Libertarian
boosted
Itâs hard to believe we need to have this conversation in this day and age. But if we donât keep having it, at some point we might not be allowed to have it.
Question: What is free speech? Or, rather what is not free speech?
In 2017, former Vermont governor, presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean informed the American public that âhate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.â Thatâs one variation of the âhate speech is not free speechâ claim.
Yes, âhate speechâ is free speech (and yes, itâs protected by the First Amendment).
On July 12, speaking at a White House âsocial media summit,â President Donald Trump opined that âfree speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me, thatâs a very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But thatâs not free speech.â
Yes, calling something âbadâ that Donald Trump calls âgoodâ is free speech too (and yes, it is also protected by the First Amendment).
This shouldnât even be an âissue.â Itâs just not that complicated, folks. But for some reason weâre still making it complicated.
Ever since the framers enshrined freedom of speech in the Constitution, Americans have struggled with what, if any, limits can be legitimately placed on that freedom.
The law and the courts have carved out limited exceptions for things like speech âdirected to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,â âtrue threats of violence,â and knowingly false speech aimed at defaming a personâs character or defrauding others in a commercial sense (e.g. âIâm selling you one ounce of goldâ when itâs actually one ounce of lead with gold paint on it).
There are plenty of reasonable arguments to be had about what, if any, exceptions to unfettered freedom of speech might make sense.
But when it comes to matters of opinion, the only reasonable position is that youâre entitled to have opinions, and to express them, period.
Even if Howard Dean thinks theyâre âhateful.â
Even if Donald Trump thinks that heâs âgoodâ and that youâre making him look âbad.â
Even if they make someone feel angry or, to use the latest non-specific catchall complaint, âunsafe.â
We donât have to agree with othersâ opinions. We donât have to like the manner in which others express their opinions. We donât even have to listen to other people when they express their opinions. But we donât get to stop them from expressing their opinions. Not even if weâre Howard Dean or Donald Trump.
In anything resembling a free society, thatâs just not negotiable. And no politician who argues otherwise should ever win an election to the position of dogcatcher, let alone governor or president.
Libertarian
boosted
How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and âwe the peopleâ have none?
You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.
This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-loving people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.
It works the same way every time.
The governmentâs overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have been convenient ruses used to terrorized the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point: on June 17, the same day President Trump announced that the government would be making mass arrests in order to round up and forcibly remove millions of illegal immigrantsâincluding families and childrenâfrom the country, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in Gamble v. United States that placed the sovereignty (i.e., the supreme power or authority) of federal and state governments over that of the citizenry, specifically as it relates to the governmentâs ability to disregard the Constitutionâs Double Jeopardy Clause.
At first glance, the two incidentsâone relating to illegal immigration and the other to the governmentâs prosecutorial powersâdonât have much to do with each other, and yet there is a common thread that binds them together.
That common thread speaks to the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of âwe the people.â
Now you donât hear a lot about sovereignty anymore.
Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.
In other words, in America, âwe the peopleââ sovereign citizensâcall the shots.
So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.
Thatâs not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?
In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the governmentâs brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.
The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to âwe the people.â
So you see, the two incidents on June 17 were not hugely significant in and of themselves.
Trumpâs plan to carry out mass arrests of anyone the government suspects might be an illegal immigrant, and the Supreme Courtâs recognition that the government can sidestep the Constitution for the sake of expediency are merely more of the same abuses that have been heaped upon us in recent years.
Yet these incidents speak volumes about how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized âwe the peopleâ have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.
How do we reconcile the Foundersâ vision of our government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police stateâs insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?
They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.
We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what she has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).
This slide into totalitarianismâhelped along by overcriminalization, government surveillance, militarized police, neighbors turning in neighbors, privatized prisons, and forced labor camps, to name just a few similaritiesâis tracking very closely with what happened in Germany in the years leading up to Hitlerâs rise to power.
We are walking a dangerous path right now.
The horrors of the Nazi concentration camps werenât kept secret from the German people. They were well-publicized. As The Guardian reports:
The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitlerâs Holocaust⦠They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatised as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand. They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters⦠The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of âdesensitisationâ which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jewsâ¦.
