Quite frankly, we have serious problems with the environment, economy, human and civil rights, labor, etc. that the actual day to day impact of PRISM just isn't a big deal to most people.
That's because people are short-sighted fools who don't care about or oppose the fundamental liberties they claim to want to protect. The whole "land of the free and the home of the brave" thing is just a joke.
As I said above, this is just isn't a problem yet.
The constitution and your privacy being violated are problems in and of themselves.
People aren't being jailed for associating with known dissidents. No one's curb stomping the press for associating with undesirables.
That we know of. The whole surveillance thing is secret, and the leaks have already revealed some abuses. They could be sharing information and selectively targeting people.
But let's be honest here. What's more important and relatable, tax reform or NSA reform?
The latter, obviously. Anyone who thinks otherwise shouldn't live in a country that's supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
I'm simply rolling my eyes at how badly informed you are regarding our judicial-political system.
No, you just keep repeating the obvious: That our judicial-political system doesn't work like I would like it to or reach the right conclusions. Something I'm clearly aware of.
I'm not appealing to authority; I'm attempting to explain to you how it actually works in the real world.
Okay, seriously, stop. If the problem didn't exist, I wouldn't be complaining. I know the problem exists, which is why I am complaining.
What matters is how the case law has evolved.
If case law says that the first amendment means that the government can assassinate citizens for any reason, then case law is... wait for it... wrong. And of course, the only way to fix this is to challenge it. Judges do sometimes rule against precedent.
Did you know that water is wet? That's about as useful as telling me that the system is not how I would prefer it to be.
What fails is the logic. "A spy agency spies." is not a justification for spying on a particular group. If you're too dumb to come up with a specific justification for a specific situation, then just don't bother. Mass surveillance is what's under discussion, and mass surveillance will catch all sorts of innocent people in the crossfire. It's not targeted in any way, so I can't support it.
And I've heard pretty much all arguments for DWI checkpoints and the TSA. There is nothing you or any judge could say that would make me accept egregious violations of our fundamental liberties. To make it clear: I understand perfectly how our system works; it's working poorly at the moment, and a number of problems need fixing. Recognizing that our system is violating our rights with the unjust consent of the courts != being ignorant of how the system is working.
Of course, I noticed how you also glossed over all the other examples like the NSA's mass surveillance and made it sound as if my complaints were limited to the TSA and DWI checkpoints. There's even more than what I listed too, of course.
The economy wins elections. That's a simple fact.
Yes, I'm aware. Why would I complain if I weren't? This is the sort of thing that makes the title of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" an absolute joke.
If those egregious violations of the constitution are laughable to you, then you desire a government with near-unlimited power that can search anyone to check whether or not they're criminals simply because some authoritarian judges have decided that it is a "compelling state interest" or whatever other nonsensical justification they use at the time to rewrite the constitution.
DWI checkpoints? TSA? Seriously? Do yourself a favor and Google 'compelling state interest' and 'strict scrutiny.'
If you honestly think that searching everyone to check their criminality is anything less than a serious violation of the constitution, you are anti-freedom. The "case law" you speak of is nothing more than government thugs giving other government thugs more power. The courts are not always right, and in fact have been wrong many times. Too often, they side with the government instead of siding with the people as they should.
The only way to fix this is awful situation is to get judges to finally uphold the constitution on issue after issue. It won't be fixed by citing their previous (incorrect) justifications and giving up. Appealing to authority will not help you here.
They go in this order: soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box.
The first three are already being tried. The last one is pointless, since without enough support, you're screwed anyway. If you have enough support, you may as well just use the ballot box or something.
For the record, I don't regard my liberties as less important than money; I was simply stating the fact that it's hard to care about liberty if one is starving to death.
Maybe. But my point was that people see the economy as more important than liberty, and that's the problem. All these politicians mainly talk about is the economy, rather than the things that affect our fundamental liberties.
Says someone who has probably never been unemployed for any significant amount of time in his life.
