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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

All speech must be legal short of threats,fraud, etc. If one administration is given the power to outlaw speech you don't like, you may not like it when the next administration you didn't vote for does the same. Everyone should have the right to say what they want free of government repercussions. I would even go so far as to say what someone says and does on their free time is their business and not their employers as long as they are not representing themselves as speaking for the employer. Non violent Nazi on your free time, cool that's your business as long as you don't discuss it in any way shape or form at work and you treat all of your coworkers equally and with respect. Obviously if someone is committing felonies in support of their beliefs that's something else.

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Employers (unless you work for the government) are not bound by the first amendment, and can fire you or penalize you for expression outside of the workplace.

It seems like that is an oversight we should fix.

It's not an oversight, it's the inevitable and intended consequence of freedom of speech, freedom of association and private property as defined by the US Constitution and law. "fixing" that would mean undermining those fundamental rights in favor of a right that doesn't exist in the US, the right to employment.

We should have all of those, but right now we have those asymmetrically depending on your cause.

If I believe that people whose name is ohCh6zos should be made into bacon ought the law force you to employ me or do you think adults should be able to choose who they associate with?

I believe that the existence of protected classes means you do not enjoy the freedom of association you rightfully should, and that either extreme would be preferable to the middle ground where only some expression overrides freedom of association.

You have freedom to associate with whom you choose based on any reasonable criteria other than not hiring someone because of the color of their skin, where they come from, or whom they choose to love. The freedom of a tiny minority of employers cannot be extended further without abridging the freedom of the vast majority of folks. You have argued both for forcing people to associate with those whose views they find deplorable and for privileging the right of employers not to associate with protected classes. Which is it?

The only possible interpretation is that you are either vacillating between mutually incoherent positions arguing first one than the other with no attempt to reconcile them or you would like the government to privilege one group of people by allowing them to discriminate while forcing people to accept their "free expression" however odious it is.

Except you can hire based on the color of the applicants skin. You can openly favor black people over white and Asian applicants. Lots of companies do it. OP is simply stating he is against all favored status, hiring should be a meritocracy.

Here are two quotes from the same fellow

> I believe that the existence of protected classes means you do not enjoy the freedom of association you rightfully should

>> Employers (unless you work for the government) are not bound by the first amendment, and can fire you or penalize you for expression outside of the workplace.

> It seems like that is an oversight we should fix.

He believes that employers ought to be forbidden from using your out of work communications to make hiring and firing decisions but wants to scrap the prohibition on using your membership in a protected class to make that same decision.

You absolutely can't make a hiring decision on race. If Joe White and Joe Black apply for the same position you are required to evaluate all applicants and cannot turn down Mr White for his skin color any more than Mr Black. What you CAN do if I understand correctly is make targeted attemps to advertise to and invite people based on characteristics. You can for instance advertise in what is traditionally a woman targeted magazine in order to inspire more women to apply for instance.

What does "asymmetrically" mean other than freedom of speech not implying freedom from consequences?

He likely means you can be openly anti white without consequences but not anti black. Openly anti Christian but not anti Jewish.

I believe we would be better off as a society if we either decided it was ok, or not ok and not situational.

In a perfect world we'd just all decide to be better people and not racist without external pressure, but that seems like a pipe dream.

I agree with you

There are plenty of spaces where you can be openly anti-black and anti-semitic without consequence. That you can't do so in, say, a black church or a synagogue doesn't mean white Christians don't have the same rights as black people and Jews. Try to be anti-white or anti-Christian on any "free speech" platform or many places in the American deep south and you'll definitely face consequences.

Right, I realize that, that's why I said we should go further. All of the amendments are about individuals relationship with the government.

This isn't even true now. There are all sorts of limits including but not limited to gag orders, no contact orders, defamation, harassment, malicious use of a telephone device, obscene phone calls and so forth.

You imply that it is utterly impossible to draft a law forbidding some speech without handing the tools of oppression to the next fellow to hold office but we already deal with plenty of nuanced situations now many odious examples of speech that aren't nuanced at all.

Calls for stochastic violence or terrorism are just as worrying as specific threats even when the target is not specifically called out. Someone should murder all the jews is no more acceptable than lets get together at the bar next Tuesday and kill Bob the Jew with the candlestick.