Likewise, the mass of ordinary Americans are fully aware of the Trump Administrationâs efforts to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the governmentâs plans for this country.
These mass arrests of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant may well be the shot across the bow.
You see, itâs a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing government agents to lock large swaths of the population up in detention centers unless or until they can prove that they are not only legally in the country to empowering government agents to subject anyoneâcitizen and noncitizen alikeâto similar treatment unless or until they can prove that they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books, and not guilty of having committed some crime or other.
Itâs no longer a matter of if, but when.
You may be innocent of wrongdoing now, but when the standard for innocence is set by the government, no one is safe. Everyone is a suspect, and anyone can be a criminal when itâs the government determining what is a crime.
Remember, the police state does not discriminate.
At some point, once the government has been given the power to do whatever it wantsâthe Constitution be damnedâit will not matter whether youâre an illegal immigrant or a citizen by birth, a law-breaker or someone who marches in lockstep with the governmentâs dictates. Government jails will detain you just as easily whether youâve obeyed every law or broken a dozen. And government agents will treat you like a suspect, whether or not youâve done anything wrong, simply because they have been trained to view and treat everyone like potential criminals.
Eventually, all that will matter is whether some government agentâpoorly trained, utterly ignorant of the Constitution, way too hyped up on the power of their badges, and authorized to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fitâchooses to single you out for special treatment.
Weâve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we donât seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.
All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government todayâwarrantless surveillance, stop and frisk searches, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, indefinite detention, militarized police, etc.âstarted out as a seemingly well-meaning plan to address some problem in society that needed a little extra help.
Be careful what you wish for: you will get more than you bargained for, especially when the governmentâs involved.
Remember, nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is.
The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police.
The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention.
The war on immigration is turning out to be yet another war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding âpapers, please.â
Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out nowâwhether itâs in the name of national security or protecting Americaâs borders or making America great againârest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.
If youâre inclined to advance this double standard because you believe you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, beware: thereâs always a boomerang effect.
As commentator Shaun Kenney observed:
What civil liberties are you willing to surrender in the apprehension of 12 million people? Knock and drags? Detention centers? Checkpoints? House-to-house searches? Papers, please? Will we be racially profiling folks to look for or are we talking about people of Chinese⦠Indian⦠Irish⦠Polish⦠Italian⦠people-who-might-look-like-you descent as well? If the federal government makes a 1% rounding error and accidentally deports an American citizen, thatâs 120,000 Americans⦠what means will be used to restore their rights? Who will remunerate them for their financial loss? Restore their lost homes? Personal property? Families? ⦠What happens when these means are turned against some other group of undesirables in America by a president who does not share your political persuasion, but can now justify the act based on previous justifications?
We are all at risk.
The law of reciprocity applies here. The flip side of that Golden Rule, which calls for us to treat others as we would have them treat us, is that we shouldnât inflict on others what we wouldnât want to suffer ourselves.
In other words, if you donât want to be locked up in a prison cell or a detention campâif you donât want to be discriminated against because of the color of your race, religion, politics or anything else that sets you apart from the restâif you donât want your loved ones shot at, strip searched, tasered, beaten and treated like slavesâif you donât want to have to be constantly on guard against government eyes watching what you do, where you go and what you sayâif you donât want to be tortured, waterboarded or forced to perform degrading actsâif you donât want your children to be forcibly separated from you, caged and lostâthen donât allow these evils to be inflicted on anyone else, no matter how compelling a case the government makes for it or how fervently you believe in the cause.
You canât have it both ways.
You canât live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.
You canât claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.
You canât expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.
Indeed, when the government is allowed to operate as a law unto itself, the rule of law itself becomes illegitimate. As Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, âeverything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was âlegalâ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was âillegal.â It was âillegalâ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitlerâs Germany.â
In other words, there comes a time when law and order are in direct opposition to justice.
Isnât that what the American Revolution was all about?
