The Irish Green Party followed many on the left around the world, including our own Democratic Party, this week and came out for censorship and speech controls. Indeed, the party went full Orwellian as its chairwoman Pauline O’Reilly called for “restricting freedom” to protect it.
O’Reilly’s comments are part of the introduction of the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022. We previously discussed this massive assault on free speech.
The legislation that would criminalize “incitement to violence or hatred against” people with “protected characteristics,” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.”
Limiting free speech has become an article of faith for many on the left. I have written about my distress (as someone who grew up in a liberal, politically active Democratic family in Chicago) in watching the abandonment of free speech values by the party. Democratic leaders now uniformly call for censorship and speech regulations. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.” Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.”
The anti-free speech movement has become openly Orwellian in claiming to protect freedom by limiting freedom. It also employs using terms like disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation to obscure their effort to silence those with opposing views. Rather than use “censorship,” they refer to “content moderation.”
That effort was on full display this week in Ireland with this anti-free speech legislation.
Speaking before the Irish Senate (Seanad) this week, O’Reilly declared “when one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good.”
It is the same message of New York democrats calling for limiting speech as a way of protecting democracy. Indeed, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has declared free speech is “tyranny.”
O’Reilly assured citizens that giving up freedom was nothing new or threatening: “Throughout our Constitution one can see that while one has rights they are restricted for the common good. Everything needs to be balanced.”
What is particularly chilling is how low the threshold is for denying free speech, according to O’Reilly. It now appears that “deep discomfort” is enough:
“If a person’s views on other people’s identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”
What is interesting is that O’Reilly admits that there is nothing new about hateful views but it is time to clear out such voices: “Social media has fuelled hatred but it has also put on display for all of us the dirty, filthy, underbelly of hatred in Irish society. That hatred has always existed.” Of course, she and the majority will determine what views create “deep discomfort.”
The Irish legislation is likely to be replicated around the world if the free speech community cannot hold the line against the anti-free speech movement. It is part of an unrelenting movement in Europe, particularly by the European Union, to rollback Western free speech values that once defined countries.
We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens.
Ireland now stands on the precipice of freedom. The embrace of such laws by the Irish is crushingly ironic. Frank Ryan, who fought against the treaty, spoke for many radicals in declaring “as long as we have fists and boots, there will be no free speech for traitors.” Those anti-Treaty forces rejected the views of free speech that long defined Western nations. Now, Ireland is declaring “no free speech for haters” and assumes the authority to define who are haters and who are not.
“O’Reilly declared “when one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good.””
Maybe in Ireland. But not in a country where liberty is paramount as this capsizes entirely the roles of law and liberty. In a free country, law does not moderate rights. Law is instead moderated by rights. That is the only way rights can remain intact. Otherwise, rights become a mere rider to whatever may be deemed appropriate, by whomever may be in charge at any particular time. In other words, not solid at all. Instead, they become a shifting sand that will invariably erode over time, as virtually anything can and will be considered offensive and/or dangerous by at least some. Such renders rights as subjective and amorphous as the subjective (and often manufactured) moral quandaries used to justify its elimination. Indeed, the term “common good” is highly subjective. Who’s “common good” ? Reasoning such as O’Reilly’s is of, and is purely – evil -. It will utterly eviscerate and destroy liberty altogether. It is fit only for tyranny. Lets hope and pray the Irish are smart enough to know this, and stonewall it into oblivion.
As someone who has been active in the Green Party of the US for over twenty years, I have to say that this is NOT the kind of Green Party I want to see. I understand the concern for protecting people from hate speech, but trying to legislate it so that nobody ever has to hear anything that makes them “uncomfortable” is insane. We need to be challenged, to be made to feel uncomfortable, in order to grow and evolve as human beings.
Whenever someone begins a statement with “I’m for protecting free speech BUT…” you actually don’t believe in free speech at all.
Just like a nice, ripe watermelon – Green on the outside and Red to the core! We seem to have a bumper crop of Commies, ripe for mostly peaceful culling, issuing forth these days.
>The legislation that would criminalize “incitement to violence or hatred against” people with “protected characteristics,” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.”
And that’s a massive assault on free speech? Let me ask you, sir, if somebody screamed in your face that they favor committing mass murder against all people belonging to any group you belong to (say, people of your income bracket), would you (a) respect their right to free speech and do nothing or (b) ask whoever was responsible for keeping the peace wherever you were to remove this person from your presence?