Wrong. And Irrelevant to the validity of my statement.
What matters in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is for the government to follow the constitution and respect your fundamental rights. Other things come after that. People apathetic/hostile towards freedom (the people who got us into this mess) tend to disagree. If you honestly believe the mass violations of our fundamental liberties by the government are less important than money, then your priorities are screwed.
Nothing I said was hyperbole. Most voters are mindless and do no research whatsoever. Fact. Voting for evil scumbags is irrational and unprincipled. Fact. Voting for third parties can send a message, and not doing so because it's unlikely they'll win creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fact. Merely outputting facts is not irrational.
"False dichotomy" as in "there are more than two choices."
The parties, and their politicians, have strikingly different platforms with strikingly different historical outcomes.
Bullshit. That's only true if you concentrate on a select few issues. When it comes to getting us into war (or bombing other countries and saying it's something other than war), or violating the constitution, both parties are largely the same. You have The One Party to thank for the TSA, the Unpatriotic Act, citizen assassinations, the NSA's mass surveillance, unchecked corruption in government agencies everywhere, and a host of other freedom-violating nonsense. They're the same in pretty much all the ways that actually count. The economy is a truly minuscule issue. Both parties refuse to shrink military and defense spending as it should, and when someone shrinks it *slightly* (nowhere near as much as it should be), whichever party didn't make the decision gets angry. Both parties are in on the "The terrorists, child molesters, and other bogeymen are going to get us!" scam, as well.
But hey, feel free to pretend otherwise if it helps you justify not voting in national elections.
I strictly vote third party, because there are next to no good candidates in The One Party.
Because his opponents were worse and no third party has any chance of winning thanks to the first past the post system used in American elections.
Nonsense. Voting for evil would still be disgusting even if third parties had zero chance of winning. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. How is any candidate ever going to win if no one ever takes a chance? It might be low, but giving up just brings the chances down even further. In addition, they don't even need to win in order to send a message to the two scumbag parties.
See what good it accomplishes.
We have the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, unfettered border searches, all sorts of warrantless surveillance, constitution-free zones, a ridiculous number of corrupt government agencies, draconian copyright laws, DUI checkpoints, rampant warmonger, and all sorts of unconstitutional nonsense. What good has voting for republican or democrat scumbags ever done? None. It's idiotic. I'd say you deserve all of this, but unfortunately, I'm suffering the consequences of your foolish choices too.
Voting for evil scumbags *cannot* be called "tactical." Most people do not have anything that resembles a strategy; instead, they simply vote for a candidate running for a specific party without doing any research whatsoever or putting one bit of thought into it. Calling that "tactical voting" is a huge joke.
Voting for evil is unprincipled and irrational. People create self-fulfilling prophecies for why others cannot win, and do not realize (or even think about) that even if third parties don't win, enough votes can send a message to The One Party candidates.
I'm saying that starting a war because another sovereign country chooses to build nukes is just warmongering nonsense, and especially so when you already have tons of nukes of your own. Just refusing to deal with them is fine.
Iran is a sovereign country. If they want to build nukes, that alone is no reason to harass them like warmongers.
I find it funny how you're so against regulations, but you have no problem with the US playing world police. Do you also claim to want small government, while proposing that we steal people's money to fund your wars?
They both show how utterly moronic it is to buy into the false dichotomy of republican vs democrat. A vote for an evil scumbag is a vote for an evil scumbag regardless of which of those two worthless parties you hate more. Vote for someone you actually like instead of being an idiot.
Intelligent people also have the ability to act intelligently and get over irrational fears of certain words arbitrarily deemed to be bad. This usually involves questioning society's values. I guess that would make many people who insist that any word they don't like is "uncivilized" (a completely subjective term) rather irrational. Some words are just objectively bad and uncivilized. The magical opinion fairy decided it.
Unless we're abandoning the whole concept of trying to live in a civilized society except when it comes to the stopping of war which is routinely promulgated on here.
