You know, I'm getting so many predictable responses like this, I wonder if I need to rebut them or just leave them up as proof of my point. The trolls at FedSoc won this round, that's for sure. Not only did the protesting students fall into the trap, so did all the apologists for fascism.
You're getting "predictable" responses because they are the correct responses to the argument of "suppressing speech is ok as long as it's the right kind of speech"
Except I never said suppressing speech is ok as long as its the right kind of speech.
My point, let's be clear, is simply this: there ARE good guys and bad guys in this situation. The bad guys did what the bad guys always do, flex their bullying power; the good guys chose a dumb response, anger and shouting down, which fell right into the bad guys' trap.
The secondary point I made, which you have now helped me demonstrate, is that the trap laid by the bad guys not only traps their obvious opponents, it also traps "neutral" bystanders who want to appear "reasonable."
By this logic, people advocating for threats and the eradication of others are just as legitimate as those who want them left alone and want peace. This didnтАЩt work with the Nazis and it wonтАЩt work here either. Some boundaries about what is acceptable need to be set.
You are mistaking protection of speech and strong free speech norms with endorsement or approval of the speech in question. It's not a matter of who is "legitimate" or not. It's a matter of that historically whenever any group has been given unilateral power to decide who is and isn't "legitimate" that has resulted in acute human suffering, and I don't believe we are any more advanced today than we were any of the other times in the past to know for sure what speech is or isn't "legitimate" or to keep our governments and other levers of power under control enough to give them the authority to decide that either.
Consider that I find your views on suppressing speech to be abhorrent and dangerous. Is the world better of if I am able to restrain you from speaking your views? Arguably yes. And yet there is always a possibility that you're right, after all enlightenment thought processes haven't been the default for most of history, or even a good part of the modern age. So what if you were right? By forcibly suppressing your speech, the discussion will never happen. The status quo will continue and the world will be worse off as you imagine.
On the other hand, you could be wrong. But if I suppress your ability to speak, again this discussion and debate will never be had. Other people who think the same as you, or even who are on the fence may never hear a robust (or even this mediocre) defense of free speech values. In such a world, people with your views might eventually become a majority because with no articulated defense of free speech, it could become viewed as a relic of "old white men", and that majority might even change the laws eliminating free speech and again we'd be worse off.
Or moving out of the very abstract into the more concrete, one doesn't have to go back very far to find us jailing, fining or suppressing people for:
* advocating against the draft (Schenck v. United States)
* establishing communist organizations (Whitney v. California)
* advocating the "violent overthrow of the government" by way of distribution of the Communist Manifesto (Dennis v. United States)
* general communist advocacy including at times "violence" (Yates v. United States)
* calling law enforcement officers fascists (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire)
* "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] tumultuous or offensive conduct" (Cohen v. California)
* "endeavoring to arouse the Negro people against the whites, urging that they rise up in arms and fight for equal rights" (Feiner v. New York)
* Selling erotica (Roth v. United States)
* Selling more erotica (Miller v. California)
* Saying 7 words (FCC v. Pacifica Foundation)
* Distributing "obscene or indecent" messages to anyone under 18 (Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union)
* Publishing material that depicts "depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed or religion" (Beauharnais v. Illinois)
* Taking out an ad criticizing the police (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan)
* Antagonizing a judge (Sacher v. United States)
* Antagonizing the police (Hess v. Indiana)
* Criticizing a congressman (Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus)
* Lying about military service (United States v. Alvarez)
* Protesting wars (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District)
Not all of those cases went in the way of maximal freedoms, but in every single one of those cases, the people who were suppressing the speech thought it was dangerous, or abhorrent or otherwise illegitimate. In many cases, it's likely the speaker themselves was viewed that way. Back to those communist/socialism cases specifically and that was viewed by all "right thinking people" at the time as about as bad as being a Nazi. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But that's for each individual listener to decide, not for some authority from on high to forcibly stop.
Whatever happened to "stand up to bullies?" I guess that fighting back is just bad american values. Far better to give the bullies whatever they want as soon as you can or else you might be undermining their first amendement rights.
Or do only these things apply when its the liberals fighting back? Hmmmm.....
Nothing happened to it. Stand up to bullies. But proportional force is also called for. One doesn't get to shoot their bullies because they called them a "four eyes". Heck I'm sure our recent president thought many a media organization were being bullies. I don't know about you but I'm awful glad we have strong free speech rules and norms that prevented him from shutting down everyone and everything that didn't kowtow to him.
