1960s were not that long ago - that is within the lifetime of many people still alive. The reason it isn't plausible that free speech laws won't be amended any time soon is because these laws are still broadly supported by most Americans.

I can't really say about the BBC, which AFAIK is a government organization and so subject to government regulation in a way that private speech is not. I believe our conversation here began as a discussion about hate speech laws. You asked for an example of people being prosecuted for hate speech and I gave you one where a thief being arrested for shoplifting was also charged with "ethnic intimidation" for calling police officers "Nazis" and "skinheads." You say that this kind of abuse wouldn't happen in the UK. Okay, maybe so, you would know better than I. But it would happen in the US, which is a much larger and less centrally controlled country than the UK.

Yeah, this is why reducing free speech issues to questions about constitutional/government structure isn't very interesting. There are benefits as well as downsides to the UK system and I have a lot of admiration for its history as a nation. However, my view in favor of a broad guarantee of free speech and against hate speech laws isn't contingent on accepting the American constitutional system - I would support it under an unwritten constitutional parliamentary system as well.

It's still a pretty long time ago and the vast majority were way before that. But I do agree with your point about USA opinion - I just think it's a misconceived point because change is a process where you rarely get support for the destination before you even have any prospect of enacting some change.


The BBC was an example of but are you really saying it's a human rights issue for the press is regulated to the extent of having to challenge some claims of fact?

Yes the conversation has got away from us a bit, sorry about that. I was objecting to your claim that it would always goes that way when it clearly hasn't in the UK. If you're restricting your claim to the USA then my point is moot but I would argue that the difference between the USA and the UK is in part down to the different systems of government.

I have limited admiration for either our countries history as nations but that's not really the issue beyond my politics favouring change. Yes I fully accept that you make your case for free speech on the basis of merit - no complaint at all from me about that.

I do think you risk an indirect appeal to the constitution when you point out that public opinion favours free speech. That's because too many of them may favour free speech because it's in their constitution. Can't prove this either way but I'd bet a modest sum that if your constitution had had a carve out for hate speech then that too would be supported by public opinion, and the wisdom of the founding fathers in having done it would be lauded.

There's a lot to this but it means there's a lot to delve into - we can hopefully try and fail miserably without it going too sour.

Starting with free speech is possibly not ideal. It seems a very long time ago now but I was once anticipating a lively debate with you know who about the merits of the USA written constitution, supreme court approach vs a more flexible accountable approach. I'd think trump has more or less settled it on my side of the argument but I suppose many will disagree and we have that brexit thing strangling the life out my side.

I'm actually a little surprised you make this argument - isn't one of your objections to written constitutions that they don't provide a real defense against unjust or fascist governments because they can just get rid of them?

I'm not restricting it to the US - I don't believe you that it wouldn't happen in the UK - but I don't see any point in arguing about a counterfactual like that. My view is that limitations on speech will usually favor the powerful and especially those enforcing those limitations more than the weak. For instance, lèse-majesté laws are still common around the world, even in liberal democracies. Blasphemy laws are even more common around the world, including in Northern Ireland. I'm willing to accept the tradeoff of allowing hate speech if it also means we don't ban speech attacking the powerful.

They've already got this case, where the guy was convicted, so.. the bat**** crazy abuse meter is already pushing 11 over there.

I almost mentioned that case in response to microbet's 'which 2+2ers should go to jail' post. Deeply controversial as that case was - he was fined £800

There's so much in here that could be unpacked but my view that I think you're responding to, is that constitutional right to on free speech doesn't protect the USA from dictatorship.

That doesn't contradict the claim that the everyday politics of laws/beliefs changing is normally a gradual co-evolving process.

I'm not saying it can't happen. I was pointing out you would really struggle to show that's how hate speech laws in the UK have been used and therefore it wasn't the inevitable consequence you seemed to be claiming. Tom is on more fertile grounds for criticism with the nazi cat.

A fundamental disagreement between us is that you have more confidence than I do in the ability of the polis to not make bad decisions. I'm sympathetic to the view that human societies over the long term bend towards justice, but I think this bending is very noisy and so think we should use safeguards to protect the best laws we've already established, even if that means we are less efficient in forming new ones.

Pretty sure I've not claimed it is inevitable, just likely. I think it is wise to take a comparative politics perspective on these kind of basic questions, and so I don't assume that the US or UK won't someday have the same kinds of leaders other countries have had that support limitations on speech about religion or political figures/movements. Making it legally difficult for such leaders to carry out these wishes seems like a a good way of preparing for that day.

Resiliency is a major point of a society. If you start at the very beginning, any sense of justice and liberty and property that even remotely resembles today's starts as the equivalent of a mutual defense pact. There's no way to prevent a bad actor who's stronger than an individual from taking their stuff (and possibly killing/harming them), but the collective making sure that's a bad idea- a very bad idea- minimizes the number of times it happens and the number of repeat offenses *even while wannabe bad actors live among them*. This isn't a permanently stable state though. If the bad actors unite (or recruit outside help) with strength stronger than the rest of the collective, they take everybody's stuff by force or by threat (any ancient civilization getting conquered, etc). If the bad actors can't win an all-out war, but can do a lot of damage to anybody who resists, it's incumbent on the rest of society to band together to bitchslap them hard when they start getting uppity. Every instance of appeasement in place of justice causes an even more difficult problem the next time until the mutual defense pact is clearly toothless and society is ruled by the bad actors, in effect if not literally in name.

