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Comment by lesstenseflow | Hacker News Reader

The ACLU is not above criticism. Is there something in particular you object to in this article?

I take issue with calling the desire to do violence against people like me an "ideological difference"

As a counterpoint, accusations of "violence" get thrown around with little restraint. "Silence is Violence" but I've also found that disagreements can equate to "denying my right to exist".

That was the point of Ira Glasser's stance. Him and other ACLU members defended the right of Neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. Glasser himself and many of the other attorneys on the case were Jewish. They were protecting the rights of people demonstrating to advocate for doing violence against people like them.

Viewpoints like this are mostly gone these days in the US. Liberalism has become unpopular on the Left (and it's always been just a suggestion on the Right in my experience).

Most liberal countries have restrictions on outright hate speech. It's definitely possible to be a liberal and also oppose the right of Nazis to advocate for mass genocide.

Who defines hate speech? Do you need agreement from 100% of citizens or can a few politicians decide what a country can and cannot say legally before running afoul of hate speech laws?

Who defines what constitutes murder, what food safety regulations are, or any of a million other laws? It really doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem

Free Speech isn't a "liberal" or a "conservative" value, it's an American value.

The reason "hate speech" exists in European countries is because they have unresolved baggage from WWII, and rather than confront the problem, they decided to put a boot down and curtail civil liberties instead. None of that is relevant to the USA or has any bearing on our politics.

The word "liberal" has been mangled to the point where it is essentially meaningless. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who believes the government should have the power to regulate the content of your speech, at the point of a gun, is in no way "liberal".

There we have a case of prominent Jewish lawyers defending the right of Neo-Nazis, a group of people who advocate for violence against Jews, to protest. Here we have people suggesting we need legal restrictions around hate speech. Do you see the difference of values?

Liberalism is about guaranteeing individuals' rights in the face of the State. My point is that the Left in the US has lost interest in it and are more interested in pursuing their policies regardless of how it affects freedoms. The Right has never really cared for Liberalism and so it's falling out of favor.

Holding a desire to do violence is even more protected than saying it out loud or writing it down, which are also generally protected if they aren’t imminent incitement.

Also, by now I've seen so many breathless statements by leftists who are literally shaking rn that so-and-so "denies my right to exist" and "wants me dead" that it doesn't even look like anything to me anymore. It's just a slogan. Letters of the alphabet strung together.

If you're so completely devoid of empathy that you have no reaction to hearing that someone is afraid for their for their life, that says a lot more about you than it does about them.

I don't think you have enough info to really judge OP. There's a reason everybody learns the boy who cried wolf story as a kid - it's human nature to become desensitized to something after frequent false alarms.

It's worth considering how recent advances in things like gay rights are, and how much more is left for things like trans rights. Why should I care more about debate club than about being able to make medical decisions for my significant other? It's one thing to consider a situation from afar, but having it bear down on you directly gives you a very different perspective.

I mean sure, but you're making the discussion about a different (albeit related) issue than I was trying to address.

For one thing, your comment states concrete concerns that could directly affect you, as opposed to the vague "fear for my life" sort of comments OP was referring to.

But more importantly, my question is not whether OP was correct, it is whether stating this opinion on an internet forum with little other context is somehow enough info to make a judgement about his empathy/morals.

> Why should I care more about debate club than about being able to make medical decisions for my significant other?

Because for every loud/news visible minority like some LGBT folks there are others like Southeast Asians who nobody is caring about. By focusing on laws we can uplift _all_ minorities, not just the ones we identify as. The victories of a Neo Nazi's ability to publicly demonstrate can help Southeast Asians or African Americans demonstrate against police brutality or fight for equity in hiring, pay, and crime.

Not all minorities have hugely visible movements advocating for their rights. The modern LGBT movement is very visible and very online. My dark-skinned PoC parents are poor, speak bad English, and need a lot of help to navigate the US. Nobody is focusing on them.

If you’ve been paying any attention to US politics over the last few years, it is pretty clear they’re talking about police killings of black people and/or hate crimes directed at Asians and LGBT folks

Yes these are certainly problems that should be addressed. School shootings are also a problem that should be addressed, but it would be hyperbolic to say you feared for your life going into school every day. Some of the language that is used surrounding those other issues creates unnecessary anxiety IMO.

But that's not really my main point, I'm certainly open to debate on the topic. I just don't agree with the character judgement of OP - we have no idea how his circle talks.

I've personally encountered two people that were clearly attention seeking or perhaps had an anxiety disorder with the way they talked about such issues. One example was a black female born into the upper middle class, working from home as a SWE in a gated community during the pandemic, saying quite literally that she actively feared for her life due to police violence.

To be clear, I do not think the existence of that extreme invalidates the legitimate underlying concerns at all. They've also been a minority of the voices in my experience. I'm just saying that language starts to lose its meaning if you encounter too many of these types, and I have seen with my own eyes that they exist.

The right response is probably not to outright dismiss a statement about fearing for one's life, but some amount of skepticism is normal if it's been a false alarm in the past. Especially on an internet forum with random strangers.

I have tons of empathy, but I won’t coddle strangers on the internet over their dramatic rhetoric. It’s not sincere, it’s polemical, and I’m not buying it. If it is sincere, they need therapy not empathy. Get some perspective on your situation and don’t cry wolf.

Nice try with the “you must be a monster!” tactic.

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