Yup. When counter protesters are terrified to show up because they might get shot, things get a little dicey IMO.
I think we’re talking past each other. .
Whatever abhorrent end-goal that the speech declares, reaching there involves actions that are beyond the scope of a speech. Those actions should not gain momentum due to largely negative social reaction and will also clearly fail against constitutional safeguards. The actions can perhaps only take root as part of an armed uprising, at which point we are talking about a completely different, and also very improbable, scenario.
Adding further exclusions to freedom of speech (however narrowly defined) will likely make that legislative/judicial process into a political game, and I’d consider that a disaster.
And who gets to make that determination? How do you codify it into law? How slippery do you make the slope and what administration do you think might take advantage of such a law?
How does Germany codify it into law? It’s not as if this is unexplored territory.
Germany’s tradition of free speech doesn’t exactly match our own.
I’m just saying if you want to know how such laws would be enacted or codified, there are real-world examples.
If you specifically mean how would you do it in accordance with the U.S. Constitution (rather than in an ‘if I could have a pony’ sort of way), then Germany’s laws obviously have less relevance, since they don’t have to square with such a document.
I agree with you. I think one of the great freedoms we have in this country, something that those of us who haven’t lived elsewhere take for granted, is the freedom to say almost any damned thing we please. Any limitation on that, however sensible, is something that requires the gravest sort of caution.
However, I don’t think freedom of speech means freedom from all consequence, which some people mistake it for. We, as private citizens, have every right to shun those that engage in hate speech. Businesses have every right not to employ people that do so.
Except we don’t all have that. We have recorded video, actual real life video of police officers arresting black individuals for talking back to them or saying what they don’t like. The Freedom of Speech you speak of is not even equally applied, today.
Ok. Let me qualify the previous statement with “in theory”. That’s absolutely how it should be for all of us. The fact that it isn’t is a problem of enormous magnitude. I didn’t mean to overlook that. You might not know it from the way I have written in recent months, but I’m very much an idealist at heart.
And many people who marched with the right wing scum on Saturday are finding out that doing it has consequences. Of course, you do hope that the people who “out” them get it right.
I’m just going to say that having lived for 6 years in NYC, I always felt I had more freedom of speech in Spain than in the US, even though we have hate speech laws here. What the law says and the reality of the amount of social discourse and debate are very different things.
But hey, sure, enjoy your Nazi rallies!
Should it be protected speech to yell “Fire!” in a burning theatre full of Nazis?
That would violate the Clear and Present Douchebag principle.
At the same time all of Trump’s press conference nonsense was going down, a federal court found that Texas’s redistricting was based on intentional, racial discrimination.
Big part of Texas’s congressional district map was just invalidated.
Why would you ever warn them? Just sneak out and lock the door behind you.
I like where your head is at.
