> Progressive causes are near and dear to my heart. I am a feminist and staunch Democrat. As a federal public defender turned law professor, I have spent my career trying to make change in a criminal legal system that is riven with racism and fundamentally unfair to those without status and financial resources. Yet, as someone who understands firsthand that the fundamental rights to free speech and due process exist only as long as competent lawyers are willing to vigorously defend extreme positions and people, I view the ACLU’s hard-left turn with alarm. It smacks of intolerance and choosing sides, precisely what a civil-liberties organization designed to defend the Bill of Rights is meant to oppose.
What an incredibly level headed take. It's so level headed that it seems fake when projected onto the landscape of modern political discourse.
>It's so level headed that it seems fake when projected onto the landscape of modern political discourse.
Yes, and we need more of this sort of thinking, from everyone capable of it. I believe we have to stop thinking that "keeping your head down" is a solution. It is not. We must challenge unfairness itself, even if, especially if it yields an outcome we would prefer. This means principle over loyalty, and it won't make you popular but it may save our civilization.
Personally I'd like to get back to a world where the fate of civilization is not the responsibility of every individual to worry about on a daily basis. That same mindset is underneath all the polarization as well; are you really a good (or loyal or principled) person if you're not actively fighting for causes X, Y and Z? Could be correlation instead of causation though.
But that's what freedom of speech is for. If you are a citizen of a free country with freedom of speech and voting rights, everything is your responsibility. You are supposed to be the ultimate source of power.
If you think something is wrong in the society, fixing it is your responsibility. You can of course ignore it if you think the issue is not particularly significant or if it looks like other people are already handling it. But if the issue is important and contested, you are expected to get involved.
The deeper issue behind polarization is that people don't agree on the principles the society is built on. The Constitution may codify some principles, but too many people consider them insufficient or illegitimate. There is no fix to this apart from the vast majority of people agreeing on some set of principles.
I think everyone should try living a few years as a non-citizen in a foreign country. It gives a different perspective on politics. You live somewhere in the long term and see the issues around you, but you don't have the same rights as most other people and your responsibilities are limited.
At least in the United States that’s really not what the founders were going for. Their stance was more, “First, imagine there is no government. Then people come together. What would they reasonably agree to out of self-interest?”
It wasn’t about individuals being responsible for solving every societal problem they each observe, and it wasn’t about creating an apparatus individuals could use to solve arbitrary social problems.
It was about self-governing individuals negotiating with each other and having the tools to safeguard those agreements against tyranny. Individuals were responsible for themselves, not society. Political society existed as a compact to lift up the individual, not the other way around.
> If you are a citizen of a free country with freedom of speech and voting rights, everything is your responsibility.
I vehemently disagree. America is a representative democracy. We vote for representatives in the legislature and other parts of government who are responsible for the "everything". All the regular people have to do is vote for whichever representatives they think will do a good job. There is no obligation that everybody be informed in all matters concerning how to run a country. Even congresspeople have specializations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senate_c...
That's the voting rights part. Freedom of speech gives you the right to tell your representatives how you want them to represent you. If you choose not to get involved in a contested issue, your representatives will think that the issue is not important to you. They will then prioritize their efforts accordingly. As far as everyone else is concerned, an opinion you don't act upon is indistinguishable from not having an opinion at all.
Freedom of speech makes representative politics a market, where effort is a key currency. You may dislike markets in general or think they are inappropriate in some situations, but they are an inevitable consequence of individual liberties.
What about a social media site for congressmen where you can only, like / vote / comment if you are a verified constituent and every post is linked to a real identity. And moderation was done wikipedia style. As in a comment may be removed, but you can see why it was removed and it's content and author can still be viewed via history or something similar.
This type of thing is only possible in an environment where there is roughly homogeneous values. When values diverge extremely on basic issues -- only 1 side will trust the tech owners not to shadow ban, astro turf, fake polls etc.
Bold of you to assume the congresscritters are interested in reading the letters written by constituents. At the local and state level I've had _some_ success in getting in touch with my local reps but when it comes to the federal level? Nothing. Every email I've ever sent is responded with the generic "Representative foobar is working for all americans blah blah blah..." followed by the generic press release they send out every few months.
It is the job of congress to write up and pass laws concerning matters I will never understand, and for which I am grateful that I am not obliged to understand.
What do you want me to say? Throw away the constitution because congressmen are idiots, lets do direct democracy and all pretend we're experts on everything? Nobody can be informed on everything; anybody who thinks they are is obviously an obvious idiot who doesn't know his own limitations. No, direct democracy sucks for anything much larger than a canton, and certainly for any group with interests as serious and diverse as America's. What we have now is far from perfect, but it works reasonably well and I wouldn't throw it away in exchange for a nuclear-armed ochlocracy.
The mere thought of that sends shivers up my spine.
>Personally I'd like to get back to a world where the fate of civilization is not the responsibility of every individual to worry about on a daily basis.
Then your only choice is an unfree world. Maintaining freesom requires constant vigilance because those who want power and control never sleep.
Rubbish. Bob from the car factory can take a sabbatical without the free world sliding into tyranny. In fact, very little that I have done in my life - if anything at all - has had any appreciable effect on free society. This is the kind of "I know this is rubbish but it conveys an ethos I want to convey" statement that's sending language and meaning into decline.
A single individual slacking on maintaining a free society isn't going to end everything, I agree. That was never my point. Collectively, the majority of people in a society must maintain vigilance.
200 years ago an individual working on a farm would have zero practical influence on the national scale. They did not have to fight evil everyday because they were not aware of it and it didn't effect them.
I'd make an argument (open to being wrong) that the majority of people who choose to degrade their quality of life, daily, fighting (lesser or fake) "evil" have no meaningful effect on the outcome. There's a small percentage of dedicated people who make a difference. The mentality that you're describing just encourages more people to join that majority and actively lowers the influence of those dedicated people because of it.
I’m pretty sure on the whole you’re wrong about 200 years ago, and wrong overall. The sentiments I wrote mirror those from Ancient Greece, and there are many equivalents from a great many societies since then.
Do you think people didn’t have to deal with bandits? Or try to decide if they should give to their neighbors during a famine instead of pretend they had nothing?
Or deal with being (or their children being) conscripted into terrible wars or defend their land? Or had to make decisions on a day to day basis on if they should take advantage of someone, or protect someone?
The focus you seem to have on national politics to the exclusion of all else is the bigger issue I think?
We have the most influence on the things closest to us, and as things get larger and further from us that wanes. National issues bubble up. I’m not saying ‘go March on Washington for every issue’.
I’m saying ‘stop the abuses you can, make the best decisions you can, and work hard to make things better where you can’. And don’t just sit back and go ‘meh, I don’t make a difference anywhere’.
Because you can make a difference somewhere.
That means local, regional, etc. can be impacted more - and that is often done by day to day decisions. That means $50 to a cause, if it is worthwhile and effective in others. That means taking a stand in a water cooler discussion, even if it won’t make friends, when it is important. That means, if you have kids, teaching them right and wrong in a useful way.
> Personally I'd like to get back to a world where the fate of civilization is not the responsibility of every individual to worry about on a daily basis.
It always has been every individual's responsibility.
What is different now is the loss of individual agency. People no longer believe that they can make a difference individually, nor do they believe that individuals can be actually be responsible for their actions.
Instead we are taught we are part of a system and that system determines outcomes we face in our lives. That we are not individuals, but belong to a group that defines how we think and how we act and it is not something we can escape from.
And what happens is that the only people in a position to do anything about solving any of our world's problems is the ones in central state government. That it is up to the government to free us or solve world hunger or save the environment or whatever else we think is the problem with society.
And the result of this is the loss of individual agency. We don't feel in control nor do we feel that we can make a difference. Instead we feel as if we are dependent on an external locus of control; politics.
So this compels people to obsess about politics. The only control we have over government is vote, but our individual vote doesn't matter. So to make a difference we need to "game" the system, forced to create narratives and convincing arguments and debates and stories to convince everybody else to agree with us.
However this 'external locus of control' we place in government is illusionary.
The government can't solve poverty, it can't fix the environment, it can't provide universal health care. All they can do is seize the wealth generated by the public and repurpose it to try to address those problems while causing a whole raft of other problems along the way.
