In his 1941 State of the Union Address, President Franklin Roosevelt imagined “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms” which he identified as freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. This has come to be called the four freedoms speech, and was the inspiration for last year’s BBC
Yes, excellent lecture. I had quite a few thoughts on listening to it. I think I am less pragmatic (as you say) than she is, and so I see things a little differently despite being on the same side of the overall issue.
There's a delicate issue that comes up a few times in the lecture and the Q&A, which is the role of the archetypal Twitter mob in curtailing artistic freedom and free expression. She isn't always clear about this, but we do need to respect the freedom of the people in the Twitter mob to say what they have to say. What they have to say might be to call for other people's freedom to be curtailed, though, which I think is what happens when an employer is urged to fire someone. Strictly speaking, it's the firing that punishes that person's speech, and the employer who is responsible for that. But there is a gray area where the mobbing (which is just the sum total of a bunch of people exercising their free speech) is a punishment in itself, like when a bunch of readers are convinced to boycott a book. I feel like we don't have a good framework for thinking about this kind of problem.
As with a lot of the stuff people are saying in defense of free speech these days, I wish the rights of the listener/reader/audience were foregrounded more. If we focus solely on the rights of the creator to say what they want to say, then it sounds quite selfish to say that this should take precedence over other people's discomfort at what was said. But if we emphasize that silencing art means coming between the artist and a willing, eager audience, who have the right to decide what they want to hear or read, that is a more positive vision.
On "money is not speech," which comes up when she mentions Citizens United. I think everyone would agree that money is not speech, but the right to free expression might still require the right to spend money on expression. By analogy with reproductive rights: a law that said "you're allowed to have an abortion, we're just going to restrict the ways you can spend money on abortions," in practice is a restriction on reproductive freedom.
Yes, excellent lecture. I had quite a few thoughts on listening to it. I think I am less pragmatic (as you say) than she is, and so I see things a little differently despite being on the same side of the overall issue.
There's a delicate issue that comes up a few times in the lecture and the Q&A, which is the role of the archetypal Twitter mob in curtailing artistic freedom and free expression. She isn't always clear about this, but we do need to respect the freedom of the people in the Twitter mob to say what they have to say. What they have to say might be to call for other people's freedom to be curtailed, though, which I think is what happens when an employer is urged to fire someone. Strictly speaking, it's the firing that punishes that person's speech, and the employer who is responsible for that. But there is a gray area where the mobbing (which is just the sum total of a bunch of people exercising their free speech) is a punishment in itself, like when a bunch of readers are convinced to boycott a book. I feel like we don't have a good framework for thinking about this kind of problem.
As with a lot of the stuff people are saying in defense of free speech these days, I wish the rights of the listener/reader/audience were foregrounded more. If we focus solely on the rights of the creator to say what they want to say, then it sounds quite selfish to say that this should take precedence over other people's discomfort at what was said. But if we emphasize that silencing art means coming between the artist and a willing, eager audience, who have the right to decide what they want to hear or read, that is a more positive vision.
On "money is not speech," which comes up when she mentions Citizens United. I think everyone would agree that money is not speech, but the right to free expression might still require the right to spend money on expression. By analogy with reproductive rights: a law that said "you're allowed to have an abortion, we're just going to restrict the ways you can spend money on abortions," in practice is a restriction on reproductive freedom.