Im not sure how far down this rabbit hole i want to go with you. You seem to be honest and have good intentions, but i find it amazing how you don't seem to know enough history or at least be able to apply it to this topic, to understand it.
1. You do understand what a freedom is right? That it even applies to people you don't like or don't agree with... i mean.... this is actually something ive feared with those i deem to be fake democrats lately and why they seem almost exact to the far religious right. You're justifying removing rights instead of defending why we need to have them in place, its exactly what we hear when they say gays should not have rights. Your justification might sound better, but its the totalitarian nature of what you're doing that you're not considering.
2. Your solution to this rather silly and comically simplified situation is to remove other peoples rights, because you imagine a situation where yours is taken away.......... man... that describes the rationale for every bad idea ever. That is being ruled and making decisions based on imagined fear and we know its never a good idea to react to this self created fear. youtube.com/watch?v=_CSPbzitPL8
“…there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.“ John Stuart Mill
If you don't know who John Stuart Mill is, hes a philosopher, political scientist and economist who was smarter and more brave than you or i could ever be. His sentiments on this went along with some of the smartest people the worlds ever seen in the founding fathers, and some of the most important political authors of all time, including Orwell and Huxley.
John Stewart Mill also came up with the "Harm Principle." If you're not sure what that is, the principle states that there is a need of limitation of free speech if it causes harm unto others which is a principle accepted by all free countries.
Where in my comment did I suggest we remove the rights of others? The concept that if you threaten a person is already illegal as it should be. The idea that you threaten a group of people should be illegal because of historical examples, from the Jews and Japanese of WW2 to the Tutsis and the Rhonghyi people.
A free enligthened society cannot be "free" if they continue to allow falsehoods and misinformation plague their society.
So, you're not grasping the personal aspect of this that you are putting forward and how its a totalitarian idea that you're justifying because you think your reasons are better than another persons reasons who want to silence you. When a nation follows this path, even for modest and what seems reasonable, reasons, its really simply only determining the direction of dictatorship you want.
For example.
You say that your idea is reasonable so we implement it for the reasons you suggest (which btw, i think you're missing that this simply covers public speaking but im going to go with how you're applying it)....... okay..... what next? I could make a very reasonable and historically accurate argument as to why we should then apply it to religions. You presented imaginary fears, i have a world history of very real things people should be afraid of with religion. And since you're so concerned with the cost of human life, there is no real argument against it right? Ban religion. Its costed more human life and caused more oppressive regimes than anything else. Hell, i could even actually argue that its religion you should ban instead of "hate speech" since the religious connection tends to be there all the time.
Im sure you want to sweep that aside as ridiculous, but its exactly how things happen and we know this because we've seen it over and over and over again. Its typically not as quick, but its a spiral we always see happen. Even in the US we've seen it happen and it continues to spiral downward.
A slippery slope argument that ignores that western countries already follow restrictions on free speech. Case in point, Germany. You cannot go out of your way to make a nazi salute and yell, "kill the jews" before being arrested and fined. The same goes for Sweden, Finland, and many more.
Yet, those western countries are free and even freer than us. Why is that? For a country that is suppose to follow the philosophers, we aren't as free, not because of restrictions of free speech but because we choose autocratic laws and vote against our own interests in providing care for ourselves. That's not freedom.
1. Im not assuming anything and nothing ive said should lead you to think that im assuming the best of people or expect them to act in a certain way. The only thing i am addressing is what is necessary for a free society, those rights and how they are applied to everyone. They are rights, not options.
2. Is this new or have you simply not been paying attention? Did Obama do a single thing he was elected on? No, nothing. Yet to this day we still see people blindly defend him as a good president.
Did Bush? Did Clinton?
Did Bush "no new taxes" give us new taxes?
This list goes as far back as presidential history does. Im not trying to be insulting, but we again face this wall of you either not knowing or ignoring that this is nothing unique to Trump. Even if you did know, im not quite sure why you'd single him out and im not quite sure of the point you're really trying to make.
To quote the great South Park:
But Stan, don't you know, it's always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and some turd. They're the only people who suck up enough to make it that far in politics.
@drunk_pi said:
If you think past presidents didn't deliver on their promises, you are surely mistaken. Obviously you can't keep all your promises but you can keep key promises. For example, Obama did deliver on passing healthcare reform as well as many others which you can find on Politifact. As to whether or not the promises were effective can be debated on.
If you think there's nothing unique about our current president, where were you during the presidential race, when he spouted nonsense after nonsense? Did you see how his followers act violently against protesters? Or how they wore t shirts calling for lynchings of journalists?
How do you solve a math problem and how do you teach people to solve math problems?
Do you say "2+2 is 4. Dont figure out why, dont question why, dont question how it works, its just 4" or do you teach them how math works?
You're also not talking about truths, you're talking about ideas and ideologies. And you or no one else gets to decide what someone else thinks or believes. Again, you seem very very very totalitarian.... you're the same coin as what you're against, simply a different a side. There is a reality to life that you just don't seem to get, people will think differently, they will believe different things and you don't get to alter that nor do/should you have any control over it. And the rights that protect them in this field, protect you.
@drunk_pi said:
When presented with new information, people are less likely to accept the new truth. That is the reality. We still have flat earthers and creationists. They spout their nonsense, people accept them and "truth" becomes augmented to suit their opinions.
Kind of like how you're scoffing aside the history of what happens when we start to limit speach and what academia generally says on this subject?
Same coin, different side.
@drunk_pi said:
We've seen on these forums people spouting nonsense and despite all the factual information given, their response is, "fake news." How do you deal with that? More facts? You can't deal with stupid. But if stupid has the potential to bring down a country with their misinformed ideas, what would you do about that? Freedom is vital but so is stability.
Oh i know! We ban people from speaking! We take your specific subjectivities and force them onto everyone else! That's brilliant, totally worse than the problem you're highlighting here.
I might come back and continue this... i don't know.
But i hope you realize you're conveying the exact same things that we fear from dictators and the far right, you simply think your justification is better than theirs and you apparently don't understand the topic enough to know why those markers cannot exist at all. I hate to go back to it but its such a great example and he nailed everything in a way that no one else has before or since. But Animal Farm and 1984 was written for you and your ideas. To explain to people why what seems like a decent act, is fundamentally wrong for a society and what it leads to, is why Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984. In fact Animal Farm very specifically and accurately addresses this.
If you'd like a more modern example of how these things work, simply look at what a wing of the "left" is doing right now and how they put such ideological and subjective rules on one another that they eat themselves. A+ was a great example of this. GG was another great example.
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