Connecticut's First Amendment problem

[Openmindhere]

6 hours ago, ExpandMyMind said:

Get a grip, 'Orwellian'. Many countries around the world, most with as many, if not more, freedoms than the US are Orwellian because they convict people who shout racist slurs? 

Only in America would you see people defend racism and racists in the name of free speech. Only in America would you see their Constitution prioritise someone's right to be a complete dick over a victim. 

Free speech is stupid.

This is about the Government CONTROLLING speech, and more importantly, THOUGHT. The Founders of this country realized the free exchange of ideas was so important to a free society based on personal LIBERTY that they enumerated these rights in the Bill of Rights. The most important concept being the 1st Amendment;

 Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Of course there are consequences for one's actions. "You can't yell fire in a crowded theater." There are plenty of laws protecting the rights of individuals, But that's the point... Government should only make laws to protect the rights of its citizens, not to control thought. And nowhere is the right NOT to be insulted enumerated.  

That's what America is all about, Charlie Brown.

 

[spartan max2]

7 hours ago, ExpandMyMind said:

We have plenty of free speech here in the UK without the need for 'Free Speech'. There has to be a line between free speech and hate-speech, threats, racism and cultism. 

My issue is how these laws are abused and can be abused. We know it never gets applied equally across the board.

Do you count a MAGA hat as threatening and racist?  People have been kicked out of places for simply wearing a hat. 

What about conservative speakers having paid events on college campuses? These get protested, banned, and censored all the time.

Pro life protest (don't agree with).

Etc. The current left has shown me that they are pretty fine with censorship. They would happily ban right wing news organizations and even try to justify that they can because of "fake news".

On YouTube they demonitize and alter the algorithms to hurt right wing channels all the time. 

Twitter is fine with enforcing rules against conservatives that they ignore for liberals. Hence Mitch McConnells Twitter being banned, yet all the treats against him never are.

 

While we know the same standards would never be applied to someone like Al Sharpton and any of the racist things he says. Or really any hateful comments that come from any other left wing sources.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by spartan max2

[ExpandMyMind]

45 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

Twitter is fine with enforcing rules against conservatives that they ignore for liberals. Hence Mitch McConnells Twitter being banned,

That's not true. See, this is one of the crazy things about Republican politics. US Republicans spout conspiracy theories, like Twitter banning McConnell because they're anti-conservative, and people just seem to accept them. Even weeks, months and years after they've been completely and utterly debunked, you'll still have them repeating the same misleading bull****. People still actually believe the Biden-Ukraine crap, which shouldn't come as a surprise when it's the same people who still believe Hillary Clinton Murdered Seth Rich. Their entire platform is centred around smoke and mirrors and conspiracy theories.

Roger Ailes around the time of the launch of Fox said: 'the people don't want to be informed, they just want to feel informed'. That's conservative media's entire business model. They tell a group of disenfranchised people what they want to hear - constantly - reinforcing fears, insecurities and beliefs that suit Republicans. It's a conservative tactic used worldwide, needed in order to get enough people to vote for parties that essentially only exist to enrich the already wealthy at the expense of the poor, but supremely effective in the US since the 90s.. 

The level of indoctrination performed by conservative US media, and Fox in particular, is astounding to see in a developed, relatively well-educated nation. You should check out Brainwashing my Dad. It gives you an idea of the tactics used by conservative media and also explains why they're so unregulated and biased. It was largely down to the end of the Fairness Doctrine, which happened as a result of facts being unable to compete with the ever increasingly far-right conservative doctrine. 'Facts have a well-known liberal' bias isn't actually just a smart quote, it's objectively true. Unfortunately for the Dems, they don't have cult-leader type nutjobs like Rush Limbaugh to constantly shower their listeners with lies and conspiracy theories.

Quote

The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been considered by some to be a contributing factor for the rising level of party polarization in the United States.^[2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

The decisions made by Republican governments, all because their political ideas were being slaughtered on TV every night when opposing sides were actually presented fairly, basically radicalised 20-30% of the voting population over the next 30 years. With McConnell stacking the Supreme Court, **** knows how mental they'll be in the next 30 years. We already have members like and then regularly promising terrorism if their Messiah is removed.

Edited November 3, 2019 by ExpandMyMind

[spartan max2]

@ExpandMyMind

 

Mitch was suspended from Twitter, I'm not sure what you mean?

https://amp.businessinsider.com/mitch-mcconnell-campaign-locked-on-twitter-posting-kentucky-protest-video-2019-8

I have examples for every example (lol) I mentioned. It's real things happening. You probably don't notice because in left wing media they probably give a small sentence blurb ,when a conservative speaker is censored, with a highly out of context quote justifying it.

 

And yeah left wing people have conspiracies too. "Bush did 9/11"Tulsia Gabbard is a Russian asset" "Hillary Is innocent because she didn't know any better" (the reason they let her off the hook for her private server and emails lol).

Also, if the fairness doctrine was removed in 1987, and it's so important to liberals. Then why have the liberals not reensated it any of the times they were in power since 87? 

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by spartan max2

[ExpandMyMind]

46 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

Mitch was suspended from Twitter, I'm not sure what you mean?

