@ “free speech” fetishists
do you defend the free speech of leftists, antifascists, feminists, queer people, etc?
Yes. On the other hand, do you think that censorship of right wing people is acceptable, or even understandable?
You’re both listening to each other before slandering, misinterpreting, spamming and derailing what the other have to say.
So it’s not really “defending free speech” or “respecting free speech” as much as it is “eagerly waiting for ammunition to prove the other side wrong”.
Technically, free speech lets you say anything you want (so long as it’s not an incitement of violence) and it prevents the government from intervening. It doesn’t prevent the angry black neighbor from next door kicking the shit out of them for being racist, even if the neighbor is willing to risk getting arrested for beating the shit out of them.
I don’t really care if two sides have a ferocious verbal shitslinging match, provided it doesn’t get violent or incite violence, I’m fine with it. Even if they are nasty pricks, there’s an audience waiting to hand out consequences for being shit human beings. Charlottesville was case in point for that even before the violence started.
Free speech laws don’t have a direct relationship with assault laws. I can’t imagine that the law will be kind to your hypothetical angry Black man from next door kicking the shit out of someone, regardless of that someone’s racial opinions.
Consider https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#United_States and note that in important fighting words case, Chaplinsky vs New Hampshire, some of the words in question were calling someone a Facist. This was upheld as counting as fighting words.
Please also note Cohen vs California, where wearing a jacket reading “Fuck the Draft” in a court house was judged to not be fighting words, as it was not reasonable for anybody who was or who reasonably might be present to understand it as a personal insult. Presumably, wearing a t-shirt reading “Fuck Bob Bobson” in the presence of Bob Bobson would still count as fighting words.
Please also compare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.V._v._City_of_St._Paul where literally burning a cross on the lawn of an African American family was the act in question. The Supreme Court unanimously struck down the conviction under a city Bias-motivated Crime ordinance, saying, “it (the city of Saint Paul) has proscribed fighting words of whatever manner that communicate messages of racial, gender, or religious intolerance. Selectivity of this sort creates the possibility that the city is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas… St. Paul has no such authority to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow Marquess of Queensberry rules… Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone’s front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire.”
I don’t know why you wasted your time writing this when my entire point is that the guy kicking in the door is doing something illegal as a consequence of someone’s entirely legal free speech. Freedom of speech =/= freedom from consequence. It not being legal doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen and I never so much as implied the judge would be kind to law breakers or that there’d be an excuse in sentencing for it. I don’t really need to note anything when nothing you’ve written is of any relevance to my point.
Huh, I’ve become used to “consequences for speech” being essentially meaning; *taps club threateningly* “there will be consequences for saying that” with complete endorsement of the morality of beating and killing people for their speech, and an implication that it is immoral that the government would object to that.
The “consequence” is getting assaulted. Which, ok, the consequence of yelling at the next car over in traffic might be getting shot in the head in a road rage incident, or the consequence of getting drunk at a frat party might involve getting raped, but you phrase it like that, *shrug* “actions have consequences” and you will be pilloried as a victim blaming jackass who is justifying murder and rape, respectively.
