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Comment by myWindoonn | Hacker News Reader

They phoned me earlier this year and asked for $1500 USD. I asked them why we live in a country where people are starving, exposed, and sick in a country that has a bounty of food, housing, and healthcare. “Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind,” says a person who probably has all three of those things. Feed people, and then ask for virtues from them.

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Free speech is how civil rights are won. It is a prerequisite for a positive change.

I know how much food $1500 will buy, or how many months of rent it will cover, or how little of a hospital bill it can handle. How much civil rights can $1500 buy? They didn't know on the phone, but I was genuinely curious.

I agree that free speech is essential -- I imagine that they asked for money because I gave them money in the past. Can you agree that the starving, homeless, and sick might have difficulty exercising their right to free speech even if the ACLU protects it in court?

> “Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind,”

That's nonsensical. If somebody leaves the First Amendment behind, they are leaving liberalism behind. If you do not support free speech, you simply are not liberal.

If you seek to use governance as a tool to strip citizens of their liberty you are demonstrably un-American. That doesn't stop many politicians from doing so and making it a foundation of their party's ideology.

Such politicians are not liberal, no matter which party they belong to.

You are talking text book liberal but I believe the person you are responding to is using liberal to refer to a specific political party, The Democratic Party. Democrats are referred to as liberals or THE liberals in the US.

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