Yes, but the reason why his account was temporarily suspended (it's not anymore by the way) is the conspiracy theory. it was suspended for a legitimate reason (and probably picked up by bots after someone reported, not anyone at Twitter). He posted a video of people giving death threats, violating the Twitter terms of service. This was addressed within days, if I remember correctly. But here we are months later and I'm still finding people claiming that social media is out to get Republicans. All the while Zuckerberg, after having dozens of meetings with conservatives including politicians, has made Facebook basically the home base for the Republican Party's torrent of fake news and conspiracy theories.

And an argument I bring up regarding Twitter "bias" against Republicans is that Twitter refuses to even use a white supremacist algorithm because it would result in the banning of multiple Republican politicians. If they really were biased in a substantial way and out to ban Republicans, wouldn't those who make racist, supremacist comments be a fairly easy target? But instead Twitter steers clear.

46 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

And yeah left wing people have conspiracies too. "Bush did 9/11

That wasn't a partisan conspiracy theory. At all. 

46 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

Tulsia Gabbard is a Russian asset"

That's not a left wing conspiracy theory, or at least not a popular one, it's just a claim made by one person. And what she said is not even really controversial, other than the wording. Tulsi does look likely as Russia and Republicans' pick to split the Dem vote, much like Jill Stein in 2016. She wouldn't even have to be aware of it.

Quote

On December 18, 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee is looking at the presidential campaign of Green Party's Jill Stein for potential "collusion with the Russians."^[85] The Stein campaign has released a public statement stating that the campaign will work with investigators and provide requested materials, citing public transparency.^[86] In December 2018, two reports commissioned by the US Senate found that the Russian government's attempts to interfere in the 2016 election had included boosting Stein's candidacy through social media posts. This disinformation effort targeted African-American voters in particular. In an official statement, Stein called one of the reports, the one authored by New Knowledge, "dangerous new McCarthyism" and asked the Senate Committee to retract it, saying the firm was "sponsored by partisan Democratic funders" and had itself been shown to have been "directly involved in election interference" in the 2017 US Senate election in Alabama.^[87] After consulting the two reports, NBC News acknowledged that nothing suggested Stein knew about the operation, but the authors said that "the Massachusetts physician ha[d] long been criticized for her support of international policies that mirror Russian foreign policy goals."^[88] Their own analysis showed that in 2015 and 2016 there had been over 100 favorable stories about Stein on Russian state-owned media networks RT and Sputnik.^[88]

^{-----------------}

Hillary Clinton subsequently argued that Russia's ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections included a plot to support a third party candidate in 2020, which could either be Jill Stein, whom she described as a "Russian asset," or Tulsi Gabbard.^[91] A few days later, Clinton's comments were clarified to indicate that she thought that it was Republicans who were behind the plot.^[92] Stein responded by stating that Clinton's comments were slanderous, that she was not running for President, that Gabbard had repeatedly said she would only run as a Democrat, and that electoral reform in the form of ranked choice voting would substantially lower the risk of undue electoral influence.^[93]

That Russia is going to back a Dem candidate to split the vote is a certainty. That's not so much a conspiracy theory as a likely prediction based on previous data. The only outlandish part if unsubstantiated is that claim that the candidate would in some way be culpable and not just another Useful Idiot.

And the difference between left and right conspiracy theories in the US, is that you'll never see a CNN or MSNBC host claiming that Clinton's claim is true, but at Fox they broadcast these conspiracy theories until they're out of breath. They're still parroting things like 'Ukraine hacked the DNC'.

Honestly, the two sides aren't even comparable when it comes to presenting the reality of US politics. And I'm someone who, only a 5 years ago, still held the belief that the US political system is nothing more than a two-headed snake with both parties essentially being the same. As soon as you start actually looking at things objectively from the outside looking in though, you see that there's a chasm between the two sides.

46 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

"Hillary Is innocent because she didn't know any better"

That's not a conspiracy theory. That's the conclusion of your government and intelligence community, and it's the same excuse that's been applied to Trump Jr with the Russian meeting. The only reason he (and I guess HRC) aren't in prison (or at least convicted. Not sure of the sentence for their accused crimes) is because they both claimed ignorance. The reason I bring up Jr is not to deflect, but to show that the same standards have been applied to both cases.

But like I said, the difference between Dem and Republican conspiracy theories is that conservative media makes Republican conspiracy theories mainstream and accepted as a given. Unsubstantiated conspiracy theories are part of Republican DNA by this point. 

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by ExpandMyMind

[Farmer77]

1 minute ago, ExpandMyMind said:

Honestly, the two sides aren't even comparable when it comes to presenting the reality of US politics. And I'm someone who, only a 5 years ago, still held the belief that the US political system is nothing more than a two-headed snake with both parties essentially being the same. As soon as you start actually looking at things objectively from the outside looking in though, you see that there's a chasm between the two sides.

Great post all the way around.

 

[quiXilver]

I experience the laws of man as intentional hopes, aspirations. 

But they are to me, rather comical, transitory, ephemeral non-things.  Noumenal.

They are suggestions.  Ideas.

 

I can break the laws of man all day, every day and I may or may not get caught at it.  If caught at it, I may or may not be prosecuted.  If prosecuted, I may or may not be punished.  Ephemeral non-things, human laws... ideas.  Notions.  Hopes.

 

 

I cannot break the Laws of Nature, on those, I break my self.

Ever try telling a hurricane or tornado it's illegal to damage property and kill people?