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Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

bigthink.com

471–480 of 480 posts

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#471

The thing is, people on the far left and the far right DON’T want a liberal society. They want authoritarianism. They want control to suppress their adversaries.

In the context of the US, everything I’ve seen suggests the right seeks authoritarianism more than the left does, doing things like getting books they don’t agree with banned, working to eliminate the votes of those not aligned with them, and weakening the barrier between church and state.

I'm not sure why you've been downvoted. The right is actively forcing books out of libraries in Florida and deciding that trans people shouldn't exist in many states. It's not like they're going to stop with that. This notion that the left is authoritarian is, frankly, projection.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of the US, everything I’ve seen suggests the right seeks authoritarianism more than the left does, doing things like getting books they don’t agree with banned, working to eliminate the votes of those not aligned with them, and weakening the barrier between church and state.

You're not paying much attention to current events are you. You have a massive blind spot. May I recommend you check out ground.news and use the bias checker to see what you're missing out on?

What did they say that's inaccurate and betrays they have a massive blind spot?

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#473

I remember the Idea Channel on YouTube had a video about violence. He started by quoting an artist saying something to the effect that putting paint to canvas was a violent act. The host went on to define violence as the taking away of agency. The rest of the video was mostly him arguing that physical violence is as easy to define as you might think and that ideas and speech can in fact be violent. My reaction was th…

Amazing how trendy redefining words has become.

Definitions are constantly in flux. It's the reason the dictionary has to be updated. See the evolving definition of "literal" for instance or how "gay" has changed over time.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you, or anyone you know, honestly believe that the level of threat that would constitute assault in most common law jurisdictions should be treated as protected free speech? My example, of a specific, credible, actionable threat. I know plenty of people with extreme views, but "coercion by threat of violence should be legal" is not one I've heard before. It certainly is a consensus, and your denial of such is in d…

I believe that equating credible threat with violent speech is a category error. Speech is not the only thing going on for the threat to be established as credible. Perhaps those things should be more harshly sanctioned than they are. Perhaps there are structural problems that grant enough leverage to create threat with only the outward appearance of speech. Speech alone -> the level of threat that would constitute a…

The guy with the FAL hasn't committed any crimes, except for speaking (a threat). He can legally own a firearm, he can legally be aware of his neighbor's habits, and he can legally ask his neighbor for some cash. Yet you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that wouldn't take his statement as criminal, and at the very least use it as grounds to take him into custody.

The only thing criminal committed is the speech.

My "false consensus building" was the assertion that the vast majority of people are okay with that speech being criminalized. Call it "violent speech", or "speech about violence" or "speech threatening but not directly constituting violence", but at the end of the day, we're talking about speech, criminalized speech, criminalized speech that damn near everyone is in agreement should be criminalized.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost" is not true. Did someone drop a bill in the legislature? Maybe. Did it even make it out of committee? Where are you getting this? "Almost" is doing a lot of work. If your source was AM radio or Fox News don't bother to reply. Leginfo only, please.

More than a year ago, but perhaps referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 ?

Nope, that's a repeal of our affirmative action ban WHICH FAILED in 2020, during the alleged peak of the woke mob. I bet Fox doesn't mention that affirmative action is illegal in California.

That is not repealing our civil rights law, the FEHA, or amending it to remove protections for white people, who are, by the way, only a plurality here. Even if we had, the federal law, Title VII, still protects everyone. The question isn't who you are, it's whether you were discriminated against on that basis.

Personally, I am really glad the rest of the country hates us and thinks we're shit so they don't come here, but it gets annoying when people just make stuff up. No, the place is far from perfect, but it's nothing like what people imagine. Even in San Francisco, they recalled the prosecutor who wouldn't do anything and San Francisco is probably the most extreme. People think that must mean every city around it is the same. Other than Berkeley, sometimes, they just aren't. In fact most of us go, thank god I don't live in San Francisco, which, by the way isn't the second biggest city in the state. San Jose has more people than San Francisco and so does San Diego. San Diego is much, much more purple. It's almost like 40m people are different.

They sure seem happy to take our tax dollars though.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real lawyers don't necessarily know every case citation. Real law students and googlers might. You get a general sense of how things work.

I guess what I should have said was that they’d have a sense of the operative case law in the area they were speaking on. I don’t think that is too high of an expectation. That case wasn’t something I had to google and I’m not in school currently.

If that's their area of the law. Being a lawyer isn't about memorizing everything. It's about knowing how things work more broadly. Writing memos about the current law is for law students and junior associates unless it's your narrow focus area.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than a year ago, but perhaps referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 ?

Nope, that's a repeal of our affirmative action ban WHICH FAILED in 2020, during the alleged peak of the woke mob. I bet Fox doesn't mention that affirmative action is illegal in California. That is not repealing our civil rights law, the FEHA, or amending it to remove protections for white people, who are, by the way, only a plurality here. Even if we had, the federal law, Title VII, still protects everyone. The que…

Arguably, a ban on racial discrimination (or "affirmative action") is a civil rights law, so almost repealing such a ban would be almost repealing civil rights law.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, that's a repeal of our affirmative action ban WHICH FAILED in 2020, during the alleged peak of the woke mob. I bet Fox doesn't mention that affirmative action is illegal in California. That is not repealing our civil rights law, the FEHA, or amending it to remove protections for white people, who are, by the way, only a plurality here. Even if we had, the federal law, Title VII, still protects everyone. The que…

Arguably, a ban on racial discrimination (or "affirmative action") is a civil rights law, so almost repealing such a ban would be almost repealing civil rights law.

Arguably being the key word, then yes. But the voters rejected it. Arguably or not, we weren't talking about affirmative action, we were talking about what people call the civil rights law, which is the FEHA, which is the state analog of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So, it's arguable if you don't know what you're talking about, and then it just becomes "annoying-reply-guy"-ly.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#479

When a message board or user is kicked off a platform, it's never for "saying the wrong thing" or "political correctness". It's generally because they organized targeted campaigns of harassment, doxxing, swatting, and other kinds of behavior that violated the terms of service. Take this example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-... "At least three people have died by suicide after becoming…

[flagged]

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that equating credible threat with violent speech is a category error. Speech is not the only thing going on for the threat to be established as credible. Perhaps those things should be more harshly sanctioned than they are. Perhaps there are structural problems that grant enough leverage to create threat with only the outward appearance of speech. Speech alone -> the level of threat that would constitute a…

The guy with the FAL hasn't committed any crimes, except for speaking (a threat). He can legally own a firearm, he can legally be aware of his neighbor's habits, and he can legally ask his neighbor for some cash. Yet you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that wouldn't take his statement as criminal, and at the very least use it as grounds to take him into custody. The only thing criminal committe…

> Yet you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that wouldn't take his statement as criminal, and at the very least use it as grounds to take him into custody.

And yet you would be hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that has ever done so, because that's not really how people make credible threats of violence for extortion.

We have a lot of case law around extortion.

> The only thing criminal committed is the speech.

It is, in many jurisdictions, not illegal to drive. Yet it is generally illegal to drive while underage. Clearly, the only thing criminal committed is being below the driving age.

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