7 ms·
“the First Amendment is a cheap thing if all it provides is the assurance that one may say what a current majority is willing to hear.” Charles Rembar
by megamike 11mo ago
“the First Amendment is a cheap thing if all it provides is the assurance that one may say what a current majority is willing to hear.”
Charles Rembar
- getcthbf67 11mo agoAs a contrararianI'm silenced a lot. How do you suggest alignment can happen if more persuasive dissenting voices are allowed to be heard?
- michael_michael 11mo agoSilenced by whom?
- theendisney 11mo agoEven the smallest authority may want to force others back in line.
- ceejayoz 11mo ago“Your ideas suck and you should stop espousing them” is free speech too.
- getcthbf67 11mo agoNot when it's followed by a blocking of the account being disagreed with.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoBullshit. I have the right to free association, too. I am not required to let you interact with me; I can block you on Twitter just as I can lock you out of my house.
- getcthbf67 11mo ago[dead]
- epistasis 11mo agoContrarian on taxes, spending, organizational issues, democracy versus monarchy? Or it, you know, those contrarian views? You know the ones. (Personally, I'm a contrarian about the presence of fire in crowded theaters, and boy have I been silenced)
- fnordpiglet 11mo agoWhy is alignment necessary? In our system compromise is the typical alignment sought where no single view dominates the decisions or direction. With enforced alignment no compromise is more than not necessary it’s not possible. That’s the dysfunction of the present because there’s a perception that holding office entails enforcing alignment, and opposing voices not only need not be heard but are forcefully silenced. However the system we have in the US doesn’t allow for that, and explicably, it’s even more dysfunctional than normal. Sooner or later they have to stop and compromise, over throw the system, or be removed. That’s precisely how it’s designed to work. So, you shouldn’t be silenced, your opinions should be heard, and to the extent they’re reasonable, they should be considered proportional to your ability to influence. The more to which this is prevented or ignored the more unstable the system is.
- getcthbf67 11mo ago[flagged]
- fnordpiglet 11mo agoThere’s a difference between forced alignment and rejection of falsehoods. On each of these the response to the questions were investigations in the public space, especially vaccines, but through various processes. This is the opposite of forced alignment - this is deliberately considering opposing views. That doesn’t mean a decision isn’t eventually reached, and the fact we are relitigating all of these year over year even on verifiable facts shows there is no forcing of alignment by the system. I think people don’t realize what forced alignment looks like - that’s Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Xi China, North Korea, etc, where dissent is not tolerated, not allowed, and alignment is forced.
- getcthbf67 11mo ago[flagged]
- fnordpiglet 11mo ago
- mpalmer 11mo agoWhat exactly do you think you deserve that you're not getting?
- getcthbf67 11mo agoI deserve words and actions to align. If people say they believe in free speech, then don't throttle posting rates. What i want is Honest, logical decision making, from a foundation of facts. What I get is tyranny. If you think free speech is important, then don't flag posts as trolling. What you say is free speech is important as long as it doesn't disrupt MY community. Free speech is important unless I label you a troll. Those statements are contradictory.
- mpalmer 11mo agoThey are not contradictory. Publicly labeling someone a troll is indisputably speech. You mistake the situation as someone denying you your rights, but really you are just failing to recognize the same rights for that person or group. The communities that are presumably excluding you are exercising their freedom of association. You may not (indeed, seem not to) realize, but freedom of association is understood to be part of the set of freedoms generally known as freedom of speech/expression. It's the freedom of people, collectively or individually, to associate with certain others, or not to associate with them. You are reckoning with the consequences of how you've chosen to exercise your rights, but you have not been denied them. No one is obligated to include you (in the context of public discourse).
- getcthbf67 11mo ago[dead]
- ceejayoz 11mo agoThey think they should be unblockable on social media; that everyone should be required to nonconsensually consume their statements. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45868679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45868679
- theendisney 11mo agoI wouldnt have imagined at the time that the worse part of electronic messages is that they could one day legaly be written in your name. I thought things coudnt be worse than not being allowed to speak (which was already normal at the time)
- jfengel 11mo agoThey also had their own messages removed. It's not clear to me that they're guaranteed a platform on their work email, but having been allowed to set a message and then having it removed and then replaced with a different one is not a good look for free speech.
- bofadeez 11mo agoI think we can all agree on this. It would just be nice if there was consistent enthusiasm for the first amendment when it comes to actual taboo ideas. Are you quoting this when you hear about right wing extremists being canceled or jailed in Europe? In the 1970s, Jewish lawyers at the ACLU defended the American Nazi Party’s right to march in Skokie. Not out of support, but to uphold the principle of free speech for all. What happened to intellectual honesty?
- SilverElfin 11mo ago> What happened to intellectual honesty? It’s gone. The ACLU itself is pretty anti free speech these days and happily looks the other way when censorship on private social media platforms aligns with their ideological views. People have been writing about free speech issues at the ACLU for about a decade now: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/is-the-aclu-still-committed-to-free-speech https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/is-the-aclu...
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- FireBeyond 11mo agoSadly, agreed. The ACLU used to be known as a stalwart on this, fighting for the right of the KKK to hold marches etc. The "their speech might be reprehensible, but we need to fight for all free speech" perspective. Now, they're uninterested in a lot of these issues. And I say this as someone very liberal. You can also separately debate where the line is on the topic of say "absolute free speech", but whatever the ACLU used to fight for, it fights for a distinct subset only, now.
- watwut 11mo agoWhy is free speech defined by freedom of nazi and never by freedom for left wing people? Nazi are popular now and sympatisants are political leaders. It is not their defense what defines freedom, it is everybody elses rights that define lack of it.