We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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If you join the Free Speech Union, it will offer to spend your money on defending vile people like Heather Herbert
“Speaking ill of the dead is not an offence, however offensive. If Heather Herbert joins the @SpeechUnion, we will do our best to help.”
I consider my membership dues well spent.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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As a member of the FSU I don’t have a problem with that. As an Anerdonian, I do have a problem with the University not having fired this person for having brought the university into disrepute.
Quite right too.
Yes – scumbags have the right to Freedom of Speech.
Heather Herbert is a scumbag – and Heather Herbert has the right to Freedom of Speech.
The only concern I’d have is that I imagine she doesn’t want other people to have freedom of speech. Although the Free Speech Union should support her right to spout her vile nonsense I think to be a member you really need to buy into both sides, namely that you can say whatever you like but you must allow me to say whatever I want too.
So the FSU can surely advocate her right to say her vile nonsense, but I’m not sure she is a good candidate for membership, since I doubt she supports the latter part of this requirement.
And, FWIW, this is a perfect example of one of the great benefits of free speech. She says these vile things, and now we all know what sort of person she really is.
I second Quentin’s comment.
Wot Fraser said.
Of course the FSU is correct to stand up for vile person, just as the ACLU was correct to back the Illinois Nazis in Skokie (“I hate Illinois Nazis”) and the police were right to protect the blackshirts in the Cable St. riots.
That said, speech without limits doesn’t mean speech without consequences. Those who find her comments vile and loathsome are also free not only to call her out for them but also to drum her out of polite society.
That last bit, the societal pressure, is what too often goes missing from discussions about free speech. Those discussions get framed in terms of a false dichotomy – either make saying hurtful things illegal or permit a calamitous free-for-all. But, at the risk of coming over all Blairite, there is a third way: social pressure. Create a society where being vile is simply not acceptable and that is willing to use that social pressure to expel those who transgress.
@Philip Scott Thomas
social pressure. Create a society where being vile is simply not acceptable and that is willing to use that social pressure to expel those who transgress.
See I’m not sure I agree. This is premised on the idea that we need to find a mechanism to stop people saying vile things, but I don’t agree with that at all. Why can’t people say vile things? Now of course I might choose not to socialize or employ a person like that but I do so not to convince them to do something different but simply because I don’t want to be around them. It isn’t some social pressure to get them to change, or at least change what they say, it is just that I don’t want to be with such a person. It is not a strategy to change society, it is just a strategy to make my life a bit more pleasant. As an example, I don’t really hang out with people who swear A LOT. Not because I think we should put pressure on them to clean up, but just because I find it ugly and unpleasant.
I’d rather vile people said vile things so that we know their vileness and can avoid them. I don’t especially want them going underground. But I say that not as a strategy but just as a passing thought.
And I also worry that this idea is premised on the idea that words are violence, and consequently we should try to stop them, if not by law then via social pressure. I don’t agree. Let people say what they will, and if you don’t like it, don’t listen to them. Other people’s words only hurt of offend you insofar as you chose to listen or chose to give them any validity. Free speech is the right to speak, not the right to be heard or listened to.
That is like saying:
If your home was burned down in a fire, we will offer you retroactive fire insurance.
I support the FSU. Money well spent.
@Fraser Orr
I also worry that this idea is premised on the idea that words are violence, and consequently we should try to stop them, if not by law then via social pressure.
Not at all. It is premised on the idea that we get to choose who we wish to admit to our social group, at whatever level that might be. If someone violates our standards then we can exclude that person.
I’ll admit, it’s taken me a long time to get to this position. I grew up in the era of the post-McCarthy hearings, when even expressing the merest sympathy for McCarthy’s efforts was enough to consign one to social exile. I was taught to think this social pressure violated every libertarian principle. These days I’m not so sure that’s true.
I do get the point, but OTOH isn’t this a possible description of the Cancel Culture?
