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I'm with you. All of society has always rested on gradients and fuzzy lines. "highly principled" extremism, while nice in theory, has never made the world much

I'm with you. All of society has always rested on gradients and fuzzy lines. "highly principled" extremism, while nice in theory, has never made the world much better. Pragmatism is what has driven most advancement. That may not feel great to some people because it's rarely perfectly fair (among other things), but it doesn't change it's success.

llanowarelves 4y ago
The legal system is exactly the opposite in establishing limits: canaries in the coal mine and the exceptions proving the rule. Not really anybody wants to be "First Amendment auditors" or the guy in Warren v Brandenburg, but they forced the issue to establish/discover limits. If what was legal was simply "what is average/normal/reasonable" then that likely would mean much less freedom. You can also be influenced socially through media (etc) either direction over time to change what the definition of "reasonable" is. Remember that Barack Obama ran on the now "extreme" position (that many non-Western countries like Japan still holds) that marriage is between a man and a woman only, a little more than a decade ago. Conversely, gay marriage was "extreme"/fringe back then.