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Free Speech is a spook, an incoherent concept that collapses the very instant it drifts outside the bounds of a rigidly-coherent values environment. To the extent that it has significant meaning, it has never been tried, and to the extent that it has been tried, it has had no significant meaning.
That being said, I see no actual value gained from taking these scalps. Let me speak plainly: I am confident that somewhere between a large plurality and an outright majority of Blues are sad that the assassin missed. If I'm correct in that assessment, it seems to me that the reality of modal Blue opinion is orders of magnitude more important than any aesthetic "norm" secured by enforcing a taboo on celebration of lethal political violence. Canceling people over their personal endorsement of political murder is not actually going to change the modal Blue opinion; all it does is help Blue Tribe as a whole hide the reality of that modal opinion, by coaching them through the entirely inconsequential and pointlessly pro forma rituals of "norms." Speech is information. Blue Tribe is leaking information, and the net result of these cancelation efforts is to help them stem the leakage. I would vastly prefer for people to speak and be heard honestly, so that we can more clearly see where we stand.
That being said, if we're going to do the comparison game, it would be better to be specific about the objects of comparison. I remember a working-class hispanic nobody getting fired for making the OK sign. Is that a good comparison to this? If not, which specific cancelation would be a better one? I remember a lot of people being cancelled for speaking or yelling the N-word in public; I also remember those people not actually getting a defense from the right. Would cases like that be a better comparison?
Can you elaborate?
I have quite a number of times before. Which point would you like elaborated in this instance?
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Plausibly so. One area that is grossly lacking any remotely suitable theory is one of character development, especially on a large scale such that it could produce any sort of a coherent values environment (not even necessarily a rigid one). To even think about such a project descends into questions of things like deterrence/rehabilitation and perhaps even free will, itself. One tension I observe is that when the left/communists engaged in large-scale projects of "character development" (given that it is a type of character that many in this forum would think is bad/harmful), many folks are pretty okay with believing that it can, indeed, be relatively successful in producing a coherent values environment (perhaps one that is, indeed, rigid).
That is to say, it is perhaps all well and good to have a heuristic rule where one looks at the population which is considering adopting a norm of free speech and concluding, "If such a population has sufficiently coherent values, a norm of free speech is potentially plausible/possibly beneficial, but if it does not, then it is not." But the core problem is somewhat upstream of that, and it is one that we have almost no clue concerning how it works. There are likely, indeed, almost surely, some feedback loops back upstream, but it becomes an even more impossible task to perform any analysis on such feedback without any conception whatsoever of how the thing it's feeding back into works.
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Here is how I try to make the concept of Free Speech coherent, at least for this narrow topic. Free Speech needs to be a graded concept, with levels of speech.
Let us set up a little context. Mr Red-one exercises his first level right to free speech. Mr Blue-two beats up Mr Red-one and boasts about it. Mr Red-one decides to stay quiet. That is a clear infringement of Mr Red-one's right to free speech.
Mr Red-three exercises his first level right to free speech. Mr Blue-four says "You had better shut your trap, or you will get a beating, like Mr Red-one." This is second level speech. Is it covered and protected by the concept of free speech? Mr Red-five makes a public fuss about what Mr Blue-four said, trying to persuade Mr Blue-four's employer to dismiss him. This is third level speech. First level is political policy discussion. Second level is using speech to deprive others of their first level speech rights. Third level is using speech to deprive others of their second level speech rights.
I think it is coherent to say
Could we say that the first and second level are both good? I see this as the incoherence that @FCfromSSC is concerned about. Some people think that free speech absolutism requires us to uphold second level speech. But that has it backwards. Since second level speech rights trash first level speech rights, upholding second level rights is going soft on free speech. There is a real conflict, but we have to uphold the first level and therefore we must disparage the second level.
What of the complication of saying that the third level is back to being good again? It really is a complication. It might be neater superficially to say that the third level is also bad. But that is to make the mistake of the lazy school teacher who doesn't make the effort to find out who is the bully and who is the victim that hit back. The first level is the one that we are trying to defend, so we object to the second level, but consistency leads to a ripple effect, with the third level good again, least we go soft on our objection to the second level, and end up weak in our defense of the first level.
You have accurately described the problem, but there is no ruleset available to us that can actually enforce correct outcomes in the face of widespread personal bias. Every point in the sequence you describe requires subjective judgement and line-drawing. This can work if you have coherent values, and it won't work if you don't, but it is the coherent values that are the load-bearing element in any case. We might as well be honest and say "We believe speech should be free so long as it isn't too objectionable". That would be both easier to understand and considerably more honest, lacking only the gloss of self-righteous, unearned piety.
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This is naked sophistry. Surely your opponents could as easily find supposed examples of Trump engaging in second level speech (uh-oh no-no bad), which would make calling for his assassination third level speech (Real American Defended Free Speech) and trying to get assassination fans fired fourth level speech (??????????).
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“Free Speech is a spook, an incoherent concept that collapses the very instant it drifts outside the bounds of a rigidly coherent values environment”
I’ve been saying this for a few years. Free speech is a fiction once speech becomes a real threat to the power.
The young in America had been taken in by Hamas thought. For the Jews does it make sense to suppress the speech or let it continue to spread? And Holocaust 2 occurs. It’s unquestionable that you suppress speech in that situation.
If you have a culture that is 80-90% heavily supported and secure in its power then free speech is a nice thing. Having 10-20% of weirdos in the population talk about other ideas isn’t a threat to the regime.
I realized a while ago that I supported Pinochet. His economic regime made Chile the richest country in the region. His regime faced a legitimate communists threat.
If my choice is suppress free speech or my country becomes a communists hell hole then it’s an easy decision for me.
My thoughts on firing HD lady are changing today. I guess people like her vote and provide cover for the elites. Perhaps it’s a good thing to get the message to people like her what is the appropriate way to think by firing a couple foot soldiers.
Wanted to write basically the same thing but you beat me to it. Free speech make sense in prosperous and stable liberal democracy because its enemies are mostly harmless. You can't say the same about Weimar republic.
The United States was not prosperous and stable in its early years, free speech made sense in a heavily indebted country experiencing periodic tax rebellions, Indian raids, slave uprisings (and the perceived powder keg of a Haitian style slave uprising), and the threat of further war from Britain.
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The issue with the Weimar Republic was not the liberals.
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