Ah yes, helping those who want you dead in a ditch always has such a happy ending………has no one ever read the fable of the scorpion and the frog?
If you lined up all of us on here in front of this person and gave him a machine gun and a belt of ammo, we’d all be toast. And thats who you want to help escape the consequences of his own actions?
You libertarians really can’t see evil when its in front of your noses. Lenin was right….you really will give your mortal enemies the means to destroy you.
I’m with Philip Scott Thomas on this one. Visualize behavior as a grey scale. At one end we have things that everyone agrees are good, motherhood, apple pie, and so on. At the other end we have things that are so bad everyone agrees force should be used to prevent them. In between we have behaviors that don’t rise to the level of crime but we would all rather you didn’t do them. In deed, criminalizing would cause more problems than it solves. These behaviors are candidates for social pressure. So called “hate crimes” would fit this description. The problem we have is that as society dissolves and social pressure is no longer a thing, the state pushes the boundary of criminality into the grey area to replace it.
@Jim
Ah yes, helping those who want you dead in a ditch always has such a happy ending………has no one ever read the fable of the scorpion and the frog?
I don’t believe anyone is suggesting we trust Ms. Herbert as the frog (or as I heard it, the fox) did the scorpion. Only that she has a right to say whatever stupid stuff she wants. So I am not really sure what your complaint is.
People always seem to forget that the conventional “freedom of speech” only affects what the government may do to us when we speak. (And I refer to direct actions as well as the nudging of private entities by the gov.)
Government may allow you to call my mom a b****. I will not.
So what I would do to someone speaking ill of MY dead is entirely removed from concepts of free speech. Civility is still a value.
Looks a bit of a Herbert Heather to me.
And I see I’m right. Sky : “Herbert, a transgender woman”
The courts should cut nutters a bit of slack.
“I don’t believe anyone is suggesting we trust Ms. Herbert as the frog (or as I heard it, the fox) did the scorpion. Only that she has a right to say whatever stupid stuff she wants. So I am not really sure what your complaint is.”
My complaint is that when the boot is on the other foot, Mr Herbert will be at the rear of the tumbrils cheering on your imminent demise. So you really aren’t going to gain anything by attempting to help him. He will take it and spit in your face (or worse).
When your enemy is dying in a ditch, make sure he’s dead.
I believe that Heather Herbert should be every bit as free to say mean things about Ann Widdecombe, as I am to say “That’s a bloke in a frock!”
@Jim
My complaint is that when the boot is on the other foot, Mr Herbert will be at the rear of the tumbrils cheering on your imminent demise.
So what? Just because she is evil doesn’t give you a justification to be evil. Fascist Muslims blew up a concert full of little girls in Manchester. The US military blew up a school full of little girls in Iran. One was celebrated, one was deeply regretted, as it should have been. The one did not justify the other at all.
@bobby b
Government may allow you to call my mom a b****. I will not.
That is definitely true. However, I think the idea, if not the legal implications, of the first amendment are bigger than that, namely that we have a society that tolerates different views than our own. Certainly, some are beyond the pale such as saying nasty things about your mother or the murder of a 78 year old woman with whom you politically disagree. Those people can certainly fuck off and die, and I have no obligation to tolerate their bullshit in my social circle. However, that idea, which is captured in cancel culture, while not generally speaking illegal certainly runs against the thread of free speech that has made the west great.
In a sense I struggle with this — if I have a person working for me or working with me who constantly expresses views with which I strongly disagree, at what point is “strongly” sufficient to stop associating with that person? There are many places of employment where just admitting you voted for Trump is enough to get you cancelled, ostracized and fired. You might argue that you’d not wanna work there anyway, but that is something rich people with choices can say.
Anyway I don’t know the answer as to where the line should be drawn, and I think the rise of cancel culture is VERY dangerous indeed. And while not generally illegal, is certainly in violation of the underlying spirit of the first amendment and the values espoused by great organizations like the FSU: ours should be a society in which public dissent is considered perfectly normal, a society where we can agree to disagree, and just change the channel when we don’t want to hear it.
