Meanwhile, Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. This is not about a principled approach to free speech. It's about protecting the right to enforce religious-inspired bigotry, tearing down the separation of church and state even as that bigotry becomes "unpopular."
I agree with you about that, but I also (might) agree with them about this.
Not that you said otherwise, but... I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days. There shouldn't be any shame in being part of the same coalition on one issue with people who are reprehensible on other issues. Agreeing with the Florida government about some point of social media regulation doesn't imply I agree with them about anything else.
Isn't it consistent to say the government deciding not distribute books is wrong for the same reason the government telling private companies they must distribute speech they disagree with is wrong? Both clearly violate free speech. Maybe you don't actually think free speech is the standard, maybe it's something more vague like an open society, but I don't see this as any different than the state mandating churches reserve 15 minutes at the start of each sermon for anyone who wants to get up and say something
There are many responses here, but I think one of the most relevant is that of natural monopolies. If you created a competitor that was somehow objectively superior to Facebook in every possible technical way, it would still almost certainly fail. Because Facebook's product isn't their software, but access to the billions of people using it. They are effectively doing little more than acting as a carrier for access to society. And you can't compete against that.
This immediately puts massive scale social media in a very unique place. By contrast, public school libraries are anything but a monopoly. If they don't offer a book you want, there are countless other ways to get it that are no less convenient, to say nothing of the digital age and searching for 'book i want pdf.' This generalizes to other scenarios as well. At one time it was believed that private businesses out be able to restrict employment or service based on things like the race or religion of their customers/applicants. But as this started to become a more substantial issue in terms of scale, society decided otherwise.
> Because Facebook's product isn't their software, but access to the billions of people using it. They are effectively doing little more than acting as a carrier for access to society. And you can't compete against that.
But that's an argument against Facebook in particular, not against social media as a category.
Fundamentally, the problem is that we have allowed the modern "public square" to be in these spaces entirely owned by private companies.
What we really need is an open protocol for a federated social network that works very much like Facebook (so, not something like Mastodon, which is designed to work like Twitter, for instance—though it would probably be worthwhile to do the same with it) and have the government operate some public "reference servers" that anyone can join, while others can also operate servers that can federate with them. That way, you're still able to connect to people even if they're not on your particular server...provided they don't belong to a server that's been blocked from federation due to hate speech or something.
Everyone says they want free speech. But deep down they don't. Some don't want gay marriage written in books, and some don't want anti-vaxxers to post misinformation. Those are 2 sides of the same coin.
Freedom of speech is a critical cornerstone of liberal government. The fact that so many sides want to reduce this right is what is scary.
We have much less freedom than we think, and the freedom we do have we pay a very high price for. I often use the phrase "What price freedom?" in conversations, and unfortunately most don't understand what it means.
But there isn't an enlightened centrist middle ground here where we allow all speech off of principle. First off, because that has never happened in American history (or any country's history?). So there is no good ol days to look back on when speech was more free. Second of all, people are way too stupid to process information on their own. Governments are at their best when they are paternalistic, that's why we have seatbelts, no lead in gasoline etc. Of course the question is "who can decide what's good for you?" but it's definitely not Florida's government. Or the demographic that frequently shows up on r/hermancainaward
> Governments are at their best when they are paternalistic, that's why we have seatbelts, no lead in gasoline etc.
The same paternalism has justified poisoning one's own people in a "war" against alcohol, dictated who was allowed to have sex with whom in privacy of their own home, and resulted in human experimentation for the supposed betterment of society.
> I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days.
There is a way to get there: it's changing our voting method.
Single-choice, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all voting is effectively guaranteed to result in a two-party system.
There are a number of alternative voting systems, and all of them that I've heard of have flaws, but Ranked Choice Voting is one of the better ones, and seems to be gaining some traction recently in a few places.
If you really want to break our political duopoly, push for Ranked Choice Voting at every level you have influence over. It'll be easier the more local you get, and the more jurisdictions adopt it, the easier it will be to get others to do the same.
