Free Speech

"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." -Eleanor Roosevelt I've always been a big fan of personal freedom, which includes the freedom to speak your mind, say what you think, ask questions, be wrong, and learn. This is, after all, how we've all improved ourselves over our lives, as none of us were born knowing all that we've managed to acquire over our lifetimes. And I've never had to have an official comment policy for all the years I've been blogging; the most I've ever…

This time last year I sat in a small room at the Law Society surrounded by far more luminary individuals such as Simon Singh and Dara à Briain for the launch of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. In short, the law is extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics. The guests heard from scientists, comedians, and journalists who had been gagged by these laws. The English libel law is particular dangerous for bloggers, who are generally…

With the whole controversy around Michael Savage being blocked from entering England because of his inflammatory comments I thought I would look at attitudes toward speech. One thing I've noticed is that Americans tend to be less instrumental when it comes to matters of speech; that is, speech is not justified as a means, as opposed to being a basic liberal right. In contrast in most other parts of the world people seem more likely to justify the right to speech as a utility in the service of some other end. This difference results in a variance in the way people approach offensive and…

In my post below where I show that different groups accept free speech to different extents some asked if the fact that those with better vocabularies supported free speech could just be that they were college educated. To some extent this seems to be true. Here is the chart again of support for a racist being allowed to speak by vocabulary test score (0 out of 10 on the left, 10 out of 10 on the right). Less than High School: High School: Some College: College: Graduate School: There aren't too many with college & graduate educations who have vocab scores below 5 out of 10, ergo,…

There are several questions regarding speech which which have huge sample sizes in the GSS: SPKRAC (Allow Racist to Speak), SPKHOMO (Allow Homosexual to Speak), SPKCOM (Allow Communist to Speak) and SPKATH (Allow Anti-Religionist to Speak) all have sample sizes of 53,000. This means that one can look for trends at a relatively granular scale. I decided to check how people lined up as a function of Age, belief in God, political views and intelligence (vocabulary). Lots of charts below. A key: 1) Age goes from 18-89, left to right. 2) God goes from (left to right) atheist, to agnostic, to…

I have just finished taking my last major exam of medical school - Step 2 of the boards (including Step 2 Clinical Skills, or CS, which costs 1200 bucks, requires you to travel to one of a few cities in the country hosting it, and is sealed by a EULA that forbids me from talking about what the test was like), and am winding down my medschool career in the next few weeks. It's about 2 weeks from Match Day (the 19th), when I'll find out for sure where I will spend the next 5 or so years of my life. I'll be sure to have a post up a little after noon that day when I find out what the answer is…

frankbi has the latest on the Listener against free speech. Pamela Stirling, after using dubious legal threats to shut up a critic says: So that, we're not into censorship of any kind. As we discussed with Brian Leyland, the Voltaire quote, you know: "I disagree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it." Also worth checking out at the link is an interview with BBC journalist Alex Kirby on "balance" in reporting on climate change.

Lawyer Steven Price, who specialises in media law, comments on the Listener's use of legal threats to silence a blogger: In the comments section of the correction and apology, someone has helpfully posted a link to a copy of HotTopic's original post. Don't you just love the internet? On the off-chance that the link is removed in the near future, let me take the liberty of reproducing it here. By all means, pay a visit, and encourage others to do likewise. I hope that the post receives exponentially greater attention as a result of this legal threat. I don't say that because I'm a free speech…

Earlier, I wrote how the environmental writer for the New Zealand Listener was fired after Heartland demanded he be silenced, and: Gareth Renowden has the full story. Well not any more. The Listener hired a lawyer to threaten him and the post has been taken down and an apology put up, which includes this statement: In fact Mr Hansford was not sacked by The Listener, and nor did The Listener seek to censor or suppress Mr Hansford's views. When you use lawyers to suppress people's views it kind of undercuts your claims that you didn't suppress Hansford's views. Dave Hansford commented on the…

Three months ago, I wrote about vacuous legal threats issued by the Society of Homeopaths against one of the better skeptical bloggers, Le Canard Noir, who runs the excellent Quackometer Blog and created the infamous Quackometer, in order to intimidate him into silence. The attempt backfired spectacularly, as scores of bloggers reposted the article by Le Canard Noir that prompted the legal threats, in the face of which his ISP had caved. Now it looks like it might be time to do it all again, this time with a different twit who has issued abusive threats against Le Canard Noir. This time…

Kurt Anderson writes a great piece in New York on the recent tendency to blow things wildly out of proportion: Almost any argument about race, gender, Israel, or the war is now apt to be infected by a spirit of self-righteous grievance and demonization. Passionate disagreement isn't sufficient; bad faith must be imputed to one's opponents: skepticism of affirmative action equals racism, antiwar sentiment equals anti-Americanism (or terrorist sympathy), criticism of Israel is by definition anti-Semitic, and so on. More and more people think they're entitled to the right not just to ignore or…

Managers of Russia's new media have informed their journalists that from now on 50% of the news must be positive: At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be "positive." In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of…