Dioclese revisits an age-old theme, that of freedom of speech. The age-old bit is because he goes over ground oft-covered by blogs; that of what we allow on our own turf.
Some bloggers do not allow this and yet they proclaim to the masses that they are the last bastion of free speech. The ego has taken over.
I left a fairly lengthy comment over there, but I want to expand here – even though I have covered it in the past. From time to time with new audiences coming and going, it behoves us to revisit those basic principles.
I set up this blog to champion our civil liberties at a time when David Blunkett as home secretary was doing his best to bulldoze them out of the way – and haven’t we seen his successors following in his footsteps?
Thing is, what do we mean by civil liberties? Because until we are clear about that, these sorts of debates will continue. Actually, they are very straightforward: freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary arrest (habeas corpus), freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of religious worship.
However, there is something else that is essential to natural law – at least natural law in common law countries; property rights. I say this because it is here that we get the confusion and accusations of hypocrisy. Civil liberties are those liberties that are freedoms from the state. They do not apply on private property. For example, when I started motorcycling, I joined the BSA Owners club. We met at a local pub. When the pub changed hands, the new landlord decided that he did not want us meeting there. Was our freedom of assembly and association curtailed? No, of course not. We went elsewhere. Equally, your home is your property and you may decide what you will allow to go on there. You may decide, for example that people who come in may not discuss religion and politics. Fair enough, your gaff, your rules. Is it an infringement on your guests’ freedom of speech? No, of course it isn’t. No one is stopping them discussing it in their own homes.
There is a misplaced belief that the internet is a free-for-all and that sites must allow anything to be said or the owner is not a supporter of free speech. This is risible nonsense. Moderation on a blog or forum is not a restriction of freedom of speech and the owner may well be a champion of civil liberties. There is no conflict because the owner recognises that property rights outrank civil liberties and that when we talk of defending civil liberties we do so from the state, not private individuals and property owners who may simply feel that they prefer not to allow a graffiti artist to express himself on their nice clean walls. Just because a place is accessible to the public, it does not follow that it is publicly owned and that the public may do as they please. So, sure, I have a moderation policy and you do not have absolute freedom of speech here – and I make that plain. I have no qualms about doing this and complaining about the state passing hate speech laws. There is no hypocrisy.
It is for this reason, therefore, that I support the right of guest house owners to refuse a double room to gay couples – because it is their property and they should have the absolute right to set the rules. If the gay couple feel aggrieved they can publicise their disapproval (freedom of speech) and go elsewhere. Likewise, I support the right of landlords who refuse me service because I turn up on the bike. Their loss, not mine. I will go elsewhere and discourage others to patronise the establishment.
However, when the state passes laws that stop us saying what we like in case it causes offence, then freedom of speech is affected. For without the right to offend, there is no freedom of speech – and what we say is (or should be) no concern of the state). Just as what we do in our private vehicles is no concern of the poltroons on the green benches – although at least one of them gets it.
When the state decides that it will not allow people to protest in parliament square or next to the Cenotaph, then our basic liberties are under attack – it is the erosion of liberties by the state that we worry about, for that is real erosion, not because a blogger or forum owner engages in moderation. That is not and never was a restriction on freedom, for property owners have always set rules on their own property.
Besides, moderation is logical and necessary – for there are disruptive folk who need to be shown the door for the sake of everyone else who is trying to engage in a conversation. The loud-mouthed bore who constantly interrupts, won’t listen and keeps trying to start fights is not exercising his freedom of speech, he is being an arsehole and sooner or later will be shown the door – and rightly so. Civil discourse does not mean you have to tolerate bad behaviour – and it never did. Being a supporter of free speech certainly places no onus on anyone to put up with pig-ignorant, loud-mouthed jerks who cannot engage in a civil manner.
You will note in the comments on Dioclese’s post that I am accused by the resident troll of deleting and banning anyone who disagrees with me. I very rarely remove a comment – even if it is technically in breach of my comments policy. I recognise that feeling sometimes run high, so will let intemperate remarks remain. I only ban people who are deliberately disruptive. I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade and those folk can be counted on the fingers on one hand. Yet there are those who feel that this is hypocrisy. It is not. I am merely exercising property rights. There is no contradiction between this and complaining about the state doing its damnedest to destroy our civil liberties, for property rights are themselves an inherent part of our basic liberties.
XX For without the right to offend, there is no freedom of speech XX
I think there is a difference when one goes out DILIBERATELY to offend, and when some crochet wearing pinkoe is automatically “offended” at everything.
I say what I like, if someone is offended, TOUGH!
But to do that with forethought…
Lets see how others think, I feel that this has a lot to do with Mens rea. (Guilty intent)
Even if offence is deliberate, that is still fine by me. Some people need to be offended good and hard on a regular basis so that they get the message that they have no right not to be offended.