Hand in glove with the above is false information designed to spread hate. Ex The jews are setting our forests ablaze with jewish space lasers! Do you know who snuck in and stole my breakfast? Jews! Why am I going bald? Jewish space lasers pointed at my head! If you constantly spew hateful nonsense while others directly call for violence its pretty clearly part of the same shtick and you ought to be treated similarly.

This is trivially defined as clearly false information about a group of people defined by cultural, ethnic, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation yada yada yada designed to promote hatred towards a group of people.

You may trivially point out that grey areas exist. This is hardly a barrier to dealing with the numerous black and white scenarios so evident around us.

Lastly I don't want to employ or work with a "non violent nazi" just because he promotes mass murder only on his own time because such a person is an odious human being and regarding minorities as subhuman is inherently going to color his decision making even if he presents as objective. I really don't think I or any manager ought to be obliged to overlook the fact that applicant has already publicly announced that he is an odious human being.

Even were he to fully separate his odious being from the job he does his coworkers will inevitably come to understand who he is if he keeps putting it out there online under his own name and you'll find yourself at a disadvantage in terms of retaining good help and clients if everyone knows you employ nazis.

Free speech absolutism is an indefensible position. It is so far as I'm aware practiced nowhere in the world.

I'm not a free speech absolutist and think current laws do a pretty good job of dealing with things like fraud, threats, etc. I don't think that openly disliking a group of people should be illegal though. I don't think we should hate others but of more importance to me is that I don't want to give the government more power to police speech and thought. In my mind that's far more dangerous. If someone thinks Jewish space lasers are to blame for the weather, or whatever it's pretty dumb, but shouldn't be illegal. Only when it rises to the point of "we should do something about the Jewish problem" and plans are taking place should it be illegal. The police / FBI are pretty good at determining which is which and acting on it. Exceptions apply.

Giving the government more power is a slippery slope. Is Christianity arguing against homosexuality hate speech? Should we round up all of the pastors and priests? Should we demand people provide the government with a list of their personal beliefs and send those that are on the fringe to reeducation camps? Should there be a government mandated listening device in every home? Bad people and those we disagree with will always exist I'm totally good with that. I'm not good with thought police.

Stochastic terrorism isn't really a thing though. It's just a vague accusation anyone can make, without proof of cause and effect. Purely rhetorical in nature.

Sounds like something a stochastic terrorist may or may not say. Likely resulting in bad things happening but not definitely. /S

How about when you emit a constant stream of lies about gay people claiming that they are pedophiles looking to "groom" your children as if "morally upright" straight white kids could somehow catch the gay and then in the same state an extremist shoots up a nightclub. Not specific enough? How about developing a nationwide network of conspiracy theorists to promote insane and often highly specific conspiracies that lead crazy people to invade a pizza joint to free imaginary children supposedly trafficked from an imaginary basement?

Specific lies leading to predictable dangers to individuals by a probabilistic vector like continually throwing rocks over an overpass knowing you are likely to hit SOMEONE without knowing who or when the damage will be done.

How is that "not a thing"?

People are responsible for their own actions. If I take what you just posted to heart and went and killed one of the "nationwide network of conspiracy theorists" to save the gays, are you responsible? If we start working on the basis that no one is smart enough to hear anything at all that may be controversial then who gets to decide what that is? Who do we give the power to be the decider of absolute truth too? What about when a new administration takes over that you don't like? Or are we no longer having elections either? We either assume that people have their own agency or we assume that humanity must grant the government control over all of our decisions. I'll go the free speech route every time. Physical actions like throwing stones are very different than words.

We don't need an perfect and absolute arbiter of truth to identify malicious hateful lies the same way we don't need one for defamation laws. We have high standards high bars and a legal system.

The biggest difference between what they are doing and my statement is that my statement is carefully and actually researched truth, spoken with intent to inform, and furthermore although it pointed out how dangerous those lies were it called for a legislative solution to the problem not self help. If you took it upon yourself to take action it would be solely your action.

By contrast they pass on lies they either know are false or with reckless disregard for the truth of the matter often with vague implication of threats and calls to action.

I say the clear distinction in circumstances is sufficient for a court of law to address. I suggest that we don't need to wait until someone gets murdered we can just throw the folks promoting lies and hate in jail first. This is no more problematic than defamation as an exception to the first amendment.

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