The truth of the matter is that society is not defined by government. It doesn't work because of government and it never did.
Instead society is constructed through the individual relationships and voluntary associations people have with one another. The places you work, the churches people go to, the stores you shop at. Your friends, associates, and neighbors and, in turn the relationships those people have with everybody else. with everybody else. These casual and formal groupings and links that individuals create between them are the fabric in which society is constructed.
It is also the place where problems get solved. It is from this social fabric we get grocery stores, truck drivers, policemen, hospitals, plumbers, construction workers, and every other type of person, profession and jobs that goes into creating the resources on which human life depends.
So your personal responsibility for actually "doing something" and "changing the world for a better place" resides in your relationships with those people. How well you do your job. How well you take care of your family. How often you are willing to help out other people. The volunteer jobs you take. The financial aid you provide for other people and other initiatives.
You can tell you are doing a good job when you profit and other people profit from your existence among them.
Arguing on twitter and "taking up causes" online accomplishes nothing. It is not the signaling, or arguing, or showing solidarity or icon changing that provides any meaning. It is in the doing. It is the same now as it was 200 years ago.
>The government can't solve poverty, it can't fix the environment, it can't provide universal health care. All they can do is seize the wealth generated by the public and repurpose it to try to address those problems while causing a whole raft of other problems along the way.
This demonstrates how successful the right wing corporate media has been in training Americans that "government doesn't work" when all you have to do is look outside to find out that it's a lie.
I think you are misunderstanding. A healthy civilization is composed of a certain number of openly principled people. If your civilization has fallen below this threshold, it will suffer. But choosing to be an out-spoken, principled person is, I believe, always good on the basis of virtue alone. It's worth being that way no matter the current situation. It's roughly analogous to getting vaccinated.
We can choose to have a civil debate, and perhaps, one of us might even change their mind. And if we cannot agree, we can choose for ourselves. If we must agree, then we abide by the law, whether or not we think it is wise, and the loser can (and should) attempt to change the law.
Yes, and the solution has traditionally been to vote for principled leaders. Now, I don't think people know what principled means. They don't understand why "hypocrite" is a bad thing, and neither does anyone they know. Nor do they understand why allegations without evidence are dangerous - unless it's leveled against them, of course. Something deep and important is missing from many millions of minds; it was either there and suppressed or removed, or it wasn't there and didn't get nurtured. Of course, maybe it's always been this way and that's why small-scale illiberal leaders of the rabble, who themselves see the value in these things, have always been important to large scale liberal rule.
I remember when this approach was considered normal, and even people that were unable to raise to it at least tried to fake it. I'm not being facetious here, I really remember it, and I'm not even that old. I wish those times would return one day.
"... in 2018, the ACLU spent $800,000 on a campaign ad for Stacey Abrams during her run for governor in Georgia and $1 million in an attack-ad campaign against Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings."
There's more of the same, but it's enough to get the picture.
That's all you need to know. The ACLU is not about fairness for everyone.
They aren’t the American Fairness Union. Stacey Abrams is a proponent of expanding civil liberties. Brett Kavanaugh has repeatedly demonstrated contempt for them, exemplified by the coming decision that overturns Roe.
I probably don't agree with Brett Kavanaugh but I do certainly believe he was subjected to an extended and transparent political smear campaign. I don't think it is a good picture for an organisation for civil liberties to partake here and if they are connected to that it is a bit worse than a bad look.
So its a bad look for a special interest group to pursue that interest when a Republican operative is involved? I don’t understand how the two are related. Are you saying Brett Kavanaugh was wrongly construed, that he will support civil liberties? Seems like money well spent by the ACLU.
I don't see any possibility how the media campaign against him can be construed as a gain for civil liberties. Especially like you almost admit that it wasn't about his failures as a person and just politically motivated. This is independent from how well Brett Kavanaugh will later defend civil liberties or not.
How is it independent? The reader can decide if he's morally qualified or not, but he had a long judicial record to rely upon for the ACLU to decide that he wasn't a friend of civil liberties.
Yeah, this thread it wild to me. Are we really gonna both sides this and pretend that candidates who openly and proudly oppose the liberties that the ACLU fights for are somehow equivalent?
The ACLU can’t just sue for liberties that require legislation be passed, that is unless you’re in favor with more legislating from the bench. And in that case they have to support politicians that will further their mission.
ACLUs’ political donations aside, the world is not fair, and some are playing to win to inflict suffering on others. Arguing for fairness for everyone doesn’t necessarily mean you want fairness; it can also mean you’re looking for a system vulnerability to exploit. Revealed intent matters.
I would not enable fairness for someone attempting to harm a family member, a loved one, the general public, or myself, for example. To do so would be to empower their harm projection.
Weirdly enough I don't see anything the ACLU is doing in the article that's particularly left or even progressive, just barely Democrat. My guess is there's 100x as much money available to an org fighting for a particular party's most important items at a given moment vs actually looking for free speech violations.
The ACLU on Northern California is the #3 donor (over $300k) for the effort to reject the recall of the progressive DA in SF. (sfethics.org list of actual donors, not guesswork).
Regardless of one's position on the recall, it seems an odd thing for the N. Cal ACLU to be putting over 5% of it's operating budget into this campaign.
Yes, the level-headed take is that an organization has not taken a "hard-left turn" unless they are calling for redistributing the land and cancelling the debt.
Unless your baseline is "Nordic countries" or similar, the US is pretty far to the left.
This is true regardless of whether you look at the size of the government, relative to the economy or where it sits on the spectrum between ethno-nationalist vs self-criticism/openness to outsiders. The US has a much larger than average sized government spending vs the size of its economy and it takes in three times more immigrants per year than any other country.
By comparison, China, Japan, India and other major world powers are considerably further to the right. Even influential small countries such as Israel and Singapore are also a bit more conservative.
> Unless your baseline is "Nordic countries" or similar, the US is pretty far to the left.
How about most of Europe and Latin America?
It is hard to define what "left" means nowadays but it is telling that you believe the "size of the government", as defined by mostly military spending, can consist as a checkbox for being part of the left.
I am not arguing about the other governments you mentioned, I am arguing that it is simply incorrect to use "size of government" as a measure of how "left" a country is, particularly when using the US as an example. The US is notorious for having very bad safety nets while disproportionately investing in military, both of which are hardly causes favoured by the left.
Germany takes more and this is raw numbers not adjusted by the size of the country. Germany is less than a third the size of the US and taking more. Spain takes 60% as many immigrants as the US and is roughly 1/7 the population.
> Not sure where the claim about taking immigrants is coming from
The link was right at the bottom of the comment and if you click it, you'll see data sources mentioned prominently.
As of 2020, the US has 50.6 million foreign born immigrants, while Germany, which was #2, had 15.8 million. Adjusted for current population it's fairly close. The UK, in contrast had 9.4M, and Spain 6.8M. All of these countries have immigrant populations compared to world averages.
You could nitpick at time frames or various other ways to slice the data but there's no defensible claim that the US accepts fewer immigrants than most countries.
One of their most visible (on Twitter) attorneys is a transgender person who openly called for "stopping the circulation" of a book discussing critically the transgender phenomenon [0]. This is the same org that once fought for a neo-Nazi organization's right to hold a march. From "I may not agree with your opinion, but I'll defend your right to say it," to "we must prevent opposing views from being heard" in under a decade.
The 2nd Amendment isn’t as cut and dry “minimal gun restrictions” like some organizations want you to believe. I think the ACLU’s interpretation is defensible
Except they don't defend it. If they did they would be advocating against standing armies. If it's believed to be a collective right to promote the common defense then the scale of the US Military is a major affront to that. But realistically we are so far removed from what the founders envisioned we we should do a total redraft.
An army, like a militia, would fall under "collective right". So I don't see how their stance is against standing armies.
Re: redraft, I go back and forth. I think if we want to be textualists then we need a redraft because the founders couldn't possibly have envisioned the modern world. The idea of redrafting isn't that radical -- Thomas Jefferson wanted it [1].
But pragmatically, I don't think we'll ever redraft it. Both liberals and conservatives would have to agree to a redraft (they won't) and then agree on what the new draft would be (they won't). The only way to modernize the Constitution and Bill of Rights is to interpret it using a modern lens. "What would this document mean if it was written with today's world in mind?"