” Just because she is evil doesn’t give you a justification to be evil.”
Refusing to help someone is not the same thing as actively doing them harm. I’m not proposing prosecuting Mr Herbert, I’m just saying I’m not going to expend time and money trying to defend him.
There’s another point too – until the Leftists get screwed by the same laws they introduced to target the Right they won’t learn any lessons about the importance of free speech.
I think with freedom of speech goes freedom of association. He is free to say what he likes, and I am free to ignore him and only talk and listen to those I consider congenial.
Fraser Orr has a point – we are supporting the liberty of someone who would take our liberty (or what is left of it) and cut our throats as well – and laugh whilst doing it.
However, I still the support the Freedom of Speech of the vile Heather Herbert.
What Jim said, in the latest iteration:
Even more important:
That is one of the reasons why i claim that (most) _American_ libertarians do not understand the concept of incentives.
“Fraser Orr has a point – we are supporting the liberty of someone who would take our liberty (or what is left of it) and cut our throats as well – and laugh whilst doing it.”
I think you’ll find thats MY point.
“Arrested”. Some poking around fails to reveal the charges or supposed crime. Initially police called her writings non-criminal.
What happened?
@Snorri Godhi
Refusing to help someone is not the same thing as actively doing them harm. I’m not proposing prosecuting Mr Herbert, I’m just saying I’m not going to expend time and money trying to defend him.
The FSU is not offering the help this person, they are offering to defend freedom of speech, whatever benefit accrues to Herbert is entirely of secondary concern. Criminal defense attorneys do this all the time, defending the worst scumbags who have done terrible things in order to defend and enforce our legal and constitutional protections. People hate lawyers and defense attorneys in particular. Some of theme are a bit scummy for sure, but they serve a really important function. Were you or I ever prosecuted for a crime, whether guilty or not, we’d surely be glad not only of our own attorney, but also the tens of thousands who have gone before who have insisted that searches are justified, evidence relevant, police misconduct not tolerated and juries are fair.
That is one of the reasons why i claim that (most) _American_ libertarians do not understand the concept of incentives.
You’ve said this before, and frankly I think it is exactly the opposite of true. Libertarians are the one group of political thinkers who really do think about incentives.
I’d only applaud their stance if they realised that the scumbag is being hoist on his own petard. The Scottish law he’s charged under wouldn’t exist if not for his ilk demanding it, so it’s only fair he gets to be charged under it
Given that this Herbert bloke was advocating kindness at the barrel of a gun, thereby actively promoting violence, it wasn’t a free speech issue.
Fraser:
Yes, i said it before, and you also replied to me before.
And i can see your point — i think — in a narrow domain: the free market relies on incentives, and therefore, people who believe in free markets, believe in incentives.
Where i think most _American_ libertarians are wrong, is in not thinking about incentives in the real world, as distinct from incentives in an idealistic free market.
I have given an example of that — or rather, Jim did. Foreign policy is another area in which i think that most American libertarians are inclined to wishful thinking.
But please note that i wrote ‘most’ twice in the above. Milton Friedman, for instance, did not seem inclined to wishful thinking: witness his statement that getting good people to govern us is not a satisfactory solution, it is necessary to align the selfish incentives of rulers with those of the people.
(Friedman was following a line of thought started by Hume and A.Smith, if not earlier — and in fact, there were premonitions in Machiavelli.)
Jim – I stand corrected Sir.
Although I still support the Freedom of Speech of the vile (utterly vile) Heather Herbert.
Some of what some here are talking about seems to me to reduce to our right to publicly shame someone. Not cancel them. Not assault them. Just publicly call them out as vile. I wish we could bring back the stocks in the public square. 12 hours in those getting pelted with rotten vegetables sends a message (ok, I guess that’s assault AND battery).