Finally, if anyone suggests that the governmentâs mass immigration roundups and arrests are just the government doing its job to fight illegal immigration, donât buy it.
This is not about illegal immigration. Itâs about power and control.
Itâs about testing the waters to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.
Itâs about the rise of an âemergency stateâ that justifies all manner of government misconduct and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.
Itâs about how much tyranny âwe the peopleâ will tolerate before we find our conscience and our voice.
Itâs about how far we will allow the government to go in its efforts to distract and divide us and turn us into a fearful, easily controlled populace.
Ultimately, itâs about whether we believeâas the Founders didâthat our freedoms are inherently ours and that the government is only as powerful as we allow it to be. Freedom does not flow from the government. It was not given to us, to be taken away at the will of the State. In the same way, the governmentâs appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.
We must get back to this way of thinking if we are to ever stand our ground in the face of threats to those freedoms.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, itâs time to draw that line in the sand.
The treatment being meted out to anyone that looks like an illegal immigrant is only the beginning. Eventually we will all be in the governmentâs crosshairs for one reason or another.
This is the start of the slippery slope.
Martin Niemöller understood this. A Lutheran minister who was imprisoned and executed for opposing Hitlerâs regime, Niemoller warned:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak outâBecause I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak outâBecause I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outâBecause I was not a Jew. Then they came for meâand there was no one left to speak for me.
How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and âwe the peopleâ have none?
You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.
This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-loving people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.
It works the same way every time.
The governmentâs overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have been convenient ruses used to terrorized the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point: on June 17, the same day President Trump announced that the government would be making mass arrests in order to round up and forcibly remove millions of illegal immigrantsâincluding families and childrenâfrom the country, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in Gamble v. United States that placed the sovereignty (i.e., the supreme power or authority) of federal and state governments over that of the citizenry, specifically as it relates to the governmentâs ability to disregard the Constitutionâs Double Jeopardy Clause.
At first glance, the two incidentsâone relating to illegal immigration and the other to the governmentâs prosecutorial powersâdonât have much to do with each other, and yet there is a common thread that binds them together.
That common thread speaks to the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of âwe the people.â
Now you donât hear a lot about sovereignty anymore.
Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.
In other words, in America, âwe the peopleââ sovereign citizensâcall the shots.
So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.
Thatâs not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?
In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the governmentâs brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.
The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to âwe the people.â
So you see, the two incidents on June 17 were not hugely significant in and of themselves.
Trumpâs plan to carry out mass arrests of anyone the government suspects might be an illegal immigrant, and the Supreme Courtâs recognition that the government can sidestep the Constitution for the sake of expediency are merely more of the same abuses that have been heaped upon us in recent years.
Yet these incidents speak volumes about how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized âwe the peopleâ have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.
How do we reconcile the Foundersâ vision of our government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police stateâs insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?
They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.
We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what she has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).
This slide into totalitarianismâhelped along by overcriminalization, government surveillance, militarized police, neighbors turning in neighbors, privatized prisons, and forced labor camps, to name just a few similaritiesâis tracking very closely with what happened in Germany in the years leading up to Hitlerâs rise to power.
We are walking a dangerous path right now.
The horrors of the Nazi concentration camps werenât kept secret from the German people. They were well-publicized. As The Guardian reports:
The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitlerâs Holocaust⦠They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatised as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand. They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters⦠The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of âdesensitisationâ which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jewsâ¦.
Likewise, the mass of ordinary Americans are fully aware of the Trump Administrationâs efforts to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the governmentâs plans for this country.
These mass arrests of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant may well be the shot across the bow.
You see, itâs a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing government agents to lock large swaths of the population up in detention centers unless or until they can prove that they are not only legally in the country to empowering government agents to subject anyoneâcitizen and noncitizen alikeâto similar treatment unless or until they can prove that they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books, and not guilty of having committed some crime or other.
Itâs no longer a matter of if, but when.
You may be innocent of wrongdoing now, but when the standard for innocence is set by the government, no one is safe. Everyone is a suspect, and anyone can be a criminal when itâs the government determining what is a crime.
Remember, the police state does not discriminate.