You know, I'm getting so many predictable responses like this, I wonder if I need to rebut them or just leave them up as proof of my point.
The trolls at FedSoc won this round, that's for sure. Not only did the protesting students fall into the trap, so did all the apologists for fascism.
You're getting "predictable" responses because they are the correct responses to the argument of "suppressing speech is ok as long as it's the right kind of speech"
Except I never said suppressing speech is ok as long as its the right kind of speech.
My point, let's be clear, is simply this: there ARE good guys and bad guys in this situation. The bad guys did what the bad guys always do, flex their bullying power; the good guys chose a dumb response, anger and shouting down, which fell right into the bad guys' trap.
The secondary point I made, which you have now helped me demonstrate, is that the trap laid by the bad guys not only traps their obvious opponents, it also traps "neutral" bystanders who want to appear "reasonable."
By this logic, people advocating for threats and the eradication of others are just as legitimate as those who want them left alone and want peace. This didnтАЩt work with the Nazis and it wonтАЩt work here either. Some boundaries about what is acceptable need to be set.
You are mistaking protection of speech and strong free speech norms with endorsement or approval of the speech in question. It's not a matter of who is "legitimate" or not. It's a matter of that historically whenever any group has been given unilateral power to decide who is and isn't "legitimate" that has resulted in acute human suffering, and I don't believe we are any more advanced today than we were any of the other times in the past to know for sure what speech is or isn't "legitimate" or to keep our governments and other levers of power under control enough to give them the authority to decide that either.
Consider that I find your views on suppressing speech to be abhorrent and dangerous. Is the world better of if I am able to restrain you from speaking your views? Arguably yes. And yet there is always a possibility that you're right, after all enlightenment thought processes haven't been the default for most of history, or even a good part of the modern age. So what if you were right? By forcibly suppressing your speech, the discussion will never happen. The status quo will continue and the world will be worse off as you imagine.
On the other hand, you could be wrong. But if I suppress your ability to speak, again this discussion and debate will never be had. Other people who think the same as you, or even who are on the fence may never hear a robust (or even this mediocre) defense of free speech values. In such a world, people with your views might eventually become a majority because with no articulated defense of free speech, it could become viewed as a relic of "old white men", and that majority might even change the laws eliminating free speech and again we'd be worse off.
Or moving out of the very abstract into the more concrete, one doesn't have to go back very far to find us jailing, fining or suppressing people for:
* advocating against the draft (Schenck v. United States)
* establishing communist organizations (Whitney v. California)
* advocating the "violent overthrow of the government" by way of distribution of the Communist Manifesto (Dennis v. United States)
* general communist advocacy including at times "violence" (Yates v. United States)
* calling law enforcement officers fascists (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire)
* "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] tumultuous or offensive conduct" (Cohen v. California)
* "endeavoring to arouse the Negro people against the whites, urging that they rise up in arms and fight for equal rights" (Feiner v. New York)
* Selling erotica (Roth v. United States)
* Selling more erotica (Miller v. California)
* Saying 7 words (FCC v. Pacifica Foundation)
* Distributing "obscene or indecent" messages to anyone under 18 (Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union)
* Publishing material that depicts "depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed or religion" (Beauharnais v. Illinois)
* Taking out an ad criticizing the police (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan)
* Antagonizing a judge (Sacher v. United States)
* Antagonizing the police (Hess v. Indiana)
* Criticizing a congressman (Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus)
* Lying about military service (United States v. Alvarez)
* Protesting wars (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District)
And many many many many others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_involving_the_First_Amendment#Freedom_of_speech
Not all of those cases went in the way of maximal freedoms, but in every single one of those cases, the people who were suppressing the speech thought it was dangerous, or abhorrent or otherwise illegitimate. In many cases, it's likely the speaker themselves was viewed that way. Back to those communist/socialism cases specifically and that was viewed by all "right thinking people" at the time as about as bad as being a Nazi. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But that's for each individual listener to decide, not for some authority from on high to forcibly stop.
Whatever happened to "stand up to bullies?" I guess that fighting back is just bad american values. Far better to give the bullies whatever they want as soon as you can or else you might be undermining their first amendement rights.
Or do only these things apply when its the liberals fighting back? Hmmmm.....
Nothing happened to it. Stand up to bullies. But proportional force is also called for. One doesn't get to shoot their bullies because they called them a "four eyes". Heck I'm sure our recent president thought many a media organization were being bullies. I don't know about you but I'm awful glad we have strong free speech rules and norms that prevented him from shutting down everyone and everything that didn't kowtow to him.