And if history has shown us anything, it's that power that's not held accountable- either because there's no reasonable mechanism for it to be or because those whose responsibility it is are ignorant/delusional/complicit/huge pussies when it's time to act- expands and turns evil (if it wasn't already) against those under it almost incessantly and inexorably. Other than not getting taken over from the outside, it's THE most fundamental obligation of an established society to prevent the accumulation of power anywhere near a dangerous level and to harshly punish any misuse of it.. because if it doesn't, it's a clear path straight to hell, and almost everybody who isn't high on the food chain of the unaccountable power structure (which, almost by definition, is a large percentage) loses and loses hard.

From that perspective, considering any open-ended mandate to censor (hate speech, offensive speech, etc) as a desirable power to even exist, much less to be controllable by majority vote, can only come from a complete failure to understand anything. Even the basic observation that power tends to be used against the powerless, not for the powerless, is enough to throw this idea far, far away.

Furthermore, even if it's still functioning "as intended", when it's applied, or even attempted to be applied, in favor of a group that still faces any significant animus (say, LGBT), it almost completely destroys any ability for the two sides to cooperate to take down power that needs to be taken down. Rednecks and gay-friendly liberals may not like each other, but they could agree that, say, cutting health care spending to fund a tax break for zillionaire campaign donors is probably just horse**** and that the people who are doing that need to be voted out ASAP, but once you pit them against each other as their primary focus, there's no chance of that happening anymore, and the system becomes ripe for bad actors who campaign on the slap fight and then find even more ways to hand out money to the rich while everybody's busy arguing about who's allowed to say what. Republicans have spent 40+ years and countless amounts of money and time engineering those kinds of divisions for exactly that purpose, and Chezlaw's all like "Hold My Beer". That's not even speculation- it's obvious how well the campus censorship stories play with the right. They read that stuff and they're looking for a fight.

I seriously doubt that is remotely true. I'm also in favour of maximal recording of all interactions between the police and the public along with it being a serious criminal offense for the police to intentionally obstruct any recording.

i do have a lot less confidence than you in a constitution to help and more confidence in democratic accountability to help. We can clearly legitimately argue about the principles but I'd take the UK police/justice over that of the USA in a heartbeat - it's not close, not by a country mile and I think that's in part down to our system being better. Of course there could be other reasons and I suppose some might disagree and think USA policing/justice is better - does anyone think that?

This is where I think we clearly disagree. I think the good stuff is in the vague noisy messy bit and that despite the problems it's better to embrace it rather than avoid it.

okay I was responding to the below. I understand your point better now. it's a valid concern of course and a valid objection to many laws including this one. As is the objection that it will be misused against regular people.

Sorry I wasn't clear here, by "polis" I meant the body of citizens of a country, not the police.

I've been influenced in my thinking here by the argument in Why Nations Fail that strong institutions that are inclusive rather than extractive are a major component in the long-term success of a nation. A strong rule of law that protects the minority rights of citizens is one of the most prominent examples of such an institution, so I'm very leery of weakening it by making exceptions to benefit specific groups. I tend to think that such exceptions over time will be taken advantage by elites or used as an excuse by elites to make other exceptions that do so.

The issue isn't free speech. The issue is the size of megaphone you can get anonymously. We don't need to curtail free speech, but we do need to end anonymous speech.

http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk...v-Mark-Meechan

“As a matter of law, the test is not whether the video was offensive but whether it was grossly offensive. That standard is an objective one in which I must apply the standards of an open and just multi-racial society, taking account of context and the relevant circumstances, applying reasonably enlightened contemporary standards, considering whether the message is liable to cause gross offence to those to whom it relates: in this case, Jewish people. It is a high test. I concluded, applying these standards to the evidence, that your video was not just offensive but grossly so, as well as menacing, and that you knew that or at least recognised that risk.

“The fact that you claim in the video, and elsewhere, that the video was intended only to annoy your girlfriend and as a joke and that you did not intend to be racist is of little assistance to you. A joke can be grossly offensive. A racist joke or a grossly offensive video does not lose its racist or grossly offensive quality merely because the maker asserts he only wanted to get a laugh.

Aside from prosecutorial discretion are there any prohibitions on “whom it relates”? I didn’t run across anything other than some rather vague guidelines. So I’m thinking the law could just as well apply to politicians and the various groups who support them, along with virtually anyone or any group that would likely suffer gross offence. And that's irrespective of actual intent or even if "to whom it relates" wasn't actually exposed to it. Am I missing something here?

So, ban non de plumes?

@john21. I have to make the small point that Scottish law and English law are not the same thing. Afaik everything we're discussing here is going to be much the same apart possibly from process.

That aside. Yes it's very clear which groups and this site looks pretty good if you want more info: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...10/index2.html

So it cannot be political affiliation and intent/motivation is very important.