Unfortunately political power is not generally distributed on a per-issue basis. In most cases it simply is not an option for an individual citizen to support increasing personA's political power to regulate social networks without increasing personA's overall political power.
I am a one-issue voter (whenever it's on the ballot) and my issue is voting reform because, in my view, the two party system America (and almost Canada!) is stuck with is just making inter-party discussions on policies impossible. Once the political class has stratified like it has in America and can box out anyone who doesn't pass a litmus test of dozens of issues (Oh, you're pro-gun rights but also pro-abortion access? Sorry, neither us nor the other guys want you) then the political system will quickly break down.
We desperately need elections where more than just the two dominant parties can compete without a spoiler effect.
This is happening, just FYI, up in Canada right now - there are four parties worth talking about - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois - the last two are essentially just regional parties which do occasionally win surprise seats but mostly just exist within a localized area. That is enough, in our parliamentary system to force cooperation at a federal level - but without serious action I can't see any ending in sight other than slowly devolving to American politics.
Isn't that his point? Plenty of you exist, yet your party will not represent your interests. The "left" party that you vote for has chosen a set of values that are contradictory to your own, and you have no recourse because who else will you vote for?
It depends on the specific politician but I think a generally accurate characterization of the left is that they want to restrict gun access (some of us would say that'd be a "sensible restriction" while others would disagree). There are some notable exceptions here from rural states. One of my Senators, Bernie Sanders, is actually rather pro-gun rights coming from a state that has a strong hunting tradition - though he is less in favor of handgun access.
The thing is, even just a few non party affiliate votes in parliament can have a huge impact. Both parties could get more of a chance of their pet policies being implemented under a multi party system. That is, if you were to take the political parties at face value as caring about the issues they promote.
The reality is, the parties are systemically more interested in self preservation than governing. So neither seem to support serious reform.
I don't see how letting governments regulate social media is in any way good. I don't know how anyone who is "libertarian" can now support this initiative of government overreach.
Imagine creating a forum and now the Florida government dictates what you can and can't moderate. Disastrous.
In an ideal world that's true, but in reality it's probably not a good approach to treat political alliances on issues as independent transactions to be taken at purely face value. If you're an advocate for free speech, it's probably worth being extremely dubious of Republican efforts aimed at "big tech" even if they claim to care about the same issue you do. For one thing, those efforts are clearly motivated by very specific speech and even if you hope that translates into better protection for speech in general, it's worth considering if that's actually what your new allies are actually aiming for. There's a long history of policies claiming to be for the general good ending up exclusively benefiting a select few in practice. That's not always the case of course, but especially worth keeping an eye out for when the folks advocating for the policy are making it fairly clear up front that's their agenda.
The other issue is a bit more strategic. Policy victory brings electoral victory, and you don't get to pick and choose which other policies come along for the ride when someone wins. Nobody agrees with a politician or political party on every issues of course, but it's probably not a good idea to ignore the rest of their views entirely just because they happen to back at least one policy you agree with. At the risk of invoking Goodwin, if you weren't a fan of that Hitler fellow but supported him anyways because you liked road construction, you might have regretted your choice.
Well put. Welcome to contemporary political discussions. Objectivity is really scarce. The entire discussion goes down the toilet due to some form of 1) whataboutism 2) moral superiority complex 3) strawmanning 4) gas lighting. Add a dozen or so common biases and you've got a toxic brew of non-productivity. Furthermore, reconition of biases from a list like this [1] can be both good or bad. Bad in a way that it can be weaponized to shutdown conversation. Basically, everything you ever say (including this comment) would violate one of these cognitive biases, its a huge list. Feel free to use them as weapons! /s. There are also eggregious misuse of 2) which comes in the form of "For the children" or "Killing babies" or "For the good of the planet", etc.
Modernity has brought us closer to subjectivism than ever.