Basically they say The Founders wrote the whole amendment in the Bill of Rights to express the right of US to have an army (that's the only way I can make sense of the term of "collective right" with regard to keeping and bearing arms). That's kind of weird - first of all, the Army is already mentioned in the Constitution, why mention it again? Second of all, who would really argue the US government can't have an army - what case would such amendment serve, what argument it would resolve? Amendments usually address some important questions or establish some important principles - e.g. protection of freedom of speech, or personal freedoms, or freedom of religion, etc. - and limiting the power of state to infringe on those. Seeing "also, US Government can have an army" among these is kinda odd, at least it does look odd to me. I can't shake the feeling that is is not a serious interpretation but more of a legalistic trick - we pre-decided we don't want to give people access to the guns, and now we have a task of reconciling the text of the Constitution which seemingly contradicts that with this conclusion, so we invent this concept of "collective right". Which AFAIK doesn't exist for any other right, does it? You don't call 1st, or 4th, or 5th, or 6th amendment rights "collective". Even for rights "found" later - be it privacy, or access to certain medical procedures - nobody I know argues it's a "collective" right which can not be accessed by individuals but only through the intermediacy of the state functionaries. It seems to be the only one that this argument appears in. That is certainly something one would consider "odd".
> Basically they say The Founders wrote the whole amendment in the Bill of Rights to express the right of US to have an army (that's the only way I can make sense of the term of "collective right" with regard to keeping and bearing arms). That's kind of weird - first of all, the Army is already mentioned in the Constitution, why mention it again?
There’s an important word right there in the (extremely short) text of the amendment: “militia.” That word explains why the amendment exists in addition to the constitution’s mention of the army: it’s because army and militia are different things. We agree that the amendment very clearly is not referring to the right of the United States government to maintain an army, but I see no indication that the ACLU or any other significant groups believe that.
But it seems odd to me that the first 13 of the 27 words of the amendment would explain why militias are important, when a militia would be an extremely rare use case for owning a firearm.
> it’s because army and militia are different things.
OK, then where's that militia which is not an army but is a "collective" that is not composed of individuals owning, keeping and bearing arms? Which structure is it referring to? I can't find anything matching the description in the US (outside the army which we excluded, and the police, which doesn't fit either and isn't a federal business anyway). Moreover, I can't find anything matching the description anywhere in the world either - if we look at other countries that have people bearing arms outside the army - e.g. Switzerland - they keep and bear arms personally, not "collectively". So again, it looks odd - what exactly does this right mean? It again sounds like "it's not what you mean, you can't have the gun, it's 'collective'" - ok, so tell me, what does it mean then? Unlike many other concepts in the Constitution, this one seems pretty tough to figure out.
I think you are confused on what these terms mean. "Collective right" obviously does not mean that that individuals cannot own guns. It means that the right to own guns is in the context of a regulated militia. Obvious regulations that a militia might want to have are minimum age requirements, training requirements, equipment safety requirements (such as requiring owners to store and transport their guns safely and perform regular maintenance). "Collective right" means that the right isn't an individual right, in other words, individuals do not have the right to buy, sell, and own any firearm they want in any condition they want for any purpose they want.
These definitions are abundantly clear in any good-faith conversation about gun policy. The ACLU in particular is quite clear about which policies they believe infringe on civil liberties and which do not. For instance, the ACLU's position is that laws which restrict the types of weapons or ammunitions which can be owned generally do not infringe on civil liberties, while laws which restrict categories of people from owning guns often do infringe on civil rights (the examples they give are immigrants and people with mental disabilities). Incidentally, the ACLU also believes that many current federal restrictions on gun ownership do infringe on civil liberties, like the prohibition of certain convicted criminals and people with mental disabilities when there is no indication of violent behavior.
> It means that the right to own guns is in the context of a regulated militia.
Ok this is already an oddity. There's no second such right. I mean, the right for religious freedom does not require you to join a regulated religion (even if many do join organized religions). The right for free speech does not require you to be a journalist. The right for speedy trial does not require you to join a speedy trial club and pass regular legal training. And so on. This is what I'd call odd. But there's more.
> Obvious regulations that a militia might want to have are minimum age requirements, training requirements, equipment safety requirements (such as requiring owners to store and transport their guns safely and perform regular maintenance).
OK let's assume so. Note that most gun regulations in anti-gun states and cities have little to do with this - but let's assume that's what ACLU wants.
> For instance, the ACLU's position is that laws which restrict the types of weapons or ammunitions which can be owned generally do not infringe on civil liberties
How this follows? How "you can not own a gun with certain feature" fits with the above? Does this feature prevent training, or is particularly unsafe, or preclude safe transportation and storage? Not at the least. So how does it fit in this concept? It comes to the comical, that two models of the same gun, with small cosmetic change, may one be legal and another illegal in certain states (OK, let's not be coy, in California) - can anybody seriously argue that's because one can be used in militia and another can't? That's beyond odd, that makes no sense. I mean if we talked about guns that somehow useless to militia (don't know, let's assume you found an argument that specific type of a gun is so peculiar that no militia would ever have a reason to use it) - ok, I'm willing to accept that makes sense in that framework. But that's not how the regulations that ACLU supports and endorses work!
> while laws which restrict categories of people from owning guns often do infringe on civil rights
Again, how does it work? You named age restriction yourself. Isn't it "category of people"? But let's say we talk about people who are violently insane, or that are career felons, maybe violent gangsters who were imprisoned for many years for their crimes. You don't want such guys in your militia, probably, right? If you have them there, they'd probably loot everything instead of defending the fellow citizens, maybe? Yet it's absolutely "category of people". Let's take mental disabilities - of course, there is a whole gamut of disabilities, but in general you'd want your militia to be mentally stable, right? So how does it work? It looks again that the position does not even have internal consistency, that's even before anybody would start to attack it on merits of its principles! Again, that's a very odd position to hold.
That is a really cool name. My hyperbole was to point out that they are picking and choosing which "civil liberties" are valid, independent of law and judicial precedent. They totally have that right, but their positions do align with the US moderate left on most issues, including firearms.
True, I had my doubts after the initial introduction. Although I don't understand the remark about extreme positions that need and get legal defense. Because those statements are indeed the ones needing it the most and what is considered extreme can change on a day to day basis.
But the essence is correct. What I find most interesting about some of these "left" causes are that they don't argue for any liberties. They most often do the exact opposite and advocate putting people under new rules. I think that is missing the mark.
Freedom of speech always needs defendants and that will never change. But that is not what the ACLU is doing.
Lara Bazelon is a rigorous thinker and a staunch believer in procedural justice. This leads to heterodox takes like, for example, supporting Betsy DeVoss’s efforts to roll back Obama’s Title IX reforms: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/opinion/-title-ix-devos-d.... (As a conservative, I disagree with more her than I agree with her, ironically including with respect to Title IX, where I agree with Obama for conservative reasons.)
These are being promulgated by executive actions--the Department of Education issuing guidance using its authority over federal educational funding as the hook for enforcement. Thus they have been flipping back-and-forth between administrations. The Obama-era guidance was significantly rolled back by Trump, to include things like not allowing evidence to be admitted from a witness not subject to cross examination. Biden then undid certain parts of the Trump rule, specifically getting rid of the cross-examination requirement: https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2022/03/activists-e...
It doesn't feel remotely level-headed. Just about anyone in my AP English class could have made all of that up 12 years ago. That is, using circular logic to defend something like freedom of speech is something I expect any high school senior to be able to do.
What I would like to know is, why it's so important if, for most of us, for the best and most capable parts of our lives, we don't have anything that resembles free speech. In fact, we expect to have our income and Healthcare cutoff if we really speak our minds often in the workplace.
What I would like to know is, why it's okay for a few people to lie about the gravity of a pandemic and cost us 1M of our countrymen.
What I would like to know is, how countries just as capable as us manage to lead better lives despite not having free reign over discussions on Nazis.
What I would like to know is, why the staunchest proponents of freedom of speech choose to hit that down vote button to push comments like mine into oblivion rather than have an honest set of questions seen.
I haven't really heard anyone use anything but propaganda based circular logic or slippery slope fallacies to answer why unbridled free speech is necessary.