You know, you've got a point there. If someone says a word that you don't like, they're objectively uncivilized and want all of civilization to come crashing down.
I'll probably be flamed for this, but saying words can't hurt you is utter crap.
Words can't cause physical injury. Offense is also taken, not given. By dwelling over the words of others, you cause intangible emotional damage to yourself. It's seems to be hard for almost everyone to overcome the desire to inflict emotional damage upon oneself, but nonetheless, people should strive to do so, rather than having pity parties.
But really, this isn't about attacking others, but about certain words arbitrarily being deemed 'bad.' Then, a lot of these people treat these words as if they don't just offend *them*, but that they're magically objectively bad, even if others aren't offended by them. And then, somewhere down the line, the government gets involved because of oversensitive, unprincipled whiners saying that things they don't like should be banned, and we end up with unconstitutional nonsense like FCC censorship.
but those are nitpicks compared to the things I'm fully satisfied with: domestic peace, prosperity, transportation, validity of vote counts, fading homophobia, fading racism.
Mass surveillance and other mass violations of our fundamental liberties are not nitpicks; they are serious issues that need to be resolved before anyone can claim to live in a truly free country.
Nonsense. Most American schools are absolute trash that focus on rote memorization, useless busywork (solve 50 problems using the Pythagorean theorem, for example), and poorly-designed standardized testing. There is no focus on gaining a deep, intuitive understanding of how and why things work. Why does this math equation work? A grand majority of the time, this is not taught. The rest of the time, if they try to teach it, they don't do it well. Instead, they just focus on how to use it.
Now, some other countries might be even worse, but that doesn't mean American schools are good.
To a court, what is "scientifically valid" other than the testimony of scientists as to what's valid?
The fact that it could be abused does not man it's not better than what we have - a system where laws can be created with zero evidence whatsoever. Scientific consensus is important as well. Soft 'science' should be taken with a grain of salt.
are based on just such an argument of direct harm due to the content
Which is nonsense anyway.
Sure, which keeps coming back to "who decides" what's true harm.
All systems are prone to corruption, and I don't dispute that. But it's plainly obvious that throwing a brick through a window will damage someone's property, for instance. Hopefully the people will stop the government from violating the constitution, but they don't do a good job of that, and our system doesn't make it easy to challenge the government to begin with.
If the system occasionally spits out stuff like obscenity laws
But still unacceptable and we must work to fix it.
A great many laws in the USSR were "backed by scientifically valid studies and scientific consensus".
That's not exactly what I was talking about. Emphasis on "scientifically valid."
Finally, common ground. I'd note that selling a product isn't pure speech either (especially advertising, or other avenues for fraud).
Giving someone money isn't speech, but it can be closely tied to speech in such a way that taking away your ability to do so effectively infringes upon your free speech rights. But unless you have damn good reason to stop it (i.e. physical harm), don't. Stopping it because you don't like the message is unacceptable to me. Obscenity laws (the kind that puritans would put forth) that regulate commercial speech are definitely unacceptable.
If the local government can convince a court that there's a compelling state interest ("throwing a brick through a window clearly damages property and may cause injury") and that the least restrictive method was chosen ("we're not banning the words on the note, just the part where the brick flies through the window"), then I'm OK with that process, as much as it sometimes ends in particular places I disapprove of.
Local government is irrelevant. Local governments oppressing me is only slightly less bad than the federal government oppressing me, but many people don't even have the money to move away. I don't buy into the "state's rights" crap in the original sense of the constitution where the states could pretty much do as they pleased as long as their own constitutions allowed it. No level of government should be oppressing people.
If they can show true harm, then I think it's fine to ban it. I thought we were talking about obscenity laws, though.
Yeah, whatever. I live in a country that's supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave,' so I kind of expect people to hold freedom (especially fundamental freedoms) in a higher regard than safety. Sadly, I remain disappointed, and not just because they don't do so to the degree that I do. They tolerate the TSA. They tolerate the NSA's mass surveillance. They tolerate a number of egregious violations of individual liberties.