Remember that the next time somebody exercises their free speech in such a way. Maybe that’s going to start happening a lot from now on.
show us just one single solitary incitement to violence by any alt media…..your straw man argument is flaccid like an old mans rooster.
if there were any such cases they would be arrested for the actions, there are already laws in all nations against threats of harm…
now show me how pointing out the facts with evidence (ie the mrna causes clots and death no matter who makes them) and sources that are legit (ie the cdc website modernas website phizers own documents used to apply for approval ) and only because they educate those who would be ignorant of the matters they should be compared to some one soliciting the physical harm to another human? there is no comparison there they are completely differing. but hey some fools believe the media thats screaming disinfo and the dis is in disrespect to the tyrannic scum who would mandate away our god given rights and the ones codified in the constitution….i hail from the constitution state and happen to know the history very well because they used to actually teach it in school before they went all stupid and 72 genders crazy….there is xx and xy there is no other sex but male or a split tail…if your so inclined please publish this new undiscovered chromosome. i also wasnt vaxxed with 96 jabs by graduation so i still have a brain intact and retain what was learned decades ago… and my sharing this should be a crime as if i were responsible for injuring or killing another human? eat a big cock and choke on it fuctard!
And yet another who believes Frederick Douglass, a man born into slavery, somehow got it wrong. We would all like to hear specifically how you believe you understand slavery better than he did. He said that slavery cannot tolerate free speech. He pointed out, after dealing with the democrat cancel culture of his day, that liberty means nothing if we cannot express our honest opinion on any subject. You are here expressing your view in favor of what Douglass called the “law of slavery” (wittingly or unwittingly) and you have every right to do so. Now we know what you believe and where you stand even if you are either oblivious to it or unwilling to admit it. This is the beauty of free speech. If you were restricted in this we would not know you are out there supporting the striking down of the right that is the basis of self-ownership. You believe people are property and now we all know it. I’d say that it is important to know where the enemies of freedom are. As Douglass also said, “There can be no concessions to the enemy.”
These BUFFOONS don’t see the irony of them using THEIR right to free speech, to denounce and deny it to others!! Did somebody invent some means of uniformly measuring discomfort so that we can see it for ourselves just how deep it is, and no one bothered to tell me about it? Why not? Does everybody have the same level of discomfort? What if MY level of discomfort for people using their right to free speech to limit free speech is lower than O’Reilly’s level of discomfort? Does that mean that she has to shut her big, fat mouth because she is causing me a “deep discomfort” with her speech?? I sure do hope so, because then I will feel much better! But then she also has to compensate me for injuring my feelings with her high level of disdain for my feelings!!
Round 1
“If a person’s views on other people’s identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”
Round 2
“If a person’s identity makes the lives of another person with a different view unsafe or insecure and that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those identities for the common good.”
Round 3
“If the views or identities of people make the job of legislation unsafe and insecure and one that cannot be lived in peace, our job is to restrict those views and identities.”
Because
“If a person’s views on other people’s identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”
Is saying
““If a person’s views on other people’s identities make their (the person with a view and people with an identity) lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms (of view and identity) for the common good (us) .”
That is simply bureaucratic erasure of people’s views and identities, i.e. of society.
the first amendment is the first because its the foundation of freedom….the second is to ensure the first…..any questions on why the founding fathers chose to place speach press and assembly first? why is the requirement to abolish any tyrannical govt that would undermine or remove those protections written out ? why did jefferson remind us that the tree of liberty needs to be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots? people need to read the declaration and constitution at the independance day gatherisngs and make sure every one knows their rights and also knows their responsabilites in ensuring this continues for the future generations!
You can always raze his house down- regardless of whether he’s in it. Never forget that and remind him too
The problem with people who push this anti free speech pogrom is that they never think it will apply to them…until it does. I am sure that Ms O’Reilly will be in shock when someone complains that her speech makes them uncomfortable, fearful and not at peace.
When anyone thinks they are acting with virtue there are others who will say they are not. Until the general citizenry say enough is enough and push back against this idiocy it will keep creeping across the Western world like the blob. Unfortunately, the citizenry are generally apathetic, thinking it doesn’t apply to them until it is too late.
Dear Jonathan
I live in Ireland. I have read the new Hate Speech Bill twice. I have written to Senators about it. The few replies have been generally party propaganda. The Irish Government has been seduced by attendance at the court of the big powers. They want to please them more than they want to please the Irish people.
This Bill is very badly written. It is vague and rambling. It does not define hate speech, so anybody could be guilty of it. Hate speech only applies to ‘protected categories’, so it is discriminatory. It therefore should
be unconstitutional, because the Constitution states that all persons are equal before the law.
This Bill has had little public debate here. It has largely passed under the radar. It has attracted more attention overseas than here.
It is a Bill to silence us.
Thank you for drawing attention to it.
Yours sincerely
Helen Carty
The congealed forces behind this really are trying to see just how close to Adolf, Stalin & Mao they can get on the “for their own good” list. I suspect they’ll far exceed given that they start with 4 times as many serfs to cull.
Remember that crazy psychiatrist from Duke calling Trump a bigger threat than the Big Three above?
WEF/UN/CCP/Russia and Washington DC say: HOLD MY BEER.
I hope all the Moms, Dads, Grands & all their kids had very weekend. 🙂
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0:00 / 3:25
Willie Nelson & Kenny Rogers “Blue Skies
The debate on free-speech is sometimes characterized as a political power grab which it may just be. There’s the increase in the amount of communications to be consider. But, there’s also the lack of maturity or the inability to adjust to change which drives the need to implement political restrictions. However, when some “freedoms” such as the mass movement of peoples and the allowing for minute groups to have it their way, pushback is inevitable which is another freedom in itself and if one freedom is allowed then all must be allowed.