At some point, once the government has been given the power to do whatever it wantsâthe Constitution be damnedâit will not matter whether youâre an illegal immigrant or a citizen by birth, a law-breaker or someone who marches in lockstep with the governmentâs dictates. Government jails will detain you just as easily whether youâve obeyed every law or broken a dozen. And government agents will treat you like a suspect, whether or not youâve done anything wrong, simply because they have been trained to view and treat everyone like potential criminals.
Eventually, all that will matter is whether some government agentâpoorly trained, utterly ignorant of the Constitution, way too hyped up on the power of their badges, and authorized to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fitâchooses to single you out for special treatment.
Weâve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we donât seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.
All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government todayâwarrantless surveillance, stop and frisk searches, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, indefinite detention, militarized police, etc.âstarted out as a seemingly well-meaning plan to address some problem in society that needed a little extra help.
Be careful what you wish for: you will get more than you bargained for, especially when the governmentâs involved.
Remember, nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is.
The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police.
The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention.
The war on immigration is turning out to be yet another war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding âpapers, please.â
Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out nowâwhether itâs in the name of national security or protecting Americaâs borders or making America great againârest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.
If youâre inclined to advance this double standard because you believe you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, beware: thereâs always a boomerang effect.
As commentator Shaun Kenney observed:
What civil liberties are you willing to surrender in the apprehension of 12 million people? Knock and drags? Detention centers? Checkpoints? House-to-house searches? Papers, please? Will we be racially profiling folks to look for or are we talking about people of Chinese⦠Indian⦠Irish⦠Polish⦠Italian⦠people-who-might-look-like-you descent as well? If the federal government makes a 1% rounding error and accidentally deports an American citizen, thatâs 120,000 Americans⦠what means will be used to restore their rights? Who will remunerate them for their financial loss? Restore their lost homes? Personal property? Families? ⦠What happens when these means are turned against some other group of undesirables in America by a president who does not share your political persuasion, but can now justify the act based on previous justifications?
We are all at risk.
The law of reciprocity applies here. The flip side of that Golden Rule, which calls for us to treat others as we would have them treat us, is that we shouldnât inflict on others what we wouldnât want to suffer ourselves.
In other words, if you donât want to be locked up in a prison cell or a detention campâif you donât want to be discriminated against because of the color of your race, religion, politics or anything else that sets you apart from the restâif you donât want your loved ones shot at, strip searched, tasered, beaten and treated like slavesâif you donât want to have to be constantly on guard against government eyes watching what you do, where you go and what you sayâif you donât want to be tortured, waterboarded or forced to perform degrading actsâif you donât want your children to be forcibly separated from you, caged and lostâthen donât allow these evils to be inflicted on anyone else, no matter how compelling a case the government makes for it or how fervently you believe in the cause.
You canât have it both ways.
You canât live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.
You canât claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.
You canât expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.
Indeed, when the government is allowed to operate as a law unto itself, the rule of law itself becomes illegitimate. As Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, âeverything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was âlegalâ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was âillegal.â It was âillegalâ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitlerâs Germany.â
In other words, there comes a time when law and order are in direct opposition to justice.
Isnât that what the American Revolution was all about?
Finally, if anyone suggests that the governmentâs mass immigration roundups and arrests are just the government doing its job to fight illegal immigration, donât buy it.
This is not about illegal immigration. Itâs about power and control.
Itâs about testing the waters to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.
Itâs about the rise of an âemergency stateâ that justifies all manner of government misconduct and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.
Itâs about how much tyranny âwe the peopleâ will tolerate before we find our conscience and our voice.
Itâs about how far we will allow the government to go in its efforts to distract and divide us and turn us into a fearful, easily controlled populace.
Ultimately, itâs about whether we believeâas the Founders didâthat our freedoms are inherently ours and that the government is only as powerful as we allow it to be. Freedom does not flow from the government. It was not given to us, to be taken away at the will of the State. In the same way, the governmentâs appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.
We must get back to this way of thinking if we are to ever stand our ground in the face of threats to those freedoms.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, itâs time to draw that line in the sand.