It's literally impossible to implement with this system of government. The current two party system is the most efficient form of your idea that can be implemented in America.
Florida is a state. Several counties in Florida are removing books from school libraries. There is no statewide policy in Florida to ban books from libraries in general. Libraries are generally managed at the city / county level.
> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions
I think the fact that you deliberately expressed what's been a complicated, and almost exclusively school-board driven, phenomenon in such a simple way shows you either haven't read much outside the headlines, or are just hoping to pull people to your side while discouraging them to do any actual research.
Either way, your comment comes across as just as transparently politically motivated as the actions you're criticizing. If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that, it's not necessary to beat around the bush.
> If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that
No, I want him voted out because of specific actions and I also want every politician inclined to take those specific actions voted out. I don't hate him because he's a Republican, I don't hate him because he's a straight white Christian man, I don't hate him because he's from Florida, I don't hate him. I hate the actions that he's performed (funny thing about that MLK quote; some people just cannot tolerate being judged by the contents of their character).
To pretend that the people behind these "school-board driven" actions are not motivated by, encouraged by, and supportive of DeSantis is completely ludicrous. Anti-LGBT activists are clamoring to join school boards around the country, looking to effect the same policies.
Thank you. Admitting your perspective on this topic is based in personal politics is ultimately a good thing, and makes for more better reading for other users.
Oh, I wonder what could possibly happen based on the results of the initial review. Let's see:
> District staff sent out a list of questions teachers have to answer, like — does a book encourage students to believe that people are racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously? [...] If teachers answer “yes” or “unsure” to any of the questions in the district’s guidance, the book is to be removed from the classroom for further review.
There is a "satire[1]" meme floating with some disinformation about book bans in Florida. However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans[2].
Relatedly, the vague "don't say gay" law has a significant impact on LGBTQ teachers right to free expression -- straight teachers are totally free to talk about their spouses, for example, but gay teachers are not. Quite reminiscent of the "don't ask don't tell" policy.
What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans.
The idea that a teacher wants to talk to their students about their personal lives is utterly foreign to me.
Maybe it's just a sign of times changing?
Edit: this thought came to me in the context of a quote I saw from a teacher upset he couldn't talk about going surfing with his husband.
There was a wide enough income gap in our school that teachers talking about vacations was frowned upon, since you never really knew which kids didn't actually ever get to go on vacations, etc.
I had a teacher who taught a class that regularly featured his vacation photos because he spent his summers traveling. Sounds super corny, but he managed to make it interesting, and the first-person account brought to life the countries, religions and philosophies that we learning about. His wife occasionally showed up in those pictures.
My school also had two married teachers who shared a surname. We all knew they were married.
There were also a few teachers (band, orchestra, sports coaches) whose spouses would volunteer at events and travel with them.
Also quite a few teachers wore religious symbols -- cross on a necklace kind of thing. And quite a few of my teachers had pictures of their families on their desks. They didn't make a big deal about it, but evidence was in plain sight.
Now, I was in the high school in the 90s. I'm not sure when you think this changed.
> What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans.
That strikes me as odd. I recall this happening many times. Heck, there were even several pairs of teachers who met at school and got married. One teacher proposed to another teacher during a town parade where many students and teachers were present. It's not like teachers dwelled on personal details in class. It's just that it would be impossible to miss.
Doesn't seem odd to me at all. Growing up, I almost never heard my teachers talk about their partners or spouses or romantic relationships. I remember my year 6 teacher got married and decided to change her surname as a result – but that's all I can remember ever hearing about her marriage, and if she hadn't decided to change her surname, I doubt I would have heard about it at all.
Even now, we know very little about the romantic lives of our son's teachers – and I expect our son knows even less than we do. Even when we do know things, it is through gossip among parents, or socialising with teachers – not from teachers telling the children about it in class.