Moreover, it's hard to believe there is much substance to people's positions on unbridled freedom of speech when people are so religious about it. It's hard to believe that we have the right answer when we don't allow an ounce of nuance in the discussion.
Democracy requires free speech. So, if you're against free speech, then you're also against Democracy.
What form of government would you prefer? The biggest modern alternate examples are China (I'm guessing you disapprove of their zero covid policy, but your comment is ambiguous), and Russia (which also seems worse than the US according to the criteria I could tease out from your comment).
> Democracy requires free speech. So, if you're against free speech, then you're also against Democracy.
Why does democracy require free speech? Can I not vote for whoever I want even if I'm mute?
> So, what concrete alternative do you propose?
You get that there are many other countries in Western Europe that don't have as much free speech as the US right? You get that the lock down policies of many other Western countries seem Draconian relative to our policies right?
You get that giving me some of the most extreme examples of alternatives makes it seem like you are arguing in bad faith right?
Why do we need a brand new form of government? We didn't need a new form of government to ban saying "fire" in a theater.
> Why does democracy require free speech? Can I not vote for whoever I want even if I'm mute?
I think it would be extremely difficult for the electorate to make educated decisions about who to vote for if speech supporting a certain candidate is suppressed, for example.
Free speech and the ability to vote are deeply intertwined. Without the ability to discuss candidates and issues openly, the electorate can’t make an informed, honest choice. If one candidate or side of the debate is suppressed or censored, that in and of itself affects the outcome of an election.
It seems extremely difficult for the electorate to make educated decisions about who to vote for due to the lack of consequences for completely misleading or false statements. Is a politician's lie protected by free speech?
Yes, as should be the speech of each person who points out the politician is lying.
A prerequisite for a politician to experience consequences for lying is for people to be free to discuss the lie, persuade fellow voters that he is lying, and disseminate that fact freely.
You’re not going to prevent politicians from lying by limiting speech. You’ll achieve quite the opposite effect, actually.
Free speech doesn't mean consequence free speech. Someone aspiring to public office should be penalised for deliberately misleading voters. The imbalance of power and exposure means that the many people who correctly point out the lies and manipulation are unheard, while the perpetrator of the lies and manipulation can freely continue to lie and manipulate.
They will be penalized, by the voters, if people are allowed to discuss the politician’s actions and statements freely and make their own judgement about his fitness for office, and if they actually choose to do so.
Ask yourself why those voices of truth go unheard. Or why the politician’s lies continue without consequence. Is it not because of a lack of robust speech around the politician’s behavior?
Why doesn’t that robust speech occur? Sometimes it is suppressed. But more often, the root of the problem is that most people prefer to be lied to. Seeking and discovering the truth is hard work, and it is work that no person should outsource to a third party. Yet that is exactly what people do, when they rely on the press or media for the truth. Those organizations lie at least as frequently as the politician does.
Literally yes, because the next prompted question is 'who determines what political speech is true and therefore allowed?', which is a path fraught with dragons.
Some statements are grey areas. Some are provably true or false. If a politician continually makes provably false statements, and they're supported by a large proportion of the media, then what recourse do voters currently have to prevent this from continuing?
Edit: What I'm suggesting is that free speech is protected against retribution from the government. The elected officials should be held to a higher standard. They are the government, and should not be protected against retribution from the voters. There should be serious penalties for any elected official who continues to make provably false statements after they've been pointed out.
In the first place, this is a thought-terminating cliché. Second, nothing prevents a politician from saying one thing to the voters and then doing something completely different once in office. (Especially at the federal level where there is no recall or recourse). The only accountability provided surrounds reelection.
It is the job of voters to hold them accountable. Our politicians are a mirror of ourselves. We usually get the leaders we deserve.
All 3 of these are non-substantive aphorisms that serve no discussion purpose. They are statements, bare ones at that, and do not pose a question or seek anything.
Universal recall would be some great low-hanging fruit to pick. As would algorithmic districting to deal with the gerrymandering problem so representatives are actually representative.
Those statements are substantive if you engage them in good faith, which you chose not to do. I'll elaborate for clarity.
Our lying, corrupt politicians are selected from an electorate who themselves peddle lies and falsehoods on social media, and often choose to believe convenient lies that support whatever cause they want to believe in. That's not my opinion. It's an empirical fact, which you can go verify for yourself: you don't have to spend but five minutes on Facebook or Twitter to see that it is true.
The people that complain about lying, corrupt politicians are almost always the same people that peddle lies on social media. If these people truly want less lying, corrupt politicians, then a prerequisite would be for them to not engage in that behavior themselves. As I said, our politicians mirror ourselves, and they are selected from among us. We get the leaders we deserve.
Universal recall won't solve the underlying problem. We'll cycle through lying politicians more frequently under such a system, but the incentive to lie to get elected remains unchanged.
Algorithmic districting simply punts the issue to a different group of people, who will be just as corruptable as the current set of people who draw district boundaries. Who will write the algorithm? Who will set the rules under which the algorithm operates? At least under our current system, politicians accountable to voters each term set the boundaries. How will the people writing the algorithm be held to account?
"The people that complain about lying, corrupt politicians are almost always the same people that peddle lies on social media. If these people truly want less lying, corrupt politicians, then a prerequisite would be for them to not engage in that behavior themselves. As I said, our politicians mirror ourselves, and they are selected from among us. We get the leaders we deserve."
This is false. I'm not sure where you get this idea from. The people that complain about lying, corrupt politicians are everyone. You did it in your reply. The "mirror ourselves" statement is defeatist and useless. There are honest people in the world. They are calling out lies and corruption every day. You do them the ultimate disservice to claim that they are "almost always the same people that peddle lies on social media".
Doctors, judges, witnesses in court cases and many others are held to higher standards of truthfulness than the average person. These are legally binding, and have real penalties. Why can't we hold politicians to the same standards?
If a witness in a trial is found to be lying, they can't resort to "Freedom of speech!" as a defense. They are charged with perjury. We should consider elected officials as being constantly under oath, and any dissembling should be treated as perjury.
> What I would like to know is, why the staunchest proponents of freedom of speech choose to hit that down vote button to push comments like mine into oblivion rather than have an honest set of questions seen.
I didn't downvote you and don't like if someone does it without leaving criticism. That said, I understand the objection to your reasoning very well and maybe people refrain from answering because the pitfalls of your model for speech are trivial. It comes down to who get the power to define truth. That is not a problem if anyone is allowed to leave their opinion. There will be people that abuse that right and that is the cost of it.
And we have seen intentional lying which I believe was a great mistake in current times when information moves that fast. Because the lie will come to light at some point anyway.
> It comes down to who get the power to define truth. That is not a problem if anyone is allowed to leave their opinion. There will be people that abuse that right and that is the cost of it.
I don't understand how you can call my issues with it trivial when I've heard this same propaganda over and over again for decades. I think the issue is that people made this propaganda their religion and are now unable to see that nuance can be used to safely reduce free speech.
You can't yell fire in a crowded fire when there is no fire can you? Why do you act like these safeguards don't already exist for other things?
The propaganda is actually the people saying there are consequences for speech and it must therefore be limited. It is a trivial observation that there are consequences but that is of course not a justification to curb it. Again, the problem with "reasonable" exceptions is that someone has to define them. Free speech means the spread of ideas, it doesn't mean you are allowed to lie if you swear an oath to a judge.
But we specifically see language policing and idea suppression in supposedly scientific institutions (hot examples: climate change, gender, wars, racism, immigration, ...).
> What I would like to know is, why it's okay for a few people to lie about the gravity of a pandemic and cost us 1M of our countrymen.
1M people died but the way your sentence is framed is that without those lies 1M people wouldn't have died. That looks like quite the intent to deceive, which makes it look like you are the liar. Why is it ok for you?
Furthermore it's quite obfuscated. Yes people lied about the pandemic(every politician lies, it's like a contest to elect the best liar). I'm willing to bet some of those lies saved lives(just by chance, who knows).
So directly in answer to your question. Speech should be free because that's how society advances, free speech is how you question the current dogma, it's how society moves forward. There's costs and benefits. Charlatan will con people. The way you deal with charlatans is by exposing them with better speech.
Banning speech is weak sauce for people that don't know how to be convincing.
