CDR: Why Free Speech Matters

[Tim May]

At 11:55 PM +0200 9/25/00, Konrad Podloucky wrote:
>
>You got an interesting point there. Being a "latter-day euro"
>(from a country which has been accused of having a fascist
>government by most of Europe, but that's another story) I don't
>really get it that if I were a Jew (homosexual, guy with a
>non-german name, ... pick your favorite) I'd have to tolerate a
>group of loonies who don't grant me the right to live.
>Sure I can't force you to like me or be nice to me, but I think
>there are certain very basic rules, each of us has to obey,
>which make living in a society possible. Let's face it: Society
>isn't self-regulating and as soon as an ideology, philosophy or
>whatever severely restricts the way of life of a group it's not
>worth being tolerated, IMNSHO. The very least I expect from a
>fellow human being is that (s)he acknowledges my right to exist.
>Personally I think, burning their literature is going a step too
>far, but being a European, I understand why they (esp. the
>French) are so afraid of Nazism. But the Anti-Nazi Hysteria is
>the wrong way to go.


>First, a point of clarification in your language. Your phrase " I'd 
>have to tolerate a
group of loonies who don't grant me the right to live. " suggests 
that in countries with free speech (nominally, the U.S.) that there 
is some acceptance of crimes of physical violence. Not so.

Saying that Jews should be liquidated is generally legal. There are 
no laws in the U.S. banning books or articles saying this, nor laws 
banning Nazi literature, Nazi regalia, etc.

(There are attempts by certain Zionist-funded groups like the 
Southern Poverty Law Center to bankrupt groups like Aryan Nation on 
trumped-up grounds of "incitement" and "complicity." Sadly, the 
liberal simp-wimp commies in America are leading our nation in the 
direction Germany and Austria have gone. Leading some of us to wonder 
just who really did win the Second World War.)

On to the main issue, that of "free speech" and why it matters.

There's much that can be said here...entire books on the issue of 
what "free speech" means, and why it is A Good Thing.

Obviously, "free speech" means no laws abridging the expression of 
opinions, however unpopular or heinous. Free speech does NOT mean 
"free actions," importantly. In a society with free speech, it is 
perfectly permissable--in the sense of being legal--to advocate 
liquidation of the Jews, to propose enslavement of blacks, whatever. 
It is NOT generally permissable to _implement_ these ideas, 
naturally. And therein lies the difference.

I cannot do justice to the arguments for why the free speech outlook 
is preferable to one in which Bad Thoughts are not legally 
expressable. One avenue of thought is that such basics, e.g., as 
embodied in the U.S. Bill of Rights, are "Schelling points" for 
stable societies. Sort of a "I'll agree to not interfere with your 
words and what you read and whom you associate with if you agree not 
to do the same with me; but you'd better not try to coerce me into 
your worldview or initiate force against me or I'll respond with 
massive force."

(This is not the most elegant expression of this point of view, but 
perhaps you get the idea.)

This "Schelling point" approach is what "open societies" have largely 
settle upon over the centuries. "Live and let live." Or, as I like to 
think of it, a kind of Neo-Calvinist approach: if my neighbor wants 
to goof off and watch porn all day and go to Klan and Nazi rallies 
every weekend, that is his choice and it is actually _immoral_ for me 
to interfere in his choices to fuck up his life."

As for Germany, Austria, and all of the other countries which claim 
to be liberal democracies, open societies, but which have various 
laws banning Nazi literature, imprisoning people for expressing their 
view that the Holocaust was exaggerated, and so on, their policies 
are both _wrong_ and _counterproductive_.

Nothing has made Nazism more interesting to young persons, mostly 
young men, than the hint of illegality. "If they don't want me to 
know about this, there must be something to it." Plus, the usual 
flaunting of disrespect for authority.

Would such anti-Nazi laws have stopped Hitler's rise to power in the 
1930s? Maybe. Maybe it just would have been called something else, to 
"game around" whatever the specific language of the laws might have 
been.

And, of course, the German and Austrian governments of the time 
changed the laws as they saw fit.

Of course, the crypto relevance of all of this is that strong crypto 
is already making it possible to distribute Nazi and neo-Nazi 
material in these countries without any possibility that the 
governments can halt the flow.


This will make such laws moot, which is a good thing.


--Tim May


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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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