USA Politics

Onhell said:
Did you mean Vortex's reaction was too offensive to my initial comment?
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Yes. But maybe I shouldn't be talking about it again. The mods have everything under control naturally. :)
 
bearfan said:
Certainly we should care and if there are threats try to meet them head on, but we cannot tell people not to protest or express themselves because some other power says

"If you do that, we will attack you" ... this was defused, becasue the preacher (who seemed a bit nutty), turned out be be the cooler head that prevailed.   

But say someone made a painting  or movie, or song and these lunatics threatened to attack over it, what do you propose we do, say free speech applies unless someone makes a threat?
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If someone is endangering American citizens with their stupid actions, they should be stopped. Think of it this way, the government sends murderers to jail because they endanger innocent Americans. Their goal is to protect Americans' right to life BEFORE their right to free speech, or any other right for that matter. This guy's stupidity is endangering American soldiers and possibly civilians. There are very few times I am for limiting rights but this is one of them. He should be stopped before somebody gets hurt.
 
Suicidehummer said:
If someone is endangering American citizens with their stupid actions, they should be stopped. Think of it this way, the government sends murderers to jail because they endanger innocent Americans. Their goal is to protect Americans' right to life BEFORE their right to free speech, or any other right for that matter. This guy's stupidity is endangering American soldiers and possibly civilians. There are very few times I am for limiting rights but this is one of them. He should be stopped before somebody gets hurt.
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Wrong. Straight-up wrong. You can't limit someone's rights because someone ELSE might freak out. The key word is "might". We don't know what would have happened, and now we never will. That's public pressure, and that's GREAT. The public told him he was being a dweeb and he fucked off. But the government has no right to limit speech.

Free and unimpeded speech is worth the deaths of civilians and soldiers, even if they would otherwise not die, because freedom is how we safeguard future generations and ourselves from true tyranny.
 
I can appreciate that, but people said the same about a guy named Lincoln back in the 50s. 1850s, that is. "That guy talking about slavery is gonna get a lot of people killed. He better shut up."
 
Suicidehummer said:
Sorry but I'm not willing to die to let that idiot talk shit to other idiots.
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The anti-Voltaire.  [He is attributed with the quote: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."]
 
Suicidehummer said:
Sorry but I'm not willing to die to let that idiot talk shit to other idiots.
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Then move to Canada... or Germany... both countries prohibit hate speech... exactly... no freedom of speech... only limited.
 
There are a few really great quotes out there-- one that LC and I were discussing the other day is:

"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." 

Freedom isn't free, it comes with a great cost.  If we wouldn't choose to die for it, then we have degraded the millions of lives that have been lost over 200 years for the freedom that this country enjoys.  I don't want to die because of someone stupid, but one can't just sit back in fear, otherwise terrorists have terrorized and won.
 
Even Canada's hate speech laws are quite narrowly construed. I still disagree with them, but they are there. In the US, you're supposed to be able to say the wildly insane and let the marketplace of ideas sort it out. Sadly, the marketplace doesn't always get it 100% right...but it eventually will correct. That's been the nature and progression of our society (and despite those who decry the way it currently is), and there's no reason this will change.
 
I don't agree with the preacher by any stretch, but it's his right to do something in poor taste, just like the homeless guy on the street can tell me the world's ending. I'm MUCH MUCH more concerned with the dissemination of media and how suddenly a crazy attention seeking preacher that none of us knew weeks ago suddenly has us thinking it's top news that he's arrived in New York City. My god, pseudo-celebrity and the 24 hour news cycle will be the death of us all long before the planet decides to abort us.
 
Well I guess I'm just not as noble as you guys.

Cap Maronis has a point though, maybe I should be more pissed at the media for giving him any attention, because otherwise nobody would know about it.
 
Speaking of free speech and quotes... this is one of my favourites.  It's by John Stuart Mill.  I needed to look it up to get the full bit.

"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.  If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth:  if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
 
Suicidehummer said:
Well I guess I'm just not as noble as you guys.

Cap Maronis has a point though, maybe I should be more pissed at the media for giving him any attention, because otherwise nobody would know about it.
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One could argue that thanks to the media he got the pressure to get him to stop was possible... True he could have had his Koran burning and no one would have known... but now he won't have it at all..
 
Onhell said:
One could argue that thanks to the media he got the pressure to get him to stop was possible... True he could have had his Koran burning and no one would have known... but now he won't have it at all..
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Nope, now he's reconsidering.
 
cornfedhick said:
The anti-Voltaire.  [He is attributed with the quote: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."]
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This is one of those commonly misattributed quotes.  The acutal person to say this is Evelyn Hall in her work 'The Friends of Voltaire' (1906).
 
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