> What I would like to know is, how countries just as capable as us manage to lead better lives despite not having free reign over discussions on Nazis.
I live a pretty good life as an immigrant. Can't complain. Great country, wouldn't want to be anywhere else. The country where I come from does not have "free reign over discussions on Nazis".
> I haven't really heard anyone use anything but propaganda based circular logic or slippery slope fallacies to answer why unbridled free speech is necessary.
That's an admission that you really haven't heard or considered the best argument for free speech. If you can only state arguments from one side of an issue, you haven't made up your mind, it was made for you.
Pretending the actions of the government and the actions of private entities are equivalent borders on being deliberately obtuse. There is an enormous difference between being fired because you called a coworker the n-word and having uniformed men with guns show up at your front door because you taught a dog to sieg heil.
They are not equal, but they are similar and can have similar effect. I.e. if your bank seizes your account because you dared to express wrong opinion, it's different than the government did it, and yet you'd still have no access to your money and it could ruin your life pretty thoroughly. If you get fired because you consider your medical information private and do not want to disclose it, especially when you work remotely and it's irrelevant to any job function - it's not the government that fired you. But does it make the situation much better for you?
It is more dangerous when a totalitarian government infringes your rights. That doesn't mean when a private company infringes your right it's not dangerous too. Maybe less dangerous, relatively, but still very very bad.
And, btw, a lot of seemingly "private" actions turn out to be actions performed by private actors on behest of the government, which either forces or entices, by using their gigantic powers to both break and promote business, the "private" companies to act as their agents, "voluntarily" - or else.
Yeah one of the things I really dislike is that I think a lot of people who expect "free speech should be protected on the internet" also believe "companies should have the right to refuse service to anyone"
I think those two beliefs are fundamentally at odds with each other. If you think that companies should not be allowed to moderate community content, then you must also believe that a cake maker who bakes a cake may not refuse to make a cake for a customer lol.
It's Sturgeon's law applied to arguments. 90 percent of arguments are inconsistent and short-sighted.
But, there is room for a nuanced consistent position regarding common carriers and/or monopolies having fewer freedoms than other businesses. Granted, many free speech maximalists aren't making these nuanced arguments, but some are.
90 percent of arguments going against the consensus are crap, but it's vitally important that we don't stifle dissenting arguments. The biggest problems with free speech are libel, fraud, and a woeful lack of critical thinking in the general populous. The first two can be handled with better laws. I think better critical thinking education starting in late elementary school is vital to counteract some of the ill effects of social media.
Thanks for the strawman; you know as well as I do that you can be fired for a lot less than calling your co-workers obscenities. I've seen people fired for just mouthing off about their office job while they're at the grocery store.
Also, don't tell me it's important if you're more than willing (re: you're going out of your way to defend it being taken from you) to have it taken away from you. Don't tell me I'm being obtuse if you can say that it's unimportant for one of the most valuable portions of your life.
You are being obtuse. The freedoms we are talking about are freedom from government interference. Being an asshole still means that private people and companies will treat you like an asshole.
I don't see this as level-headed at all. This is really an extension of the "both sides" logical fallacy. It reminds me of Elon Musk's ridiculous tweet [1].
Why is this ridiculous? Because there is no extreme left in US politics. There's like 4 members of Congress you could consider leftist. The Democratic Party as it exists now is a center right party that makes just enough progressive noises to fundraise without actually doing anything legislatively.
In the last 10 years the only things that have really changed are legalizing of gay marriage (long overdue), #MeToo, some attention to the institutional racism that black people continue to live under and a long overdue reevaluation of widespread transphobia. That's literally it.
On the right, we reacted to the first black US president by electing a bona fide white supremacist [2]. The #1 show on the #1 "news" network openly pushes Nazi propaganda [3]. And what was the supposd left doing? Pelosi is campaigning for the only anti-choice Democrat in Congress [4] (ironically in Texas when the Supreme Court draft leaked).
The right has been massively successful in creating wedge issues to make people care about things that don't matter (eg trans people in college sports)
We've had 49 years to Federally codify Roe v. Wade but the supposed part of the Left has refused to do so despite numerous opportunities to do so.
Which brings us back to the ACLU: what hard-left turn?
> In the last 10 years the only things that have really changed are legalizing of gay marriage (long overdue), #MeToo, some attention to the institutional racism that black people continue to live under and a long overdue reevaluation of widespread transphobia. That's literally it.
Um... that's literally it?
Bad take my guy. Just because you can copy/paste links and make citations doesn't make your take any more true. It smacks of extreme ignorance. And saying things like "on the right, we reacted to the first black US president by electing a bona fide white supremacist" just discredits you further - this is a highly politically charged statement that tells on your positions (and frankly, your mental state).
> "on the right, we reacted to the first black US president by electing a bona fide white supremacist"
Do I have to cut and paste all Trump's comments and recorded statements? Politics are infuriating to discuss because you find yourself debate truth, things that are obvious but still denied.
No, you're responding to someone that just asserted concrete evidence doesn't establish truth, and that anyone that reads primary sources is probably a nutjob.
Besides, I think HN would throttle you well before you got a few percent of the way through them.
I'm familiar with a couple of these, unfamiliar with others. One problem with your cited articles is the fact that most of them don't contain direct quotes - many of them are based on second- or even third-hand accounts.
Some of these are so flimsy I'm wondering if you sent these in jest or not. Are you an elaborate troll? Serious question, because if so, I'm taking the bait. :)
I went through each bullet point and even followed links of sources. I suppose the first one was what you meant to send me? I'm familiar with this quote and it's definitely high on the list for cringe quotes. At worst this sounds xenophobic.
I'm sorry, how does this quote (I watched the video) make him racist? He basically said nothing in that quote, except he didn't admit he was wrong, which is pretty par for the course.
You actually picked an article with some teeth here. There are actually a couple of things in here that are pretty cringe from Trump's perspective (Chinese virus, anyone? Even though that turned out to be true! And the supposed Black vs White Apprentice - yeesh) but some are straight up ridiculous. 2004, he fired a Black contestant from The Apprentice? Is that really the best they got? Further, many of these are about actions taken by Trump businesses, not by Trump himself. Again note the indirect quotes from people.
BTW: you should use sources that aren't blatantly biased. Nice try, troll!
Instead of seeing a clear pattern over decades of awful statements and personal quotes, you give him the benefit of the doubt (which he doesn't deserve). Trump perhaps made it this far because one of his true skills is dancing on the line without fully crossing over it, so people that actually enjoy his awful racist ideology can still argue in polite society that "he didn't really mean that"
You can't force someone to see something they've already made up their mind isn't there.
This is a bad faith interaction, it was wrong of me to even attempt dialogue.
You'll get it right after I spend time providing evidence the sky is blue, not green.
Which is to say, you'll never catch me wasting my time talking to someone that needs such a clarification, and clearly won't listen to evidence that contradicts their immovable and laughable conclusions.
There is an extreme left in US politics, and it's a large percentage of the population.
The problem is the electoral college. You only need 50% of the votes in the smallest twenty states to fillibuster legislation in congress, twenty five states to withold funding, and sixty to overcome a filibuster.
It turns out 7% of people are all that's needed for a filibuster, and 12% can block one, assuming you have the right people. Those "super voters" are in the most conservative states in the US.
I think the populous cities should demand constitutional changes to ensure each vote counts equally. Failing that, they should work towards secession. As it is, the majority of the population is in states that send more money to the federal government than they get back, and the states running the biggest deficits are trying to claw everyone else down to their (fascist, fundamentalist, and antidemocratic) level.
I'm far more moderate than the liberal bogeymen the Republicans like to demonize.
Each person in less populated states has vastly more power than each person in more populated states. Why? Because each state gets to choose two senators. Does that make sense? I guess it does to people in those less populated states, who in effect have and hold on to the power they have. Is that how it should be in a democracy? Of course not. But people who have the power often don't like democracy.
Perhaps the democratic party shouldn't have abandoned trying to make a broad appeal.
And there is a big difference between 7% being able to block a bill and 7% being able to pass a bill. A fair number of people view it as a feature that it can be hard to pass a law when there is only some opposition.
It's an interesting set of opinions, which would be great if you didn't think these are indisputable facts that any reasonable person would agree to. Which they are definitely not.