So you're OK with someone shouting through a bullhorn at 3AM? That's a kind of speech right?
So your OK with lynch mobs, with some addressing an angry crowd shouting "are there any queers in the theater tonight? get them up against the wall! that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon, who let all this riffraff into the room? get em up against the wall!"
What about conspiracy to murder - that's speech?
"I'm for absolute free speech." Gee, I have no idea.
The right to speech is not the right to throw a brick wrapped in a note through a window.
The right to speech is not the right to deliberately cause real and immediate physical harm to another.
You know, we're in full agreement here. Neither of those things are pure speech.
The right to speech is not the right to public nudity, though that's certainly a form of free expression.
Yes, it is a form of free expression, and it should absolutely be allowed. Anyone who says otherwise is an authoritarian.
And in this day and age, where it's trivial to order almost anything online, a local government restricting the local sale of X doesn't bother me
Restricting the local sale is pointless, then. But it still infringes upon your freedoms. I can't see why you'd be defending this nonsense.
Anyway, I keep asking you to tell me what "sensibly written" obscenity laws are. Why have you not done this? Is it because they'll be exactly as I believe they are - laws written to get rid of speech/expression that you have subjectively determined to be 'bad' despite it having no physical effect on others?
"Remember, what's "subjective" is subjective - I can find a study supporting any crazy idea."
Actually, reading that more closely, that's nonsense. 1 + 1 = 2. That's a fact. If someone says otherwise, they're wrong. Not everything is subjective, even if it's hard to define subjectivity in a rigorous way that includes everything that is subjective. Morality is subjective. Likes/dislikes are subjective.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite frankly, we have serious problems with the environment, economy, human and civil rights, labor, etc. that the actual day to day impact of PRISM just isn't a big deal to most people.
That's because people are short-sighted fools who don't care about or oppose the fundamental liberties they claim to want to protect. The whole "land of the free and the home of the brave" thing is just a joke.
As I said above, this is just isn't a problem yet.
The constitution and your privacy being violated are problems in and of themselves.
People aren't being jailed for associating with known dissidents. No one's curb stomping the press for associating with undesirables.
That we know of. The whole surveillance thing is secret, and the leaks have already revealed some abuses. They could be sharing information and selectively targeting people.
But let's be honest here. What's more important and relatable, tax reform or NSA reform?
The latter, obviously. Anyone who thinks otherwise shouldn't live in a country that's supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
I'm simply rolling my eyes at how badly informed you are regarding our judicial-political system.
No, you just keep repeating the obvious: That our judicial-political system doesn't work like I would like it to or reach the right conclusions. Something I'm clearly aware of.
You miss the point. Don't worship case law.
I'm not appealing to authority; I'm attempting to explain to you how it actually works in the real world.
Okay, seriously, stop. If the problem didn't exist, I wouldn't be complaining. I know the problem exists, which is why I am complaining.
What matters is how the case law has evolved.
If case law says that the first amendment means that the government can assassinate citizens for any reason, then case law is... wait for it... wrong. And of course, the only way to fix this is to challenge it. Judges do sometimes rule against precedent.
Did you know that water is wet? That's about as useful as telling me that the system is not how I would prefer it to be.
Your analogy fails..
What fails is the logic. "A spy agency spies." is not a justification for spying on a particular group. If you're too dumb to come up with a specific justification for a specific situation, then just don't bother. Mass surveillance is what's under discussion, and mass surveillance will catch all sorts of innocent people in the crossfire. It's not targeted in any way, so I can't support it.
And I've heard pretty much all arguments for DWI checkpoints and the TSA. There is nothing you or any judge could say that would make me accept egregious violations of our fundamental liberties. To make it clear: I understand perfectly how our system works; it's working poorly at the moment, and a number of problems need fixing. Recognizing that our system is violating our rights with the unjust consent of the courts != being ignorant of how the system is working.