To where Freedom lives is up to those wanting it and those not wanting it. Allowing crime to expand while claiming a few pieces of paper demand someone be put in prison is sheer nonsense in both cases. Society is what the inhabitants decide it is. We all have equal political power, so Unite and use it !
Natural and God-given, constitutional rights and freedoms are universal by definition.
The universe includes Ireland.
________________________
“It’s the [manifest tenor], stupid!”
– James Carville
_____________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Life is messy. There is no way around this. People may express unusual ideas, employ jarring figures of speech, or are simply gaffe prone. We need to accept somethings may make us uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable should drive us to explore why someone holds views that are dissonant to our way of thinking. That is the way of progress. This drive to sterilize the world may remove some dangerous words but it will also remove many more creative, funny, off-the-wall ideas. The so called common good seems to require compliance with the lowest common denominator – not Jeremy Bentham’s greatest social good. The importance of debate and disagreement on the path towards social progress was recognized by Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes when he said, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” This principle of free thought results in messy and at times distinctly uncomfortable times to many of us, but as mature American citizens I hope, we realize that a sterile black & white environment would be much worse than one in which there are a multiplicities of shades and colors of thought – that is a bubbling cauldron of thought.
If truly evil ideas cannot be expressed and brought out in the open, then there is no way to deal with them when they eventually do burst out.
Darren/Professor Turley, In the interest of free speech, transparency, and civility rules of this blog, please let us know if Svelaz, a major left of center blog commenter, is banned and if so why. Thanks.
I’m not in favor of censorship but a guy like Svelaz was in essence a heckler through mass commenting and dominating discussion. He literally commented hundreds of times for each issue. I wouldn’t have banned him, but the site is truly better without him.
Next up is to end the “Anonymous” label. You can be anonymous, as I am, but pick a name!!!!! It is just common courtesy to the rest of us in order to enable the rest of us to ignore anyone who comments time and time again with lame, asinine comments.
HullBobby,
His pro pornography in elementary schools and public libraries, attempts to normalize pedophilia, endorsement of mutilation of children is what I think got him banned.
Everything else could be ignored.
But that, that was some really sick stuff.
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
JT’s position is not nuanced. He is a unidirectional defender of free speech.
Yet, all of us (adults) understand that free civilized societies are not possible without norms of civility that are upheld. The intellectually-engaged therefore want to smartly define the red-lines beyond which the deceitful manipulators (militant infowarriors) stand out and can be marginalized. If not, the malcontents and faux-revolutionaries will come to drawn out rational, meritocratic debate.
Therefore, it’s foolish to summarily denounce any attempts to impose norms of civility on political speech.
There have to be limits. The challenge is to have them based on civility, productivity and goodwill, and not
defined by militants to advantage their divisive “cause”.
I think that’s the dumbest thing I’ve read today. I can say that because, “free speech.”
Is “cancel culture” and matters relating to it, simply warming up 90’s culture war “political correctness” in an internet age?
Moral Panic, considering the history of US legislation? I have to check:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Extending_protections
Restrictions on free speech in Europe are misguided attempts to prevent another genocide or its little brother hate crime? Is genocide happening in the Ukraine as we type?
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What is particularly chilling is how low the threshold is for denying free speech, according to O’Reilly. It now appears that “deep discomfort” is enough:
Good point. Sometimes it feels there may be such a trend. See: experiences and perceptions:
https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2018/experiences-and-perceptions-antisemitism-second-survey-discrimination-and-hate
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The anti-free speech movement has become openly Orwellian in claiming to protect freedom by limiting freedom. It also employs using terms like disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation to obscure their effort to silence those with opposing views. Rather than use “censorship,” they refer to “content moderation.
Another valuable point. But doubtful that the dis-, mis-, or malinformation as it surfaced more recently in public discourse has legal consequences.
The lie: “We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good.” Green Party chairwoman Pauline O’Reilly stated.
The Greens are restricting freedom for THEIR own good. They and the Democrats cannot win over those with dissimilar views via debate, convincing arguments and results. That circumstance causes Greens and Democrats “such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace”. Thus, their obvious solution is to eliminate opposing views. How do they do that? By restricting free speech as harmful and only allowing speech that is, in their view, not harmful.
Who decides what speech is harmful? The Greens and the Democrats decide.
Need an example of how such an approach can play out? Think of the last big dud that was, in his own words, “the decider”. George W. Bush, one of the most ineffective and mediocre presidents of all time. ‘W’ got the US into the Iraq wars and paved the way for the Great Recession. And Ireland is seriously going to consider the likes of the Greens, Democrats, Hillary Clinton and G.W. Bush to decide what is for the common good in terms of speech? Are you suckers Ireland?
I’m afraid it’s not going to be the Americans to the rescue this time, they have their own problem’s.