Bill Clinton and Obama would both be considered homophobic nazis, white supremacists (a black white supremacist in the latter case, I've been assured that's a real and extremely dangerous variant of white supremacist by many foremost self-proclaimed experts), and woman haters for their views and policies on gay marriage, border control and immigration, even abortion (they said that abortions should be rare). So I'd say we've come a good way since electing those two bigoted old hatemongering dinosaurs, haven't we?
I can't tell if this a "both sides" butwhataboutism or not. But there's enough of that and enough people who will mistake my statements as "Republicans bad, Democrats good" that I'll address that even if that's not your point.
A better way to reduce my position is "Republicans bad, Democrats slightly less bad". Or, perhaps more accurately, "Republicans bad but effective, Democrats slightly less bad but completley ineffective."
That all goes to my point: the Democrats as they exist in modern US politics are completely feckless. They are way more concerned with fundraising, the aesthetics of appearing to do something and doing everything they can to stamp out any remotely progressive or socialist element of the party. There's no better example of this than the concerted effort to coronate the only candidate in 2016 who could get Trump elected over an actual progressive.
Obama, who I personally like as a person and a statesman, was a pretty ineffective president. Obama the candidate was progressive. Obama the president was just another Democratic right centrist who reneged on many campaign promises (eg codifying Roe v. Wade).
And Bill Clinton was the architect of mass incarceration of Americans (particularly minorities) with the 1994 Crime Bill (which our current president was one of the primary architects of). The 1994 Crime Bill was an abomination.
But you see, all of that makes my point: there is no Left in America. That's why I find things like Elon Musk's tweet so ridiculous and why I dismiss any notion that both sides are now more extreme. They're not. The political spectrum as a whole has shifted right. That's why "both sides" is both a logical fallacy in general and quite ridiculous in this case in particular.
> A better way to reduce my position is "Republicans bad, Democrats slightly less bad"
And you think this makes it better? It doesn't. The fact that you are on the left to most Democrats does not mean your political opinion is fact. It just means it's your opinion - which you are totally entitled to, just if you try to remember disagreeing with it doesn't make a person a *ist Nazi. If you hold to that, what you'd do is preclude any possibility of a rational discussion with you.
Disagreeing with me doesn't make you a Nazi. In the case of Tucker Carlson (whom I was referring to), spreading Nazi propaganda (eg [1]) is what makes him a Nazi. I don't mean he's a Nazi as a perjorative. I mean, quite litearlly, he's a Nazi.
The Third Reich had cultural Bolshevism [2]. Now we have other popular figures like Jordan Peterson arguing "cultural Marxism" [3]. It's completely different I'm sure.
If you suffer through Tucker's screed, he basically argues that black people are inherently violent. black people are inferior to real (ie white) people and that they're being manipulaated and used by George Soros against "real Americans". Replace "George Soros" with "the Jew" and you have an almost word-for-word translation of Nazi Germany propaganda.
Highest rated show on the highest rated "news" network by the way.
This isn't hyperbole. The normalization of Nazi views and fascism is terrifying and real. It's this same propaganda that has convinced people that there even is an extreme left in US politics.
> Disagreeing with me doesn't make you a Nazi. In the case of Tucker Carlson (who I was referring to), spreading Nazi propaganda (eg [1]) is what makes him a Nazi. I don't mean he's a Nazi as a perjorative. I mean, quite litearlly, he's a Nazi.
Sorry, it was too painful trying to get through the Nazi propaganda you're spreading here. I'm afraid that I won't be able to take your word for it though.
I think it's rather much more likely that he is not literally a Nazi by any objective definition, that it is not Nazi propaganda he is spreading. It may be wrong, insensitive, even racist things he is saying, but it also may be things that aren't obviously wrong or necessarily racist but they threaten your beliefs and opinions. You'll forgive me for not just accepting that someone else is a Nazi based on anonymous internet accusations. I would certainly be open to reconsider it based on e.g., a transcript.
I am sympathetic to the issues of watching Tucker Carlson for any extended period. That one video I referenced actually broke my soul to watch. So let me show you some digests:
- "Quiz: Can You Tell the Difference Between Tucker Carlson and an Admitted White Supremacist?" [1]
- "How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable" [2]
Replace the entire thing Tucker Carlson said with the entire text of Mein Kampf and you have the entire text of Mein Kampf.
He is accusing George Soros, a specific unique Jew. Arguing that is an attack on all Jews? Or the Sacklers, for that matter. Three specific Jews who committed genocide against various ethnic groups with genetic commonalities in opioid response, genocide against 2D6 variants, genocide of that gene. And in that specific instance, if you tell me it would be anti-semitic to attack the Sacklers, dude I don't care. When you say a specific powerful Jew represents all Jews, it's literally saying he's their savior or king, Messiah, or their GOD. I highly doubt good Jews like you taking them hostage like that. I prove I'm pro-semitic with my actions and words and friendship and solidarity but like I talked about before, I'm not going to cooperate with threats of accusations of being a bigot. It's not worthwhile, too easy to carry out, total impunity. And further speak for yourself, you don't speak on behalf of others, if others consider me to be very much the opposite of a bigot, whereas you in fact would qualify, don't say you speak for them. You are no messiah.
No respect for those accusations, no fucking respect for torture either.[2]
If an accusation against a member of the group is described as an accusation of the entire group, you couldn't denounce anybody for anything because everyone is part of a group and saying the whole group is bad is censored, called offensive. Particularly some groups and not others, like you can say anything you want about white people, absolutely anything, make any generalization, say they're all racist and therefore deserve are racially inferior[1]. But then you accuse one member of another group of any crime? Well that gets tricky because there's bigotry from all groups against all groups, but uh...the press kills those stories.
The movement is in practice trying to censor everything white people have to say. Silence whites.
And frankly the one calling "George Soros" "the Jew" is you, you wrote those words for the first time. You're the inventor of that piece of bigotry. A Nazi might put your comment as a source in his bibliography, then your words would be word-for-word inside a future Nazi book.
[1] In fact the progressive movement right now considers racial inferiority to only be attainable through racism. Everything else, any deformity or genetic abnormality, no need for treatment ever, six fingers whatever, they don't talk about deformities even if they were presented by every member of a group. No need for treatment to root that gene out, even if it's medically desirable, the group in question wants to do it and has the money, they hate that they object to that. The real inferior deformity, which deserves to be treated with scorn and hatred, is anything they can accuse of racism.
[2] Hey at least in Room 101, in which I would spend what according to the Gregorian Calendar was a lunar month, I have a roof over my head. I have four walls that prevent everyone except my formally accredited doctor, his assistant...like in 1984 there was a guy in a lab coat preparing the injections, that guy. I remember exactly nothing but there were three people normally. There were the orderlies, who you normally never see, the guys strapping you down, coercing you physically. All accredited professionals. And there's the beautiful toys, the video games, the time machine, the place in which I lay or sit, the straps, maybe sensors to impress me with numbers quantifying the suffering inflicted like I'm going to say "oh 35 that's a big number, hope it doesn't go up to 300 because pain is linear", the syringes with the recreational drugs I suppose were good shit. Them touching me on the hand, bedside manner, telling me I'm mad and they're going to cure me exactly like in 1984. Them like reading 1984 out loud to me to delete it all.
That's a book about a madman being cured by a psychiatrist, in the psychiatrist's own words, O'Brien/Barros literally claims to be curing the man he calls a madman, Cussen/Smith, of insanity. It's a book about medicine. It's a medical textbook. The peak of Oceania technology, where all that research money really goes. Same stuff they use to drill into the men at Guantanamo. And it's stupid shit, if you look behind the curtain it's really dumb manipulative shit.
But I have a home during that entire time. Just as Jesus on the Cross, during crucifixion, had a place to himself that nobody could evict him from. Nobody told him get off the cross and fuck off, ripped him off the nails creating orifices out of the stigmata, stole his crown of the true King covering his beautiful face with blood, told him he didn't add up to shit and wasn't the real deal, didn't deserve a shot at martyrdom. Like, you haven't paid rent for your sacrifice or we just want to kick you off. We can't let you fulfill and become the first guy to stick up to torture.
