We always must ask this question: WHO ARE THE DECIDERS?
I refuse to believe the challenges we face now are unique to us. We made the decision as a country not to trade comfort for liberty and we must not go back on that.
I refuse to believe the challenges we face now are unique to us. We made the decision as a country not to trade comfort for liberty and we must not go back on that.
People die because we have liberty. If we take some of that liberty away (but not all of it), less people would die. Less people dying is a good thing, right?
- Take away some or all gun liberty. Less people will die in mass shootings, suicides, etc.
- Take away some or all speech liberty. Less people will die by suicide (esp. LGBTQ youth targeted by hate speech)
- Take away some or all liberty to purchase choking hazards such as Kinder Eggs and less children will die.
Basically, for every cause of death or public health issue, you can almost always limit liberty (in the form of laws, regulations, etc.) to mitigate the issue.
Until we as a people decide liberty is worth a few deaths, it'll be a (slow, because democracy is inefficient) race to the bottom.
We have chosen. This is why cars, sugar, beer and numerous other liberties are legal.
Free choice is woven into the fabric of America. With freedom of choice the collateral death will always be present.
I disagree it is a race to the bottom as we have made life much more livable than in 1787.
Then why the constant attempts to invalidate the 2nd Amendment when gun death is one of the lowest causes of death?
For now. But remember the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
There are probably quite a few Americans on HN that would like to see cars severely limited or otherwise much more difficult to obtain in favor of trains and public transport. Articles come up regularly about banning cars in cities.
Sugar taxes and sugar drink bans are regularly proposed in California.
Beer... yeah, I concede that will probably never be illegal again, though I could see tobacco becoming illegal some day seeing as the legal purchase age was just raised to 21.
The scripture tackles this head-on, more or less attributing it to the chaos of the universe, and that there is no notion of good and bad.
Eventually it goes on to share some examples, but they all follow the same pattern: if someone committed murder out of passion—and you were ready to judge them for it or offer them the death penalty—could you absolutely, unequivocally, certainly say—without any doubt–that you would not do the exact same thing in their shoes? In their exact circumstances, their state of mind? With heir psychosis or their grief or their desperation?
If you were to physically embody that other person and their consciousness, would you know better than they did?
The answer is always no.
In that same vein, you have your deeply metaphysical counter-argument to the point you're making.
Do you support the death penalty? Well, what if you committed the same crime and got put on death row?
Do you support censorship and authoritarianism? Well, what if the opposition gets into power and uses that against you?
There's no notion of it being wrong or right; it just challenges how happy you are to accept it as a fact of life and not just a temporary advantage in your favour.
The implied problem here is "we as a people" deciding that our liberty is worth other people's deaths. Practically by definition, marginalized and minority groups (more likely to suffer the negative consequences of such liberties) would suffer for the sake of the majority's liberty to oppress them.
I wonder how many people these days would think he was a terrorist...
Jefferson said that in reference to Shay's Rebellion, and he certainly wasn't praising the people behind it, describing the rebellion as having been “founded in ignorance ... The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.”"
The entire quote even ends with him comparing such people to manure. He was, indeed, calling such people "terrorists", as he considered them traitors and a threat to the Union. Jefferson also said the following just prior to that famous quote:
"...what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them."
In other words, while he recognized that rebellion was inevitable in a free society, he did not believe such violence was always justified, or that it should be encouraged.
But is it hate speech? Well... it has been used to justify terrorist activity. Tim McVeigh was wearing the quote on a t-shirt the day he decided to set off the Oklahoma City bombing, and I doubt Jefferson would consider him a patriot doing his duty. So yes, while it wasn't originally hate speech, the nature of the extremist fringe of modern American gun culture, neo-libertarian and anarchist ideology has twisted it around to interpret it in the most hateful way possible.
I think a bigger/better question is: "How do we fix people, such that a majority of the population no longer falls for these kinds of tactics?"
[Edit] Some examples:
Support Free Speech? But you're giving a platform to hate!
Support E2E Encryption? But you're helping pedos evade justice!
Support body autonomy? But you're helping anti-vaxers!
Etc etc...