Offensive speech

It looks like I'm probably not teaching Mill this coming year, which is a shame. This case - in which police required that a banner reading 'white silence is violence' be removed because it was 'offensive' - would be a good one for discussions of free expression.

Desmond Swayne, MP, objecting to face masks

This clip is doing the rounds. In case videos get taken down, it can also be found here and here. It might be useful for teaching in several respects.

Swayne describes mandatory face masks as a 'monstrous imposition' and suggests that the police will be needed to make him wear one. My understanding is that masks will soon be a legal requirement, rather than just a recommendation, so this could qualify as civil disobedience.

In reply, Hancock refers to the need to balance public health against the liberty to go shopping, suggesting that allowing people to shop while wearing masks strikes the right balance. This illustrates the idea that the rights/freedoms we allow may be the subject of some kind of cost-benefit analysis.

He also notes that the law may be enforced not only by the policy, but also by the public. It's not entirely clear whether he means only that most people will probably obey voluntarily or whether he means that public pressure will enforce the obligation on others. The latter, at least, could possibly illustrate Mill's idea that freedom can be limited by social pressure (though Mill thinks this a danger even without the law).

Not bad for 80 seconds...

Five a day? Try one...

Apparently Brits are, on average, eating less vegetables. The news story doesn't (so far as I can see) link to the original source, but it mentions a report from the Food Foundation, so I assume it's this one.

I'm not entirely clear on the details, because sometimes (when talking about guidelines) the report mentions fruit and veg but sometimes it only mentions veg. Someone who doesn't eat much veg could, at least in theory, be eating lots of fruit (though I assume this isn't usually the case).

Nonetheless, there are marked divides between adults and children and between rich and poor, but around 80% of adults eat less than 3-5 portions a day, despite official advice to eat at least five portions of fruit and veg a day (and some would say double that).

Abolishing Restaurants?

A friend just shared a link to this provocative piece on abolishing restaurants.

I've not actually read it in full, so I'm basically just bookmarking it here, but it certainly looks interesting. I've never really seen such an argument made before, but it has parallels to arguments that might be made in other contexts.

For instance, in discussion of prostitution, there seems to be a difference between 'ordinary' sex - whether it be in a committed relationship or a one-night stand - and commercial sex. I've heard people make an analogy to cooking. Is there a similarly important difference between cooking for someone else as part of a caring (not necessarily romantic) relationship and cooking for them simply as part of some paid transaction?

Food for thought, perhaps.

Freedom from Parties

Speaking of freedom, as I was the other day, this local news piece is interesting. It's about police breaking up a large house party, but their intervention is not what's portrayed as restricting freedom. Rather, one anonymous local resident is quoted as saying:

"How disgusting it is for these scum to use that treasured day [VE Day] as an excuse to break many laws and impinge on the personal freedom of a quiet residential area. Welcome to the lawless Wild West of Southampton."

It seems odd to speak of the personal freedom of a quiet residential area, rather than of people, but perhaps this is simply shorthand for the residents of said area. But it also seems odd, to me, to phrase the complaint in terms of personal freedom at all. One certainly can - they were not free to sleep, because of the noise - but I don't know whether the language of freedom helps here.

Freedom and Liberty

If I'm teaching freedom again, then this piece - about 'liberate' protests against lockdown - looks like it could make for an interesting (though probably not by then so topical) discussion piece. As the author puts it:

"Liberty is a type of freedom defined and limited by civil society. It is not an unrestrained, unchecked license to do whatever one desires. Rather, liberty is a right constituted by the society — or, here, nation — one lives in."

This would pair nicely with Bernard Williams' essay 'From Freedom to Liberty', which makes a similar distinction between 'primitive freedom' and 'liberty as a political value' (though it's been a while since read this piece and I don't recall it being very accessible).

Publication: Against Detaching the Duty to Vote

I've not had much time for research lately, but a paper that's been in the works for a while has just appeared in print in the latest issue - 82(2) - of The Journal of Politics. (I'm afraid this is, as ever, restricted to subscribers.)

Here's a word cloud, indicating the content:

If you prefer the more traditional abstract, here it is:

Many people believe that citizens of a democracy have a duty to vote, yet this overlooks an important distinction between voting well and voting badly. Those who vote well may be doing what they ought to do, but it does not follow that those who vote badly are doing anything that they ought to do. While one cannot vote well unless one votes, a duty to vote as such cannot be detached from a more particular duty to vote well. Thus, even if there is an obligation to vote well, there may be no obligation to vote simpliciter.