The treatment being meted out to anyone that looks like an illegal immigrant is only the beginning. Eventually we will all be in the governmentâs crosshairs for one reason or another.
This is the start of the slippery slope.
Martin Niemöller understood this. A Lutheran minister who was imprisoned and executed for opposing Hitlerâs regime, Niemoller warned:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak outâBecause I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak outâBecause I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outâBecause I was not a Jew. Then they came for meâand there was no one left to speak for me.
Itâs hard to believe we need to have this conversation in this day and age. But if we donât keep having it, at some point we might not be allowed to have it.
Question: What is free speech? Or, rather what is not free speech?
In 2017, former Vermont governor, presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean informed the American public that âhate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.â Thatâs one variation of the âhate speech is not free speechâ claim.
Yes, âhate speechâ is free speech (and yes, itâs protected by the First Amendment).
On July 12, speaking at a White House âsocial media summit,â President Donald Trump opined that âfree speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me, thatâs a very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But thatâs not free speech.â
Yes, calling something âbadâ that Donald Trump calls âgoodâ is free speech too (and yes, it is also protected by the First Amendment).
This shouldnât even be an âissue.â Itâs just not that complicated, folks. But for some reason weâre still making it complicated.
Ever since the framers enshrined freedom of speech in the Constitution, Americans have struggled with what, if any, limits can be legitimately placed on that freedom.
The law and the courts have carved out limited exceptions for things like speech âdirected to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,â âtrue threats of violence,â and knowingly false speech aimed at defaming a personâs character or defrauding others in a commercial sense (e.g. âIâm selling you one ounce of goldâ when itâs actually one ounce of lead with gold paint on it).
There are plenty of reasonable arguments to be had about what, if any, exceptions to unfettered freedom of speech might make sense.
But when it comes to matters of opinion, the only reasonable position is that youâre entitled to have opinions, and to express them, period.
Even if Howard Dean thinks theyâre âhateful.â
Even if Donald Trump thinks that heâs âgoodâ and that youâre making him look âbad.â
Even if they make someone feel angry or, to use the latest non-specific catchall complaint, âunsafe.â
We donât have to agree with othersâ opinions. We donât have to like the manner in which others express their opinions. We donât even have to listen to other people when they express their opinions. But we donât get to stop them from expressing their opinions. Not even if weâre Howard Dean or Donald Trump.
In anything resembling a free society, thatâs just not negotiable. And no politician who argues otherwise should ever win an election to the position of dogcatcher, let alone governor or president.
The tree of liberty withers.
Shit's accelerating with fleetness and alacrity now.
Libertarian
boosted
The USA is a bankrupt warmongering police state now, but nothing will change because Americans no longer have personal responsibility and think nothing is ever their fault. Americans would rather play the victim and blame everyone else for the collapse of the US except themselves.
How can Americans sleep at night or look in a mirror today without feeling utter disgust and shame?
Libertarian
boosted
Woah, woah, woah...
Why go throwing elbows with the âlow IQâ talk when someone simply posed a question?
Riddle me this... why is it so âuneducatedâ to deduce that there may be a reason we donât know about, possibly blackmail, for DT45 to continue to allow the unrestricted, unwarranted mass surveillance of the citizenry? You can trash talk my IQ (which is/was 145 btw) all you want; but, the fact remains... After 2 years we havenât made much progress on the big promises. Those being the wall (and immigration at large), the swamp, and the mass surveillance issue which even affected Trump personally. @Longing4Freedom @dcjogger
Libertarian
boosted
@ResistingEntropy @dcjogger
So amusing that you perceive that the person was simply posting a question when in reality the question was designed for nefarious intent. Clearly, you have an agenda that guides your absurdity. It is obvious that narrow-minded people have low IQ or they would not be narrow-minded. When one has a low IQ and another person points it out, it is not a matter of talk.
Libertarian
boosted
Libertarian
boosted
@dcjogger He probly is a pedo or kinky sex addict...SMH
- Libertarian
- https://neinchan.com/pol/
Joined May 2019