At least if I'm being tortured somebody gives a shit about me enough to torture me, because it's extremely expensive, requires a lot of staff and a support team, somebody has to pay for all of that. They're ganging up on the torture victim (or victor, if he doesn't succumb) and it's just much less impressive when you see it for the incredibly pathetic act of cowardice it is. In 1984, it looks like it's just O'Brien dominating Smith, but read it closely several times and the Ministry of Love is a hugely expensive operation. Anybody can act like they're invincible with that amount of people ganging up on "the minority of one."
But somebody cares, on the street nobody cares. Eviction I respect, torture I just don't.
> I don't mean he's a Nazi as a perjorative. I mean, quite litearlly, he's a Nazi.
Again, you say it like you think it makes you argument better. On the contrary, it makes it much worse. While disliking Carlson and calling him a Nazi in a pejorative sense would be somewhat plausible (though massively exaggerated) argument, calling him literally a Nazi (i.e. member of NSDAP or one of the following parties) is plain and obvious lie.
> The Third Reich had cultural Bolshevism
The Reich didn't "have" it - Bolshevism was a real movement, and its adherents have wreaked massive havoc in Russia, killing millions, and in Germany the German Communists - which were ideological twins to Bolsheviks in Russia - were a major competitors of Nazis. That doesn't make either of them good guys, to be sure - they were both horrendously bad, with Nazis succeeding in being more horrendous, but in a meaning of "killing of 20 millions vs just killing 10 millions".
Bolsheviks weren't some Nazi invention. Neither are Marxists - many modern activists openly admit to being Marxists. Some don't use "Marxist" but adjacent terms like "socialist" or "democratic socialist" but once you ask them about their ideological axioms, they are right into Marxist mainstream.
> he basically argues that black people are inherently violent.
I'm pretty sure he doesn't. And the give-away word here is "basically". If we dig it up, it'll soon turn out Carlson didn't say anything like that, but you interpreted something he did say - by taking the most hostile interpretation possible and making two or three logic leaps from here - is as saying that, and that's why you needed to add "basically".
> Replace "George Soros" with "the Jew"
That's a cheap trick. You can't do such replacements - it's completely OK and not anti-Semitic to criticize a particular Jew for what he personally does. It's exactly when you replace it with a generic - i.e. make a shift from personal actions to imagined inherent racial/enthnic qualities - where it becomes racist and anti-Semitic. So you essentially saying "if you make anti-Semitic generalization then it'd be anti-Semitic". Of course it'd be - but it's you who did it!
Soros is a particular person, who happens to be Jewish (as are millions of Americans). It is completely legitimate to criticize him - and any other Jew - for what that particular Jew does in his personal capacity. Same, of course, is true of a Black person, Asian person, woman, man, gay person, trans person, blonde person, left-handed person - any person who you criticize for his personal action, it is not bigoted, regardless of which checkboxes that particular person checks in their personal data file.
To argue otherwise would mean to establish separate rules for different identities, and that would be bigoted - instead of defining person by their action, or, as one person said, "by the content of their character", you lump them together will all people who look like that person, or have similar genetics, or similar other inherent unchangeable qualities - completely erasing their personality and their personal agency and responsibility.
> The normalization of Nazi views and fascism is terrifying and real
Saying something "is real" because you imagined it doesn't make it real. You're not God Almighty that can create reality by His word. It's just your words, and they are worth even less when you use them carelessly.
> It's this same propaganda that has convinced people that there even is an extreme left in US politics.
"Extreme left" is an emotional and subjective term. Of course for some people some leftist positions appear extreme, just as for some other people some right positions appear extreme. That's just their opinion. Pretending like there's some objective measure that defines "extreme" and you used this measure and concluded there's no "extreme left" is, again, pretending your personal opinions are facts. But they aren't.
> The Reich didn't "have" it - Bolshevism was a real movement, and its adherents have wreaked massive havoc in Russia
Sigh. "Cultural Bolshevism" is not Bolshevism. It's a rhetorical device invented by the Nazis to attack various people and things they didn't want in the Third Reich. It had nothing to do with actual Bolshevism but was things like art, music and authors that didn't reflect their values. See "Degenerate Art" etc.
Oh sure they did attack artists they didn't like. Unlike many other things, that one wasn't unique to the Nazis. So do people in the US. Both sides of the spectrum attack art that they don't like - in different ways. Just this month Dave Chapelle was physically attacked on stage because somebody didn't like his art. This is not the only case by far - people get "cancelled" for all kinds of artistical "crimes", and though physical attacks are thankfully still rare, threats and property destruction becomes more and more common.
Below that, in the legitimate field, there lies a long-standing tradition of art critique - which yes, sometimes harshly criticizes certain art. This is what Peterson is doing too, though it is by far not the most important part of his work.
Are all these people Nazis then? I don't think so. Not even the person that attacked Chapelle - he was a violent idiot, but likely not a Nazi. I think, instead, certain people - mostly on the Left - are abusing "Nazi" label to delegitimize their opponents and the criticism of any actions of their side, while keeping the right to criticize - and sometimes physically attack, destroy, burn and maim - from their side. Needless to say, it's not how political - or cultural - discussion should be properly held.
"whataboutism" - hah give me a break, you brought up historical change and previous presidents to contrast how things have changed! Now it's whataboutism to do the same thing because you don't like the point.
And it was satire! Not surprised it's difficult to recognize but clearly it's spectacularly idiotic to actually call a black person a white supremacist. No, if I was going to criticize Obama for something unironically it would obviously be his rampant corruption and nepotism, warmongering, foreign interventions, and many failures in Eastern Ukraine and the South China Sea, underestimation of and troubling relationship with Putin, etc.
And I hear a lot of claims without evidence that "there is no left" or that one party is less worse than the other. I'm not convinced by either. The former is just pointless arguing of semantics when the intention is normally pretty clear, and the latter is clearly highly subjective.
Additionally, I am old enough to remember when being against illegal immigration wasnt a "hateful extremist right-wing", issue. (Pre-2016, Schumer, Pelosi etc talked about it a lot).
Oh they were all talking about securing borders, halting illegal immigration, etc. Hell, some of them even separated immigrant children from their families at the border and caged them. At some point in time that all became the Nazi™ thing to do, prior offenders were all retroactively absolved of their sins, and asking about how that made any sense was "whataboutism".
> So, let's just say there is a vaccine that is approved and even distributed before the election. Would you get it?
> I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump. And it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about.
This is the exact same tactic used by anti vaxxers on the right. s/Donald Trump/Fauci/. Talk about undermining public trust in institutions - this is the (now) vice president publicly saying that it would have been possible and probable for a vaccine which wasn't safe or effective to be released to the public.
There were a few weeks early on when the vice, slate, the Atlantic etc. were minimizing the virus, and the right was taking the other side. Then it switched overnight with no acknowledgement. Vice even pulled some articles. Then later Fox news suddenly claimed they had always been pro vaccine. I read it was something to do with consistency with Rupert Murdoch's news properties in the UK. There are a few countries where it stayed the other way around, Israel I think?
So if (and I do mean "if") you're calling recent Republiccan statements and policy as simply being against "illegal immigration", that's a level of revisionism right up there with the Civil War being about "states rights". For example:
- "Tucker Pushes Racist ‘Great Replacement’ Theory Yet Again, ADL Renews Call for Fox to Fire Him" [1]
- "Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as 'shithole' countries" [2]. He then went on to say we should have more immigration from Norway, which is probably the whitest country on Earth. Coincidence?
- "President Trump Pardons Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio" [4]
- "The parents of 545 children separated at the border still haven’t been found" [5]
- "Here’s what you need to know about Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that quickly sends migrants to Mexico" [6] (a policy that should've ended on the first day of Biden's presidency but--fun fact--Biden has excluded more asylum seekers under Title 42 than Trump did)
If Republicans actually cared about these people they'd end policies that destabilize countries and create refugee crises like the completely unwarranted sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba.
For the record, when it comes to foreign policy, the Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same.
And yes, the fact that so many want to leave their very poor, often dangerous or dirty, countries validates that they are indeed shitholes. They will tell you as much, if not in words, by their actions. It doesn't mean that that person is bad or that you hate them (or their culture, ethnicity, etc.) if you frankly describe the unfortunate situation of their country with that word.
As someone from outside the US I agree that the "left" in the US are mostly just corporate stooges with empty promises. I think progressive causes are mostly a distraction and don't really help most people that would need state support the most.
