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Historically, some of the most discriminated people have been people of a different religion. In principle you can "stop believing in your religion" as easily a

Historically, some of the most discriminated people have been people of a different religion. In principle you can "stop believing in your religion" as easily as you can stop believing that immigrants are destroying your country. In practice, nobody cares to protect bigots and a lot of people want to protect gays, immigrants, women, etc. It is troubling that we only protect certain classes of people since maybe the next group that comes along after the current group of bigots will actually deserve protection but the arguments we built to allow the lack of protection for bigots will be used to deny protection to that group.

snowwrestler 7y ago
The end goal of bigotry is to distort legal structures to eliminate equality and preferentially harm certain people, often because of attributes they can't change, like their ethnicity or where they were born. If you're worried about protecting people of the future, you should be opposing bigotry. Bigotry has cloaked itself in the mantle of victim and you've totally fallen for it.
- javagram 7y ago
  Those same arguments were used against freedom of religion. English Catholics were popish spies who would try to blow up parliament and overthrow the government, etc. Therefore, they needed to be persecuted as heretics to protect the common good. Roman Christians refused to worship the emperor, destabilizing the social order, and therefore needed to be thrown to the lions to protect society. Atheists couldn’t be trusted because they didn’t believe in hell, and therefore would act immorally, and so should be banned from positions of power (this is actually in a couple of US state constitutions!) (And of course, the same arguments were used in reverse later on as different groups got power) I won’t shed any tears for 8chan who are a bunch of immoral scum, but I know these same arguments will be deployed to censor religious minorities and others in the future. Hopefully they are less appealing targets.
  - vgaldikas 7y ago
    Except these were lies. These people are real, and actually causing harm. Or do you argue that it is not the case?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - javagram 7y ago
      Were they lies? Guy fawkes was real. The pope actually did excommunicate Elizabeth and sponsor several invasions/rebellions by the French and Irish. The western Roman Empire fell apart a hundred years after Christianity became the state religion. Some historians blame tensions among christian schisms in Egypt/the Middle East for the byzantine empire losing those regions to the Arab invasion. (All I’m saying with the above is that the justifications seemed plausible and reasonable to the educated people of the time. Read Pliny’s letter to Trajan seeking counsel for what to do about Christians, for example)
    - LocalH 7y ago
      It is a failing of the ego to think that one has foreseen all possible abuses of a policy going forward. I think the answer is more speech, not less. Any exception you carve out will be abused in the future, based on the history of humankind and the behavior of governing entities throughout. Take these exceptions to freedom of speech, add to them a codified framework for equity (which some are pushing for), and you're laying the groundwork for a society like that seen in Harrison Bergeron.
- BlackFly 7y ago
  You're far too quick to paint me with the brush of "enemy" simply because I can understand why sensible people are worried. That I tangentially refer to 8chan as bigots should have been enough to tip you off. Maybe you should allow a little color into your world of black and white. I suppose you don't find historical things like McCarthyism very worrying, given how easily you are to think your principle of discriminating by choice separates what you judge to be good from what you judge to be bad. But do you really trust every imaginable leader with such a power?
LocalH 7y ago
This is what I worry about. As social mores change, we must resist efforts to carve out exceptions to fundamental rights, in order to prevent those exceptions from being wrongly used against people in a harmful way. I think the Founders understood this on some level, even if they couldn't know what the political and social landscape would look like today.

snowwrestler 7y ago

The end goal of bigotry is to distort legal structures to eliminate equality and preferentially harm certain people, often because of attributes they can't change, like their ethnicity or where they were born. If you're worried about protecting people of the future, you should be opposing bigotry. Bigotry has cloaked itself in the mantle of victim and you've totally fallen for it.

javagram 7y ago
Those same arguments were used against freedom of religion. English Catholics were popish spies who would try to blow up parliament and overthrow the government, etc. Therefore, they needed to be persecuted as heretics to protect the common good. Roman Christians refused to worship the emperor, destabilizing the social order, and therefore needed to be thrown to the lions to protect society. Atheists couldn’t be trusted because they didn’t believe in hell, and therefore would act immorally, and so should be banned from positions of power (this is actually in a couple of US state constitutions!) (And of course, the same arguments were used in reverse later on as different groups got power) I won’t shed any tears for 8chan who are a bunch of immoral scum, but I know these same arguments will be deployed to censor religious minorities and others in the future. Hopefully they are less appealing targets.
- vgaldikas 7y ago
  Except these were lies. These people are real, and actually causing harm. Or do you argue that it is not the case?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - javagram 7y ago
    Were they lies? Guy fawkes was real. The pope actually did excommunicate Elizabeth and sponsor several invasions/rebellions by the French and Irish. The western Roman Empire fell apart a hundred years after Christianity became the state religion. Some historians blame tensions among christian schisms in Egypt/the Middle East for the byzantine empire losing those regions to the Arab invasion. (All I’m saying with the above is that the justifications seemed plausible and reasonable to the educated people of the time. Read Pliny’s letter to Trajan seeking counsel for what to do about Christians, for example)
  - LocalH 7y ago
    It is a failing of the ego to think that one has foreseen all possible abuses of a policy going forward. I think the answer is more speech, not less. Any exception you carve out will be abused in the future, based on the history of humankind and the behavior of governing entities throughout. Take these exceptions to freedom of speech, add to them a codified framework for equity (which some are pushing for), and you're laying the groundwork for a society like that seen in Harrison Bergeron.
BlackFly 7y ago
You're far too quick to paint me with the brush of "enemy" simply because I can understand why sensible people are worried. That I tangentially refer to 8chan as bigots should have been enough to tip you off. Maybe you should allow a little color into your world of black and white. I suppose you don't find historical things like McCarthyism very worrying, given how easily you are to think your principle of discriminating by choice separates what you judge to be good from what you judge to be bad. But do you really trust every imaginable leader with such a power?

LocalH 7y ago

This is what I worry about. As social mores change, we must resist efforts to carve out exceptions to fundamental rights, in order to prevent those exceptions from being wrongly used against people in a harmful way. I think the Founders understood this on some level, even if they couldn't know what the political and social landscape would look like today.