It was relatively common in school to discuss what happened over breaks, weekends, etc. to build conversation skills. Also, almost every k12 teacher I had would prepare a slideshow about themselves to present on the first day of class along with the syllabus. After all, you're spending a lot of time in that classroom as a k12 student.
Many teachers also have pictures of their family on their desks, as one might in their office at any other job.
Especially in lower grades, teachers are not robots that exclusively teach content from bell to bell each day.
> Also, almost every k12 teacher I had would prepare a slideshow about themselves to present on the first day of class along with the syllabus
This is pretty different from coming to school and telling 7yos about the sex party you went to this weekend and which gender you were identifying as when you went. This is the reality some parents are trying to prevent when they say some American teachers are taking their freedom to share their personal lives a bit far.
Let's be real, obviously there's nothing wrong with having a teacher who's LGBT. What people have a problem with are the folks who derive their entire identity out of that, and then greatly encourage the kids they teach to do the same. It's not dissimilar from a teacher being a veteran and insisting on sharing that part of their life with their students, to a point where parents find it crosses boundaries. We actually had a teacher at my high school who used to be a sniper in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was eventually told by the principal no more Afghan war stories, as it was making the students feel uncomfortable hearing that sort of thing from teacher.
The very obvious comparison here is a teacher coming to school and telling their kids, in detail, about their sex life or multiple gender transition surgeries. While they're topics which I'm comfortable with, I can't speak for every parent and I think it's wrong for the state to say "these topics MUST be socially acceptable to you, bigot."
Just teach the class! You don't need to get them excited about queer culture or gun culture or joining the military. Everyone would be better so much better off if teachers could just largely leave their personal lives at home and stick to the syllabus.
> This is pretty different from coming to school and telling 7yos about the sex party you went to this weekend and which gender you were identifying as when you went.
When has this ever happened?
> What people have a problem with are the folks who derive their entire identity out of that, and then greatly encourage the kids they teach to do the same.
When has this ever happened?
> The very obvious comparison here is a teacher coming to school and telling their kids, in detail, about their sex life or multiple gender transition surgeries
When has this ever happened?
Straight people also have sex parties. Why are we legislating against LGBT people specifically?
>When has this ever happened?
>When has this ever happened?
>When has this ever happened?
Were you expecting a news article? I'm not the 7yo in the classroom, these are just things I've heard from other parents while I've been spending time in FL. People are earnestly scared about what their kids are being taught in school and I think it's pretty cruel to abuse them instead of taking their concerns seriously.
Any of the examples I used are pretty obviously anecdotal, I'm surprised that wasn't clear to you. Not everything which has ever happened in this world has a Wikipedia article or video to link back to, some things just happen and then people tell others in their community, they don't necessarily run to write a blog post.
If you aren't living in FL right now I'm not sure how nuanced your perspective is going to be on the topic, but your opinions are always welcome, of course.
People saw cat litter on campus, which is commonly used to clean vomit off of floors at school, and fabricated this outrage. Anecdotes are not enough to villainize an entire group of people.
I live in TX, the book-banning capital of the US, so not too far off from FL.
Nobody's trying to villainize any LGBT people, you're the one jumping to that conclusion. I'm bisexual, two of my sisters and half my friends are queer, the fact you're unable to hear stories like this without assuming they're scaremongering lies says much more about you and your ability to process information than it does said apparent 'culture war'.
I shared an anecdote from a woman who had absolutely reason to lie, this wasn't a conversation on the internet, this was a handful of us chatting together at the dog park. Did you seriously expect me to do what you just did and smugly tell her that without a source she's just speaking lies? It's a fairly juvenile and reddit move, but again, we're seeing it right now.
If the only way you allow your priors to be updated is by reading news articles, I think you're going to find yourself fairly behind in cultural trends.
Finally, if news articles are truly the only way you can read, please feel free to read about what's happening near my hometown. [1] This should align well with your current assumption that it's not possible for LGBT people to do any wrong, and that any accusation of such is just right-wing 'nonsense'.
