4 ms·

"The mentality of "if your opinions don't align with mine, you should be silenced and banned" is the exact reason that I began moving away from the Left, despit

"The mentality of "if your opinions don't align with mine, you should be silenced and banned" is the exact reason that I began moving away from the Left, despite still considering myself socially liberal." Being banned on social media or not invited to a conference isn't illegal since your free to speak and associate with whom you wish. If Twitter/Facebook or some private organization doesn't want to associate with you doesn't mean you're forced to not speak. You just can't speak with or through them. As for the rest of your comment it just smacks of naivety of someone who's not studied political history. First, classical liberalism use to be the left but ceased to be the left the moment it shifted rightward toward sympathizing with fascists as what happened in countries like Germany under the Weimer Republic. Second, left-wing groups that you deem extreme in the United States are fairly moderate in terms of global left-right politics. Asking for LGBT people to be added to the protected classes under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 isn't extreme. If such legal extensions are extreme to you then you need to ask yourself if you're actually a liberal and not some Burkean libertarian conservative.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Torgo 10y ago
I hope people noticed that you reserve for yourself the right to exclude people you disagree with based on private property and freedom of association but then restrict them from doing the same to you by categorizing yourself under a federal anti-discrimination law.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  The civil rights act of 1964 doesn't put obligations on private parties to contract with other private parties since said private parties by definition are private. Meaning that if I operate a club or some sort of prayer group I'm privileged to exclude or include anyone of my choosing so long as the fellow members of that group agree with my decision. Federal law on this is very clear and something that no one can argue otherwise. There's hundreds of cases like this which the federal government looks at and concludes rightly the scope of the Civil Rights Act limits them. So, if I want to exclude Peter Thiel from my prayer group I can god damn can and will, and there's nothing little Pete can do about it under federal law.
  - Torgo 10y ago
    cool story but facebook and twitter aren't actually private since they have open registration.
    - norea-armozel 10y ago
      Cool story but FB and Twitter aren't violating your rights denying your access to their site. Otherwise every bar tender who's thrown out people for drunken tirades is now violating civil rights (despite the case law that says otherwise). So unless you got a constitutional lawyer that has a solid argument against site-wide bans of users, I'm just not going to listen to you until then.
dmix 10y ago
The OP didn't say it was illegal, nor should that be the metric for deciding that such an idea is entirely distasteful and not something you want to associate yourself with. Any tech/business/non-political conference that decides to go through each persons political leanings and decides whether or not the group finds them satisfactory before allowing them to talk is such a dangerous idea IMO. It is indeed a voluntary action and one that I want nothing to do with. The fact that so many people on HN can't see the problems with mixing partisan politics with business in order to shame another persons views scares me. If this was any other forum such as a news site's comment section or one of those protests by inexperienced university kids then I would be more understanding. But I don't believe I can hold the people on HN or in the tech community to that low standard... they should really know better. Sadly the media feeds into this hysteria. This Less Wrong article has never been more relevant: "People go funny in the head when talking about politics." http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ or better yet http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  "The OP didn't say it was illegal, nor should that be the metric for deciding that such an idea is entirely distasteful and not something you want to associate yourself with." So it's distasteful that I don't want to associate with people of my own free will? Are you serious? "The fact that so many people on HN can't see the problems with mixing partisan politics with business in order to shame another persons views scares me." What scares me if folks like you that want to use force of another kind to obligate me to associate with people I wouldn't urinate on if they were on fire. Seriously, I would never work for the likes of Peter Thiel under any circumstances. I have my standards, you should too. "If this was any other forum such as a news site's comment section or one of those protests by inexperienced university kids then I would be more understanding. But I don't believe I can hold the people on HN or in the tech community to that low standard... they should really know better. Sadly the media feeds into this hysteria." Sorry, but none of that gives a moral theory of obligation for me to work for or with people like Peter Thiel. "This Less Wrong article has never been more relevant." I don't give two craps about LessWrong pseudo-intellectualism. Either present a theory that I'm obligated to associate with the likes of Peter Thiel or admit you have no moral theory or basis from which to obligate me or others to associate with those we choose freely not to associate with.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Torgo 10y ago

I hope people noticed that you reserve for yourself the right to exclude people you disagree with based on private property and freedom of association but then restrict them from doing the same to you by categorizing yourself under a federal anti-discrimination law.

norea-armozel 10y ago
The civil rights act of 1964 doesn't put obligations on private parties to contract with other private parties since said private parties by definition are private. Meaning that if I operate a club or some sort of prayer group I'm privileged to exclude or include anyone of my choosing so long as the fellow members of that group agree with my decision. Federal law on this is very clear and something that no one can argue otherwise. There's hundreds of cases like this which the federal government looks at and concludes rightly the scope of the Civil Rights Act limits them. So, if I want to exclude Peter Thiel from my prayer group I can god damn can and will, and there's nothing little Pete can do about it under federal law.
- Torgo 10y ago
  cool story but facebook and twitter aren't actually private since they have open registration.
  - norea-armozel 10y ago
    Cool story but FB and Twitter aren't violating your rights denying your access to their site. Otherwise every bar tender who's thrown out people for drunken tirades is now violating civil rights (despite the case law that says otherwise). So unless you got a constitutional lawyer that has a solid argument against site-wide bans of users, I'm just not going to listen to you until then.

dmix 10y ago

The OP didn't say it was illegal, nor should that be the metric for deciding that such an idea is entirely distasteful and not something you want to associate yourself with. Any tech/business/non-political conference that decides to go through each persons political leanings and decides whether or not the group finds them satisfactory before allowing them to talk is such a dangerous idea IMO. It is indeed a voluntary action and one that I want nothing to do with. The fact that so many people on HN can't see the problems with mixing partisan politics with business in order to shame another persons views scares me. If this was any other forum such as a news site's comment section or one of those protests by inexperienced university kids then I would be more understanding. But I don't believe I can hold the people on HN or in the tech community to that low standard... they should really know better. Sadly the media feeds into this hysteria. This Less Wrong article has never been more relevant: "People go funny in the head when talking about politics." http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ or better yet http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/

norea-armozel 10y ago
"The OP didn't say it was illegal, nor should that be the metric for deciding that such an idea is entirely distasteful and not something you want to associate yourself with." So it's distasteful that I don't want to associate with people of my own free will? Are you serious? "The fact that so many people on HN can't see the problems with mixing partisan politics with business in order to shame another persons views scares me." What scares me if folks like you that want to use force of another kind to obligate me to associate with people I wouldn't urinate on if they were on fire. Seriously, I would never work for the likes of Peter Thiel under any circumstances. I have my standards, you should too. "If this was any other forum such as a news site's comment section or one of those protests by inexperienced university kids then I would be more understanding. But I don't believe I can hold the people on HN or in the tech community to that low standard... they should really know better. Sadly the media feeds into this hysteria." Sorry, but none of that gives a moral theory of obligation for me to work for or with people like Peter Thiel. "This Less Wrong article has never been more relevant." I don't give two craps about LessWrong pseudo-intellectualism. Either present a theory that I'm obligated to associate with the likes of Peter Thiel or admit you have no moral theory or basis from which to obligate me or others to associate with those we choose freely not to associate with.