I try to be very careful only to offend those people that deserve it.
Like any believer in any form of BigSkyFairy for instance?
Which is what I do ….
I don’t see any point to setting out deliberately to wind anyone up, granted that religious believers are often very thin skinned and take even the most measured criticism of their beliefs as a deliberate insult. I stopped debating with theists because we aren’t really talking about the same thing and neither side is ever likely to persuade the other that they are wrong. I still like reading about religious beliefs though, because many of them are interesting and throw some light on human psychology and the ways different people experience the world. That’s more useful I think than indulging in mutual slanging matches.
I don’t know how anyone could disagree with that ( they should be banned if they do 🙂 ), it all seems pretty obvious really. I used to be a regular visitor to Heresy Corner and often commented, too often in fact as I rarely had much to add, but the place was eventually spoilt for me by the commenter who called himself Wooly Minded Liberal, he could be interesting but his stock response was the sneering putdown, designed IMO to wind people up and to show his imagined intellectual superiority. The worst thing about that is that it can be infectious, I generally agreed with him in the frequent arguments about religion, that was during my excessively militant atheist period, and would sometimes find his dismissiveness creeping into my own comments, my fault I know but it does show how giving too much leeway to trolls can result in a degrading of a blog’s value.
That Rickie bloke looks like a typical anti smoking frothpot, I blame fourth hand smoke.
Oh, Rickie has form. He’s a rabid anti-smoker who was trolling the pro-freedom blogs a couple of years back. He tried it on with me and I bit back very hard. That’s why he is so virulent about me when he comments elsewhere – he knows I won’t tolerate his behaviour and he knows he can’t hide behind proxies.
“Take, for example, the “human right” of free speech. Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate “right to free speech”; there is only a man’s property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners.” Murray Rothbard.
I used to visit Heresy Corner. Wooly Minded Liberal called me a climate change denier. When I pointed out that I didn’t deny that the climate changes but that I was sceptical about the effect of man made CO2 and the doomsday scenarios that were being predicted, his response was to say that a climate change denier is exactly what you are. I couldn’t be bothered to reply.
Woolly Minded Liberal was a regular at CiF for a while. I think he pissed them off eventually. The bloke was an arse. He certainly wasn’t a liberal.
I am the subject of Dioclese’s beef – in as much as I’m trying to keep the Max Farquar blog going until such time as the owner feels able to return on a regular basis. It’s a long story, covered in detail in the post to which he refers, and reached an impasse last year. Suffice to say I have not made comments at any of his sites since, and I rather hoped he had taken the hint to do the same in return. But a few weeks ago his latest “resident troll”, Cuddling Aquarians, found her way over to MF and waded in spewing invective left, right and centre – something she’s been doing all over the ‘net for at least ten years. Dioclese just had to add his own few pence worth, and I followed the suggestion made by one of the “regulars” earlier and blocked both of them. I didn’t, however, remove the existing comments – something which appears to have caused them particular annoyance. I had previously updated the comments policy to cover trolling and disruptive behaviour, which they appear not to have noticed.
Last week he attempted to post again, claiming to have “caught” me visiting his blog, and even looking at the comments! It’s a bit like saying “because you won’t let me continue trying to have the last word at your ‘not very free’ place, I don’t see why you should even LISTEN at my ‘completely free and open’ venue”. I suspect he now realises I know quite a lot about what’s going on “behind the scenes”, and it’s worth noting that said troll doesn’t allow ANY comments at her own site….
Just read his post and the comments.
As far as I can make out, this Rickie character seems to be taking advice from Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” which to quote Rocking Mr. E, is “a morally bankrupt doctrine that aims to demoralise anyone that stands in the way of progressing towards collectivism. This is primarily achieved by exploiting useful idiots that have little capacity or desire to think critically, as demagogues pull their strings.”
He’s using rule number four: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
So anyone who claims to support freedom of speech must support the likes of him to say whatever he wants, wherever he wants or he’ll scream hypocrisy and that you want to clamp down on free speech.
And as we’ve seen throughout history, once people like him are in charge, free speech has served its purpose and can be gotten rid of – dissent will not be tolerated.
Indeed so – although he probably thinks that he is working entirely on his own volition. The sense of importance and superiority is strong in that one. An example of what you are talking about is in this quote:
There is no such rule either written or unwritten. He just made it up. I am not bound by any such rule and make no pretence that I am.
This wanker tried to claim that we should all speak with one voice and that we should have all posted when Old Holborn was outed by the Daily Mail.
http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/old-holborn-juvenal-for-our-times.html
Apparently our failure to do so was out some sort of shame. And he came up with another golden rule of blogging – we are supposed to never disagree with another blogger. Nope, not come across that one either, because it isn’t a rule golden or otherwise, it is an invention Rickie plucked out of his arse.
Such is the thinking (and I use the term loosely) that any form of discourse with this cretin is pointless.