> This is pretty different from coming to school and telling 7yos about the sex party you went to this weekend and which gender you were identifying as when you went.
That sounds extremely specific. Do you have a source? Because I tend to agree, if somebody told my kid shit like that I'd also want them fired too.
Are you expecting a news article? This is a story a mom at the dog park told me last week. How you feel about it is entirely your own choice and makes 0 difference to me, but asking for a source on what a teacher said in a 7yo's classroom is pretty funny I think. It's like asking for a source of your coworker making an inappropriate joke or a dog peeing on your lawn - do you operate under the framework that only things with internet sources actually happened?
If someone at the dog park told you a story, is your response to ask for a source and dismiss her when she tells you that one very obviously doesn't exist? Seems like a funny way to interact with people.
Did you never have a teacher you were friendly with or served as a mentor even outside of class? I grew up in poverty and if it wasn't for a couple teachers going above and beyond I probably would've never got the help I need to get free community college tuition.
With cases like that, personal details end up discussed inadvertently because it's impossible to avoid. So-and-so's wife might be a teacher in the same district, or they might show up at school during late work hours and so forth. Same if they're running a club or some extracurricular activity.
Indeed. And there's a difference between on observation that something exists (e.g., their same sex spouse) vs discussing their "romantic relationship".
So they want to shut down any and all speech in that regard but force companies to publish speech that may not fall within their terms of service.
The so-called "don't say gay" law doesn't actually restrict LGBTQ teachers from talking about their gay partners in informal contexts: it bans them from teaching kids in a formal context about gender and sexuality (of any kind - heterosexual or homosexual) before a certain age and restricting it based on curriculum standards above that age.
The idea that the law restricts a male teacher from having a family photo or talking to students about what he did with his husband over vacation is completely false. That would be as illegal as preventing a teacher from praying with students in their off-time (after football games), which recently got re-affirmed by the supreme court. It only binds teachers' speech when they are operating in their official capacity as agents of the state.
While you might not agree with this particular restriction, agents of the state generally do not have free speech when they are acting in their official capacity. Teachers, DMV employees, and police officers all have lots of restrictions on their official speech. The ability of the people to restrict the speech of their agents is very important for maintaining a democracy. It keeps religion out of school curricula and it is what makes cops read you your rights when you are arrested.
There are books public schools or public libraries may not carry, not bans..
Germany making pro Nazi rhetoric illegal no matter where is a ban (one I can agree with)
Florida making sure their Public money is not spent on this is not a ban. You can still own and publish these books in Florida. Or have them in a privately owned library or at a private university or school.
Let's stop hyperbolizing. It is actually totally reasonable to censor books in libraries targeted towards children. Not doing so is unreasonable.
And lending a book is a positive action. If you gave the library your playboy collection should they keep it? Why or why not? Clearly, it is important to have standards for school libraries. There are other books that elementary school libraries should not contain. For example, mein kampf should be maybe available to higher-grade high-schoolers. Certainly not children. My school library growing up would not lend books marked for older grades to younger ones without permission. This is the same thing.
There was so much misframing and misinformation about the bill, continuing to use the Democrat and media made up name and language for the bill shows your slant. Just because many media organizations kept calling it, that doesn't mean anybody here should.
> If not, continuing to use the misnomer is spreading misinformation.
Just like the reframing of "woke" and "critical race theory" are misinformation - right? Right?
I have accepted that reframing language is now a legitimate political tool, and from my PoV, the right has been doing it a lot, such as labelling any milquetoast protest by groups nominally on the left an "insurrection" after 1/6. I believe it's a deliberate attack akin to semantic satiation to render a word meaningless, the conservative operative bluntly admitted (on Twitter!) to successful rebranding "woke". That egg will not be unscrambled.
You'll likely make a terrible politician[1] then, because that is a terrible approach in game theory when facing an opponent who defects consistently.
