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How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

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Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#821

Post by sorcerer-mar »

andreygrehov wrote: post #813
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your initial comment was meant to draw some type of equivalence between a person being arrested in America for writing an op-ed and for people being drafted for war in Ukraine. Now you're 5 comments deep tying yourself in odd knots like "the US is being invaded by a foreign government" and "Ukraine is not at war" and "executive orders can overrule Constitutional due process rights." You created your own confusion, my…

You're misrepresenting my original point. My initial comment was to highlight the act of capturing someone off the street, not to equate that with arrests over op-eds or argue legal parity between Ukraine and the US. I never said "the US is being invaded by a foreign government". I referenced information publicly shared by the White House. That’s a valid source, regardless of who signed the executive order. We don’t…

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Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#822

Post by milesrout »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #801
nine_k wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only affects school libraries. As long as the book is available in public libraries, and is legal to sell, buy, and possess, it's not banned. It's just considered inappropriate for minors. It's more like giving a movie an R rating than like banning.

I'm aware of that. Clarifying it only doubles down on digging the argument-by-definitions hole. I'm starting to get a sense that that's the only argument here.

You can't complain about an "argument by definitions" when your entire argument rests on applying a label like "book banning" that has significant cultural weight. Book banning sounds bad, it sounds authoritarian, and that is basically your entire argument. So yes in that scenario it is pretty fatal to your argument if you are completely misapplying it to a situation that cannot actually be described as involving book banning at all (because no books have, in fact, been banned).

Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#825

Post by milesrout »

nine_k wrote: post #797
milesrout wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state doesn't limit freedom of expression by choosing what material to teach in schools (which it does) then it doesn't limit it by choosing what material to host in school libraries (which it does). If you want to say removing these books from school libraries is an illegitimate constraint on freedom of expression, then so is the school curriculum. So is public education generally.

While removing a book from a school library by the school board may be a sensible act, and does not violate the letter of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law..."), it definitely has something to do with the spirit of it, that it, the interaction of government and free speech. It's very certainly something to keep an eye on.

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Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#826

Post by s1artibartfast »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #804
raxxorraxor wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that as a moderator, but you still violate the principle of freedom of speech in that case. The is the prejorative of any group to do so. I tend to prefer groups that understand the principle of free speech, but it isn't a hard requirement. Culture formerly forced large commercial internet platforms to adhere to freedom of speech and we have lost that partially. And people are rightfully not too amused abo…

You might want to look up what free speech actually means before engaging in discussions about it.

Free speech means a lot of different things. I like Ken White's framework

https://popehat.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-free-speech-ped...

Free speech rights - The government shouldn't restrict speech

Free Speech culture - Private institutions shouldn't punish speech

Speech Decency - Individuals should judge others by their speech

Incoherence - Nobody should be judged for anything they say

Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#827

Post by timewizard »

unethical_ban wrote: post #771
timewizard wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have more than 2 parties. You can vote against people. To me that's a tacit admission that you're accepting the proffer. As there's no way on your vote to indicate that it's a vote of protest vs. a vote of support. The candidate you vote for will see no difference. You'll have reduced your already meager position even further. I do not accept this. I mean if you want to get into the anti-democratic nature…

A civic duty is not a legal duty. You have the legal right not to vote. My opinion is you are failing your government and your own interests when you don't vote. I agree that plurality voting is bad. We should have a system where candidates are ranked, so voter sentiment is better expressed and more than two candidates have a chance at winning. The system we have now needs to be worked, until we get a new system. If…

> you are failing your government and your own interests when you don't vote.

This is a representative democracy. How exactly am I "failing my interests" when I don't vote?

Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#828

Post by kelseyfrog »

milesrout wrote: post #822
kelseyfrog wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of that. Clarifying it only doubles down on digging the argument-by-definitions hole. I'm starting to get a sense that that's the only argument here.

You can't complain about an "argument by definitions" when your entire argument rests on applying a label like "book banning" that has significant cultural weight. Book banning sounds bad, it sounds authoritarian, and that is basically your entire argument. So yes in that scenario it is pretty fatal to your argument if you are completely misapplying it to a situation that cannot actually be described as involving boo…

So what's happening here is that there is a group who is banning books and then doing language policing because it has bad optics. What everyone else is hearing is, "Conditional banning isn't banning" which isn't a coherent argument.

It's pretty clear that if the books they are banning from these places were unconditionally banned they wouldn't go to bat for them. Rather the sentiment would be "that's good actually." It doesn't take a genius to recognize that the playbook is to make incremental advances and argue over definitions in order to achieve this goal.

Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#829

Post by try_the_bass »

PieTime wrote: post #662
tetromino_ wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have yet to see a free speech absolutist express concern ... Hi there. You are seeing one right now. Well, seeing the words of one. I am a free speech absolutist. What this administration is doing is abominable. I have always seen anti-Israeli campus posters as idiots, but Trump's crackdown on them is, imho, unconstitutional and immoral.

You’re free to support apartheid but I’ve never found slandering your opposition particularly useful. I don’t support any forms of violence, and framing is very important because it leads to peace activists being conflated with war mongering. Israel fascism is at the very heart of why free speech is being banned. https://youtu.be/9Z1NyTdhZ-U?si=9S4rOI-fQY0Yr0XD

> You’re free to support apartheid but I’ve never found slandering your opposition particularly useful

You say, as you slander your opposition.

If you proudly proclaim your hypocrisy like this, is it really any surprise that the rest of your moral argument falls flat?

Re: How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack

#830

Post by russdill »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #799
russdill wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty, and it's all pretty ugly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids

So you're saying it hasn't happened in 4-5 generations? While certainly precedent, it's understandable people are worried about it.

No, I just gave one example. I could keep posting examples, but it keeps happening over and over again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

"The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 deemed immigrants who were anarchists or members of or affiliated with the Communist Party or any other totalitarian organizations that plan to overthrow the United States as deportable immigrants. Immigrants who were successors of any association of Communism, regardless of name changes, still fell under the deportable immigrants. Immigrants who advocated, taught, wrote, published in support for communism, a totalitarian dictatorship, and the overthrowing of the United States were also deportable immigrants."

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