How about this: a large video screen in the public square showing a rendering of stocks. Just put people into virtual stocks…how we vote on that or determine guilt to put someone there is a hard question.
How was it done in the old days? Was it a sentence handed down by a judge after a jury trial?
Ann Widdecombe was a kindly soul – everyone who met her, including political opponents, found that, and it was obvious on television and so on.
How can someone welcome her suffering and death? This is one of the great problems of life – understanding human evil, understanding people who welcome the suffering and death of other people – who have done them no harm, indeed who wish them well.
But we must not make the mistake of thinking that Heather Herbert is some sort of space alien – on the contrary, there is darkness in all of us.
We must try, each day, to use our moral agency (our free will) to resist the “Heather Herbert” in all of us – because it is there, there is darkness (not just light) in every human being.
GregWA – justice was sometimes quicker in the past, for example some decades ago I visited the town of Ludlow – and I think I remember reading that the market court (in the past) judged crimes whilst the “dust of the market” was still on the accused and the witnesses, i.e. the-same-day.
And, yes, the court could order someone to be put in the stocks.
Even today the state can move fast when it wants to – for example remember the Kangaroo Court processes in 2024 against “right wing” people in Britain. Leftists are treated totally differently – if they come to trial at all.
By the way – be as wary of juries as you are of judges, a jury made up vicious scum will deliver a vicious-scum style judgement.
This was made clear many years ago – when a jury found “not guilty” the traitors who helped the Soviet agent George Blake escape from prison.
A jury made up of people like that will find a “right winger” guilty – without even waiting to hear what the charge is.
Again we all have evil within us – each day we need to fight it, or we will end up just like these people – no better, just like them.
They (even the vile juries of New York City and Washington D.C.) are human beings – just as we are.
They have just stopped fighting the evil we all have within ourselves – instead they have embraced it.
I’m late to this absorbing chat, but it’s surprising it got so far with no sign of the word “manners.” This is the essential word underlying “social shame,” “public pressure” and like concepts of non-criminal punishment.
Manners are organic, rise from an almost-total consensus, and are more powerful in long-continuity societies that maintain order mostly, as it were, in-house. Particular points of the unseen doctrine of societal manners may ebb and flow — it’s still unmannerly, to speak ill of the dead, but obviously not so much as previous.
But most manners, these simple guiding emotions of rightness and propriety, stay strong as long as the society does. Publicly proclaiming your employer’s wife a whore, for example? Deprecated as much now, as in 1826 and 1926.
You can think of almost any political movement as trying to shape manners, and in truth some succeed; I myself, for example, can now say “his husband” or “her two dads” without laughing. It only took decades! The insurgency Mr Herbert typifies, sadly, isn’t “merely” aiming to expand the sphere of manners; like the spit-flecked anti-racism of the 2020s, it’s a more pyromaniac faction altogether.
And yet. To sneer at, mock, belittle, disinvite, unfriend and even cut Mr Herbert dead in the street are all fairly sacred potentialities to us, right? Then how can we prevent him, by any statute or regulation, from making his ugly moronic statements? Even trying to get him fired strikes me as ill-mannered. What if he’s good at his job? What if, indeed, his statements about the death genuinely were taken out of context, and his actual views are, from a Samizdatista’s perspective, disagreeable but not noxious? (I have not bothered to read Herbie’s words; I fear boredom. Nonetheless…)
I am certainly with @FraserOrr Fraser Orr … Mr Orr on this one. Free speech is necessary for every dingbat, totalitarian, douchebag, and sociology professor — or it’s not necessary at all. I support the Canadian FSU, shortly to be tasked with letting Jessica Yaniv speak I imagine, so I have to exhort the Union and other amici curiae across the pond: yes, support this Hogwart’s Hubertess; put some resources and money into his defense: treat him seriously, and let him talk.
Earnest Canuck – yes indeed Sir.