I was being descriptive - not prescriptive. This is now our political reality regardless of how we feel about it: politicians hold entire hearings to get 10-second sound-bites, and political operatives focus-group effective language which tends to be pithy and evocative (which gets called "misinformation" on HN when it's the other side doing it). Talking heads get coached on which phrases to use and the meme (in the original sense) gets spread and repeated by viewers/listeners. Asking people to stop using a specific term which was selected for being catchy is a losing battle - Pandora's box was opened on what are effectively PsyOps by political parties.
1. Jimmy Carter was a terrible politician in the same vein - he gave an honest answer when asked by the press if he had lusted after any woman who's not his wife. He is a good man, but that's not good politics.
>> However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans
The bans in the article you cited are done at the school district level, not the state level. Holding the executive branch of government of Florida responsible for those decisions would be similar to blaming the Biden administration for the actions of Florida's executive branch.
It also appears that the link you cited confuses curriculum selection with book banning. There's a range of what can be called a book ban. For example, when the novel Ulysses was banned, people who sold the book were arrested and imports of the book into the US were seized. That's definitely a book ban. Nothing of the sort is happening in Florida.
There are also cases where local school districts remove titles from school libraries, but those books can still be borrowed from public libraries, sold in book stores, or purchased or read online. If that's a book ban, it's not a book ban in the same sense that the ban of Ulysses was a book ban.
Then there are decisions by local school districts about what material should be used to teach classes in the schools in that district. For me, exercising control over school curriculum is not a book ban and is in no way similar to seizing copies of books and arresting people for selling those books.
Note that 2 is open to interpretation, so this justification has been used to ban classics like beloved and the kite runner, as school librarians can face criminal penalties if they don't do what (a single) parent asks.
"Federal law strictly prohibits the distribution of obscene matter to minors. Any transfer or attempt to transfer such material to a minor under the age of 16, including over the Internet, is punishable under federal law."
Is that book banning?
Do you think federal laws against providing pornography to minors should be overturned?
The important thing is how the law is interpreted. In Florida, "Obscene" is being interpreted (and in some cases written into statute) as far more than just pornagraphic, with the express intent that people like you can motte-bailey like this and claim that it's "just" banning pornography, when it isn't.
For example, the graphic novel "Gender Queer" has been banned under the broad brush of "pornography" in Florida, when it's educational and certainly not intended to grant anyone sexual satisfaction. The key thing is that cis- and hetero-normative "obscenity", like an anatomy textbook is likely acceptable, but the same images in a book that described queerness would not be.
Specifically, to use your source, none of the books banned in Florida would pass the Miller test as all of them taken as a whole, posses "serious artistic, political, or scientific value", and few are "prurient" in nature, nor do they describe sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" way.
To use the examples from above, Kite Runner and Beloved are both critically acclaimed, award-winning novels, to claim they have no artistic merit is...simply wrong.
> cis- and hetero-normative "obscenity", like an anatomy textbook
If it's heteronormative to merely show anatomy (and presumably describe mating) then I don't understand why that's worth calling out. It's no insult to anyone to say that male-female relationships are the most common and the only ones that produce children. We don't need to represent everything as equally likely to say that it's okay.
As for cis, I struggle to see how anatomy would intersect with gender-identity at all. Bodies are male or female, and may be intersex.
> graphic novel "Gender Queer" has been banned under the broad brush of "pornography" in Florida, when it's educational
This feels like a problem of having to find a category. If there was an 'unapproved medical advice' category it would be more descriptive.
As for its educational content, it recommends - not merely discusses but actively recommends - drugs and breast-binding for something that many (most?) parents do not think is a medical condition.
> nor do they describe sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" way.
In looking it up and reading it I discovered that the author said "It's been two years since it was published, why are they mad about it now?" and the answer to that is schools. The book wasn't being protested when it was available for sale, and in public libraries, only when it was placed in school libraries.
I think the 'patently offensive' element here is specifically that it's being placed in schools even though many parents don't want it and even explicitly over their objections.