But subjecting yourself to the left - right dichotomy is disabling to yourself for the most part.
Gay marriage is a point, although on a state level that is pretty much a tax adjustment today. There were no real other demands. Perhaps gender neutral passports, but honestly that isn't really a foundation for policy crafting. Which demands did #metoo have and which were realized? Same with the question for the movements against racism? There is no result because there are no demands. Or at least I didn't hear any.
There are women in low wage jobs that could use support. How is #metoo helping them. How is removing police helping regions with crime problems. Ending prosecution of drug users was on the plan since decades and is sensible in contrast to recent demands.
> Because there is no extreme left in US politics.
No extreme economic left. Instead, the left concentrates on racial issues, which is how enforcing even existing immigration law has become taboo, whites have been a minority among births since 2016 [1], and the white supremacist president campaigned with a "platinum plan" for Blacks.
Except for the 2nd amendment and abortion opponents, the right has been an utter failure. A puppet for corporate interests pushing overseas invasions and tax cuts.
In any case, if merely implying that borders should be enforced qualifies as white supremacy, then it's no wonder no party is considered "left", even on non-economic questions.
The closest thing are the extremes in SF and a few other places.
The progressives in SF can't even keep their tools on the school board sharp enough to avoid being kicked out of office in the most liberal city in the US.
In contrast, there are left wing parties in other countries that know how to run for office, hold positions, and get things done. You know - by actually doing things.
The game-theory problem is: unilateral disarmament is a recipe for losing in today's political world. If progressives choose not to use the tools available for them to exercise power, you can be sure that conservatives won't make the same mistake. Could one convince conservatives to give up a supreme court seat? Because that's an entire branch of government (and perhaps the most powerful) that is likely to be controlled by conservatives for the rest of our lifetimes. Likewise, the Senate awards outsized power to rural states; what are the odds that conservatives would agree to a more equal representation? That they would vote for a federal ban on gerrymandering? Historically conservatives have been more strategic at preserving their political power; it's hard to see how we overcome many of the current dysfunctions the US is facing.
Simple, stop wasting money, get rid of licensing requirements, and fire HR departments en banc.
We wasted $xxx millions on BLM. They could have helped the justice system by taking that money and forcing every interaction with the public to be recorded through body cameras. Instead the money is being used on influence studios. How are we going to get rid of bad cops if we cannot identify or categorize them.
Licensing requirements are ridiculous, it causes wastes of time and hiking of wages to meet the ridiculousness. Someone who is in a bad neighborhood looking to go straight would need 500 hours of cosmetology school to weave hair. Why? There is no licensing requirement for aeronautic engineers!
HR departments are full of scared losers. We all know this. They are the people who were not smart enough in high school, got a non real degree, be then entered the corporate work environment. Because they do not have the capability to think, they have to rely on mimicry. That is why when a job needs to be filled, instead of doing a good job, they simply look at what everyone else posts at other firms. Then the HR departments make sure to hire someone with a degree so if things do not work out, HR can say: we did our best. This credentialing keeps good candidates out and causes cribbing to happen. Don’t have a degree, don’t apply. I have had to fight to get non degreed people promoted out of their current position with HR because the candidate was not “one of us.”
Who is we? I think most donators understood what they were donating to and feel fine about it.
Totally with you about the licensing requirements, but the HR thing just seems like a rant. Corporate beurocracies are risk-adverse to a fault, HR's KPIs aren't related to company performance. I think they're trying not to get fired.
Entrenched interests are why things rarely advanced. Look at dentistry we are still drilling teeth like the greeks and making very little progress except on the most advanced procedures.
Dental advancement never gets anywhere because drilling teeth makes money and it sucks so people put it off until they NEED more expensive procedures and that works great.
Dentist that want to really make a difference and use the latest techniques really can't afford it because of the regulatory burden and huge costs associated with everything.
Right. One party is fighting for fairness and democracy, the other for domination and autocracy. But I believe it is still possible to be fair by those who fight for fairness, and to be democratic by those who fight for democracy. And they can still win, eventually. It is called progress and it has been going on for centuries.
I think both major parties have pretty strong authoritarian streaks that they show in different ways. I'm a registered Democrat, and I agree that the authoritarian streak in the Republican party is stronger and more dangerous at the moment. However, I think it's also dangerous to ignore the authoritarian tendencies in the Democratic party.
Good point. If authoritarians could they of course would take over the Democratic Party totally.
As you know Republican Party used to be the one opposing slavery.
It's like Putin is really not against USA. He is only against USA as long as he is not its for-life president. And he loves democracy as longs as he is the only one who can decide what democracy means.
> Historically conservatives have been more strategic at preserving their political power
Only if your recollection of history starts in 1994. When Biden was elected to the Senate, Democrats had almost 10 percentage points greater representation in the House than their share of the House popular vote, a feat the GOP has never matched: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Popular_vote_vs_actual_...
And look at how many Republican Supreme Court appointees went wobbly. The majority that upheld abortion rights in Casey in 1992 consisted of five Republican appointees, with the lone Democrat voting with Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas.
In terms of strategy, the GOP was a complete tire fire until the Gingrich Congress of the 1990s.
I'm not sure I agree with you that this is a levelheaded take. The individual identified with 2 different groups and defers the individual's personal beliefs. It's hard to see if the reason why he/she believes in these things as a personal stance or to maintain membership within those groups.
Associating with groups, esp like these, means alignment to the groups priorities. I see this tribalism as part of what has really destroyed the modern political landscape.
The new definition of levelheaded is “straw man assertion I don’t back up with facts” then “somber toned analysis of straw man impacts”
The internet revealed that facts are real, but interpretations are extremely up for grabs. I mean is is really a “hard left turn” to stop defending the KKK or is the author just living in a world where people don’t grasp how truly outside of contemporary society that the KKK operates in?
In a world where accused KKK members are not allowed legal representation, the mere (unsubstantiated) accusation of being a ideological member of such a group becomes a weapon to end all discussion and silence the out group.
Applying mob rules (as seen on Twitter and other social media) to the legal world is most certainly a step backwards from a civil liberties perspective.
If only that were true, because pretty much everyone accused of being a bigot seems to still possess the ability and willingness to spout hatred and bigotry all over the TV, Internet, and the halls of Congress. Having your Twitter privileges taken away from you - if that happens to you at all - is hardly the end of the matter.
We are not yet in a society where such people are denied legal representation, so I'm not sure what bearing that such people still existing has on such a hypothetical world?
If you are saying that there still exists a number of actual racists acting racistly on social media, I would agree, but a not-insignificant number of them have been banned!
Social media isn’t the only place to get your message across. And even if a few have been banned, there’s an infinite number of copycats who share their views and who haven’t been deterred from expressing themselves.
Yeah, the American right is definitely silenced in today's media landscape. I can think of dozens of people banned from every appearing on Fox News becasue they were accused of racism.
> The internet revealed that facts are real, but interpretations are extremely up for grabs. I mean is is really a “hard left turn” to stop defending the KKK
Speaking of strawmen...
It is a hard turn to stop defending everybody's rights though. Where everybody includes the entire spectrum from Robert Byrd to Mother Teresa.
> or is the author just living in a world where people don’t grasp how truly outside of contemporary society that the KKK operates in?
Speaking from authority as a KKK member, what I have seen of the contemporary society that the KKK operates in is that there appears to perhaps be a tiny core group of people who voluntarily become KKK members. These people are largely viewed as sideshow freaks and circus clowns who (aside from perhaps Gov. Ralph Northam? /s) have basically zero power as a group . And then you have the other far larger cohort of us who have been unwittingly "volunteered" KKK membership by various "experts" who don't like our opinions but are otherwise incapable of rational discussion of them.
It's a great system. First you make some group so abhorrent that their rights should not be defended. Then crown yourself the sole expert and arbiter of who does and does not belong to that group. The best part about it is that you get to be the one defending the marginalized from bullies and discrimination, and defending human rights and democracy from fascists.
> And then you have the other far larger cohort of us who have been unwittingly "volunteered" KKK membership by various "experts" who don't like our opinions but are otherwise incapable of rational discussion of them.
What an incredibly level headed take. It's so level headed that it seems fake when projected onto the landscape of modern political discourse.