Of course, I noticed how you also glossed over all the other examples like the NSA's mass surveillance and made it sound as if my complaints were limited to the TSA and DWI checkpoints. There's even more than what I listed too, of course.
The economy wins elections. That's a simple fact.
Yes, I'm aware. Why would I complain if I weren't? This is the sort of thing that makes the title of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" an absolute joke.
but your examples are laughable.
If those egregious violations of the constitution are laughable to you, then you desire a government with near-unlimited power that can search anyone to check whether or not they're criminals simply because some authoritarian judges have decided that it is a "compelling state interest" or whatever other nonsensical justification they use at the time to rewrite the constitution.
DWI checkpoints? TSA? Seriously? Do yourself a favor and Google 'compelling state interest' and 'strict scrutiny.'
If you honestly think that searching everyone to check their criminality is anything less than a serious violation of the constitution, you are anti-freedom. The "case law" you speak of is nothing more than government thugs giving other government thugs more power. The courts are not always right, and in fact have been wrong many times. Too often, they side with the government instead of siding with the people as they should.
The only way to fix this is awful situation is to get judges to finally uphold the constitution on issue after issue. It won't be fixed by citing their previous (incorrect) justifications and giving up. Appealing to authority will not help you here.
They go in this order: soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box.
The first three are already being tried. The last one is pointless, since without enough support, you're screwed anyway. If you have enough support, you may as well just use the ballot box or something.
For the record, I don't regard my liberties as less important than money; I was simply stating the fact that it's hard to care about liberty if one is starving to death.
Maybe. But my point was that people see the economy as more important than liberty, and that's the problem. All these politicians mainly talk about is the economy, rather than the things that affect our fundamental liberties.
Says someone who has probably never been unemployed for any significant amount of time in his life.
Wrong. And Irrelevant to the validity of my statement.
What matters in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is for the government to follow the constitution and respect your fundamental rights. Other things come after that. People apathetic/hostile towards freedom (the people who got us into this mess) tend to disagree. If you honestly believe the mass violations of our fundamental liberties by the government are less important than money, then your priorities are screwed.
Nothing I said was hyperbole. Most voters are mindless and do no research whatsoever. Fact. Voting for evil scumbags is irrational and unprincipled. Fact. Voting for third parties can send a message, and not doing so because it's unlikely they'll win creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fact. Merely outputting facts is not irrational.
"False dichotomy" as in "there are more than two choices."
The parties, and their politicians, have strikingly different platforms with strikingly different historical outcomes.
Bullshit. That's only true if you concentrate on a select few issues. When it comes to getting us into war (or bombing other countries and saying it's something other than war), or violating the constitution, both parties are largely the same. You have The One Party to thank for the TSA, the Unpatriotic Act, citizen assassinations, the NSA's mass surveillance, unchecked corruption in government agencies everywhere, and a host of other freedom-violating nonsense. They're the same in pretty much all the ways that actually count. The economy is a truly minuscule issue. Both parties refuse to shrink military and defense spending as it should, and when someone shrinks it *slightly* (nowhere near as much as it should be), whichever party didn't make the decision gets angry. Both parties are in on the "The terrorists, child molesters, and other bogeymen are going to get us!" scam, as well.
But hey, feel free to pretend otherwise if it helps you justify not voting in national elections.
I strictly vote third party, because there are next to no good candidates in The One Party.
Because his opponents were worse and no third party has any chance of winning thanks to the first past the post system used in American elections.
Nonsense. Voting for evil would still be disgusting even if third parties had zero chance of winning. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. How is any candidate ever going to win if no one ever takes a chance? It might be low, but giving up just brings the chances down even further. In addition, they don't even need to win in order to send a message to the two scumbag parties.
See what good it accomplishes.
