331–340 of 443 posts
Funny how some people take 'freedom of speech' for granted or universal..nope...that is uniquely an American feature, still, even after centuries. Democracy does not mean free speech.
The US only got freedom of speech in the 60's.
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One thing I have learnt is that anything bad reported in the so called british press that other countries do, goes on here in the uk as well. Churchill summed it up best, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, which means people will be made examples of as and when needed.
I think the usual analogy in places where you "have" to hurt some people for some noble Higher Purpose is about omelets and breaking eggs.
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The entire point of the term "white priviledge" is to justify discrimination on the basis of people's ethnic background.
The point is to recognize discrimination.
Men get harsher sentences than women for the same crimes, but we don't really hear much about "female privilege". If you want to point out discrimination, you don't need any concept for "privilege". The problem was never that one group has something. The problem is that one group does not have something. It's the inequality that needs to be addressed, not the "privilege".
Making blanket assumptions about people on the basis of their skin color is something we should be avoiding, not encouraging. Keep the focus on what needs to be solved and suddenly you avoid all the problems focusing on "white privilege" causes like resentment, defensiveness, blame, and guilt.
I’m generally in favour of some limits on speech. I don’t think you should be able to tweet racist messages for example. It’s obviously very complicated and something people are going to argue a lot about. BUT this case has made me change my opinion. Things much worse than this are tweeted every day and this is the one that gets prosecuted. It’s blatantly politically motivated (‘national hero’, British soldier etc) a…
Aside from me absolutely being in favor of even offensive and racist speech out of general principles, you'd be surprised (or not) by how easily "racism" can be redefined to include all kinds of things that are very, very dubiously racist by any normal definition. There are extremely woke people who consider even questioning any of their arguments about race or class as a racist act. There are cases where a person ma…
Yet you can't say "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" in public schools because the judiciary lost their minds at the idea of marijuana use and its illegality. There certainly is/was bigotry when it comes to marijuana, its users, and speech around it.
To illustrate the effects of administrative suppression of free speech one can observe that Russian propaganda freely blossoms on the platforms where free speech is significantly administratively suppressed, ie. for example FB, Twitter, LinkedIn - the places where speech violating various "safe space" rules is handled by getting administratively deleted. Russian propaganda is a product of a free speech suppressed env…
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Each sentence, though individually false, comes together to produce an overall point that is also false. A lack of a disadvantage others have is a privilege. The point of calling it a privilege is to emphasize that white people benefit from racism against other groups even when they don't do anything racist themselves. Benefitting knowingly from discrimination against others while doing nothing to end it is complicit…
The 'privilege' is just a trick to divide you and make you fight each other. If it was't black vs white, it would be a 'privilege' based on subtle shades of skin, hair, eyes or even height. Anything works to distract masses from the fact that the only real privilege is hereditary wealth. Having the right family name is The Privilege. It's unbelievable that the relatively smart people fail to see this elephant in the…
There's something I find loathesome about this "Send a message" sentencing. What the judge has done is send a clear message, that he won't sentence you on the merits of the case but will sentence you to serve his own agenda. The only message this sends is that justice has failed. It's always completely transparent who exactly gets made an example of, and who gets off with a slap on the wrist. We'll spend months hunti…
The entire concept of "setting an example" seems like a bit of fascism that has snuck its way into liberal democracy.
There's something I find loathesome about this "Send a message" sentencing. What the judge has done is send a clear message, that he won't sentence you on the merits of the case but will sentence you to serve his own agenda. The only message this sends is that justice has failed. It's always completely transparent who exactly gets made an example of, and who gets off with a slap on the wrist. We'll spend months hunti…
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I disagree with restrictions on speech for the following reason: - If you limit what people are allowed to write or say, you are effectively limiting what others are allowed to read or hear. - Censorship means delegating a censor. - That censor would then be able to determine what I am allowed to read or hear. There is nobody I trust besides myself to do that. I definitely don't trust any government body to do that.…
> I disagree with restrictions on speech for the following reason: I've never once met a true free speech absolutist. We accept restrictions on speech all the time. We restrict companies from outright lying about their products. We (sometimes) hold people accountable for lying under oath. We even compel certain speech by forcing companies to disclose ingredients and allergens. Even for government some material is jus…
These sorts of lies are usually covered under existing fraud laws. When such laws don't exist, companies use accreditation firms. Long before OSHA, Underwriters Laboratories tested the safety of various building materials and electrical devices. Customers and insurers preferred UL-approved products because it meant a lower risk of harm. If a manufacturer changed their product to be less safe, they'd lose their UL certification and a lot of revenue.
> We (sometimes) hold people accountable for lying under oath.
Yes and we hold people accountable for trying to pass counterfeit money or writing bad checks. These sorts of situations are special because all parties agree on the rules at the start of the transaction. By the same token I'm against unprovoked violence but fine with sports like boxing.
> We even compel certain speech by forcing companies to disclose ingredients and allergens.
I'd be fine abolishing such laws. Companies that didn't list their ingredients would probably lose significant business (since many people have allergies). Companies that lied about their ingredients could be charged with fraud (either in civil or criminal court). And again, in places where such laws don't exist, accreditation firms do the job. That said, we don't require ingredient labeling at bake sales and those seem to do fine.
> I should not be allowed to make direct calls for violence against others, phone in fake bomb threats, or yell "fire" in a theater.
The "fire in a crowded theater" hypothetical is from a supreme court case where socialists were imprisoned for distributing leaflets that protested conscription in the first world war.[1] It has since been overturned, and it is an excellent example of why any restriction on speech ends up being abused by those in power.
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It's just standard 'edgy' anti-english diatribe from a Scot. It's really nothing I don't hear regularly either out in public or from friend-adjacent people here. It's bad taste and trashy but that's kind of it. The problem is exactly that it's not an unusual attitude to hear. The difference is who it was aimed at. So for me the real issue is that we're cherry picking when we apply a very vague and loosely applied law…
I'm from the US, so please forgive my ignorance of UK law in this regard, but is this case special at all because the target of the insult was knighted (or whatever the correct term is)? Would it have been the same result if the target was a "random" non-knighted individual?
It used to be the case that peers (ie lords) had a somewhat different treatment in the law: they would be tried for crimes in the House of Lords instead of a regular court. The idea of that seems more reasonable the further back in time you go as the nobility had more power. However that is not the case anymore either.
It continues to be the case that the justice system is more accessible to some people than others and having better access likely correlates with the probability that one is knighted.