We have the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, unfettered border searches, all sorts of warrantless surveillance, constitution-free zones, a ridiculous number of corrupt government agencies, draconian copyright laws, DUI checkpoints, rampant warmonger, and all sorts of unconstitutional nonsense. What good has voting for republican or democrat scumbags ever done? None. It's idiotic. I'd say you deserve all of this, but unfortunately, I'm suffering the consequences of your foolish choices too.
Voting for evil scumbags *cannot* be called "tactical." Most people do not have anything that resembles a strategy; instead, they simply vote for a candidate running for a specific party without doing any research whatsoever or putting one bit of thought into it. Calling that "tactical voting" is a huge joke.
Voting for evil is unprincipled and irrational. People create self-fulfilling prophecies for why others cannot win, and do not realize (or even think about) that even if third parties don't win, enough votes can send a message to The One Party candidates.
I'm saying that starting a war because another sovereign country chooses to build nukes is just warmongering nonsense, and especially so when you already have tons of nukes of your own. Just refusing to deal with them is fine.
Iran is a sovereign country. If they want to build nukes, that alone is no reason to harass them like warmongers.
I find it funny how you're so against regulations, but you have no problem with the US playing world police. Do you also claim to want small government, while proposing that we steal people's money to fund your wars?
They both show how utterly moronic it is to buy into the false dichotomy of republican vs democrat. A vote for an evil scumbag is a vote for an evil scumbag regardless of which of those two worthless parties you hate more. Vote for someone you actually like instead of being an idiot.
Intelligent people also have the ability to act intelligently and get over irrational fears of certain words arbitrarily deemed to be bad. This usually involves questioning society's values. I guess that would make many people who insist that any word they don't like is "uncivilized" (a completely subjective term) rather irrational. Some words are just objectively bad and uncivilized. The magical opinion fairy decided it.
Unless we're abandoning the whole concept of trying to live in a civilized society except when it comes to the stopping of war which is routinely promulgated on here.
You know, you've got a point there. If someone says a word that you don't like, they're objectively uncivilized and want all of civilization to come crashing down.
I'll probably be flamed for this, but saying words can't hurt you is utter crap.
Words can't cause physical injury. Offense is also taken, not given. By dwelling over the words of others, you cause intangible emotional damage to yourself. It's seems to be hard for almost everyone to overcome the desire to inflict emotional damage upon oneself, but nonetheless, people should strive to do so, rather than having pity parties.
But really, this isn't about attacking others, but about certain words arbitrarily being deemed 'bad.' Then, a lot of these people treat these words as if they don't just offend *them*, but that they're magically objectively bad, even if others aren't offended by them. And then, somewhere down the line, the government gets involved because of oversensitive, unprincipled whiners saying that things they don't like should be banned, and we end up with unconstitutional nonsense like FCC censorship.
but those are nitpicks compared to the things I'm fully satisfied with: domestic peace, prosperity, transportation, validity of vote counts, fading homophobia, fading racism.
Mass surveillance and other mass violations of our fundamental liberties are not nitpicks; they are serious issues that need to be resolved before anyone can claim to live in a truly free country.
Nonsense. Most American schools are absolute trash that focus on rote memorization, useless busywork (solve 50 problems using the Pythagorean theorem, for example), and poorly-designed standardized testing. There is no focus on gaining a deep, intuitive understanding of how and why things work. Why does this math equation work? A grand majority of the time, this is not taught. The rest of the time, if they try to teach it, they don't do it well. Instead, they just focus on how to use it.
Now, some other countries might be even worse, but that doesn't mean American schools are good.
To a court, what is "scientifically valid" other than the testimony of scientists as to what's valid?
The fact that it could be abused does not man it's not better than what we have - a system where laws can be created with zero evidence whatsoever. Scientific consensus is important as well. Soft 'science' should be taken with a grain of salt.
are based on just such an argument of direct harm due to the content
Which is nonsense anyway.
Sure, which keeps coming back to "who decides" what's true harm.
All systems are prone to corruption, and I don't dispute that. But it's plainly obvious that throwing a brick through a window will damage someone's property, for instance. Hopefully the people will stop the government from violating the constitution, but they don't do a good job of that, and our system doesn't make it easy to challenge the government to begin with.
If the system occasionally spits out stuff like obscenity laws
But still unacceptable and we must work to fix it.
A great many laws in the USSR were "backed by scientifically valid studies and scientific consensus".
That's not exactly what I was talking about. Emphasis on "scientifically valid."
Finally, common ground. I'd note that selling a product isn't pure speech either (especially advertising, or other avenues for fraud).
Giving someone money isn't speech, but it can be closely tied to speech in such a way that taking away your ability to do so effectively infringes upon your free speech rights. But unless you have damn good reason to stop it (i.e. physical harm), don't. Stopping it because you don't like the message is unacceptable to me. Obscenity laws (the kind that puritans would put forth) that regulate commercial speech are definitely unacceptable.
If the local government can convince a court that there's a compelling state interest ("throwing a brick through a window clearly damages property and may cause injury") and that the least restrictive method was chosen ("we're not banning the words on the note, just the part where the brick flies through the window"), then I'm OK with that process, as much as it sometimes ends in particular places I disapprove of.
Local government is irrelevant. Local governments oppressing me is only slightly less bad than the federal government oppressing me, but many people don't even have the money to move away. I don't buy into the "state's rights" crap in the original sense of the constitution where the states could pretty much do as they pleased as long as their own constitutions allowed it. No level of government should be oppressing people.
If they can show true harm, then I think it's fine to ban it. I thought we were talking about obscenity laws, though.
Almost all law is banning stuff people simply don't like
There's a difference between merely not liking something and that thing being truly physically harmful (i.e. not just offensive).
backed by studies justifying that opinion.
Haha. If only more laws were backed by scientifically valid studies and scientific consensus. Wouldn't that be nice?
Ahh, an ideolog, unconcerned with the real world.
Yeah, whatever. I live in a country that's supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave,' so I kind of expect people to hold freedom (especially fundamental freedoms) in a higher regard than safety. Sadly, I remain disappointed, and not just because they don't do so to the degree that I do. They tolerate the TSA. They tolerate the NSA's mass surveillance. They tolerate a number of egregious violations of individual liberties.
So you're OK with someone shouting through a bullhorn at 3AM? That's a kind of speech right?
So your OK with lynch mobs, with some addressing an angry crowd shouting "are there any queers in the theater tonight? get them up against the wall! that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon, who let all this riffraff into the room? get em up against the wall!"
What about conspiracy to murder - that's speech?
"I'm for absolute free speech." Gee, I have no idea.
The right to speech is not the right to throw a brick wrapped in a note through a window.
The right to speech is not the right to deliberately cause real and immediate physical harm to another.
You know, we're in full agreement here. Neither of those things are pure speech.
The right to speech is not the right to public nudity, though that's certainly a form of free expression.
Yes, it is a form of free expression, and it should absolutely be allowed. Anyone who says otherwise is an authoritarian.
And in this day and age, where it's trivial to order almost anything online, a local government restricting the local sale of X doesn't bother me
Restricting the local sale is pointless, then. But it still infringes upon your freedoms. I can't see why you'd be defending this nonsense.
Anyway, I keep asking you to tell me what "sensibly written" obscenity laws are. Why have you not done this? Is it because they'll be exactly as I believe they are - laws written to get rid of speech/expression that you have subjectively determined to be 'bad' despite it having no physical effect on others?
"Remember, what's "subjective" is subjective - I can find a study supporting any crazy idea."
Actually, reading that more closely, that's nonsense. 1 + 1 = 2. That's a fact. If someone says otherwise, they're wrong. Not everything is subjective, even if it's hard to define subjectivity in a rigorous way that includes everything that is subjective. Morality is subjective. Likes/dislikes are subjective.