I'm not sure this "freedom of speech" absolutism is such a good idea. A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane. I support that people can express whatever opinion they have, but not in any way they want.
Just look at how Indian politicians abuse hate speech laws. A classic example: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/media/india-bbc-office-raid-t...
"Officials had spent three days raiding the spaces following the country’s ban on a BBC documentary that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago. "
"Now ranked between Turkey and Sudan, India dropped eight places to 150 out of 180 nations in last year’s World Press Freedom Index published by the Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders. "
Retroactively applying laws to target your political enemies has nothing to do with censorship laws (except using them as an excuse) and everything to do with corruption and authoritarianism.
Donald Trump promised to prosecute everyone he holds a grudge against if he was elected president again, and the USA has constitutionally enshrined free speech laws.
The GA Republican governor is not denouncing the Atlanta DA
Was the recording of Trump asking a Republican governor to “find votes” to help him win a deep fake?
We could talk about the great national conspiracy that Donald Trump lead in collusion with Russia that made him an illegitimate president, or so said the Media until the Mueller report could not find Donald Trump conspiring with Russians
Was the recording of Barack Obama telling Medvedev that he would give Russia "flexibility" so long as Putin limited aggression until after he was re-elected a deep fake? Was the Subsequent 2014 invasion of Crimea and lack of response by Obama's administration a deep fake or just Obama repaying his half of the Bargain?
And “Hunter Biden” I was never an elected government officials.
You keep focusing on one or two national things and not the 91 indictments including the ones on the state level.
And Obama never had to call public officials to try to “find votes” or to try to convince his VP to not certify the election - he actually won twice.
Again are you accusing Biden who wasn’t an elected official while Trump was in office of having anything to do with the investigations? Are you accusing him of coordinating state prosecutions that even the Republican governor of GA is saying is legitimate?
As far as Obama
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/nov/14/obamas-hot-mi...
I’m sure you’re now going to site evidence that the “election was stolen”
Lots of bureaucratic and political positions are appointed by other elected representatives. We can't elect everybody, that would be too much. So is that really a problem here?
I am not that up to speed on the intricacies of EU governance at this level so I really don't know if this is a real problem or not.
The commissioners are appointed by the EC president in consultation with the member governments, and then the commission as a whole needs to secure approval of parliament. This is similar to the process by which parliamentary governments usually form a cabinet, but with the European Council (representatives of all member-state governments) serving in the role of head of state.
One typically talks about the government in a parliamentary system as being elected, so...
The way they play games with words doesn't make it a democratic system, it is however a very effective tool for the EU to muddy the water and confuse people into thinking it has greater legitimacy than it really does.
Is that appointment process not democratic because its one layer of indirection? It's the same thing that happens for pretty much any minister/secretary in pretty much every democracy. Is the US government not a democratic system because the secretary of state is appointed? Is the UK not democratic because the Cabinet is appointed? Are there any democracies by that narrow definition?
Yes, I know the shit show that “states rights” were in the US
But, the point is, we should always have the presumption of freedom of speech. As a matter of course that means we also must have certain responsibilities for the consequences of exercising that freedom. This last point often gets overlooked.
You can say whatever you want.
But when you take an illegal action (or, grey area, compel someone else to take an action) then you lose free speech protections.
"Fire" in a movie theater is the classic example of the court deciding what sort of speech consitutes compelling action.
This in contrast to other many other countries, where there is no guarantee that speech-that-does-not-compel-action will always be free.
To me, speech vs action is a critical distinction, because it prevents anyone in power from monopolizing the marketplace of ideas by banning an idea itself. While simultaneously preventing the worst societal consequences from actions.
Or, in other words... neo Nazis should be allowed to march peacefully... but so should everyone else. And the latter should massively outweigh the former. (That said, nothing prevents keeping a much closer eye on violence-espousing neo Nazis)
When yelling fire without a compelling reason, a reasonable person would anticipate everyone else's standard reaction, and that in the course of that action injury and/or death might occur.
Which is why culpability in the US depends on the speaker's intent. What if I believed I smelled smoke and yelled "Fire" because of that? But was simply wrong?
Unfortunately, intent is impossible to prove definitively, without actually peering into someone else's mind. Thus, can of worms.
"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is an analogy that was used to justify banning antidraft activism in the first world war. It is very much allowed under current precedent.
"Directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action" is the current standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
This is a contradiction and makes no sense.
> A society needs to put limits on behavior of its individuals to be sane
But lack of free speech and free politics drives societies insane. Look at all the crazy stuff the USSR and PRC have done in their histories, relative to the free speech and very much not insane USA.
Is that supposed to be a joke or does it just reflect your extreme bias?
You had a failed coup attempt in January 2021; your speaker of the house was just toppled by a few right-wing extremists in congress; government is on the edge of a default every few months; lots of important leaders (Biden, Trump, Pelosi, McConnell, to name a few, not to mention ones that straight up died of old age in office like RBG and Feinstein) are old to the point where one questions their mental acuity, a gerontocracy reminiscent of the last decades of the Soviet Union.
Get back to this thread when the USA has killed millions of its own citizens through enforcing insane policies on them in defiance of basic common sense e.g. the Great Leap Forward or Holomodor. That's what counts as insanity here, not politicians being outside your preferred age range.
I don’t claim to have the answers, but was just pointing out that the world has changed and we will need different policies.
I'm not saying I know what the solution actually is, but denying that there even is a problem, or that the existing guidelines were designed with the above scenario in mind, is just preposterous to me.
Again, I’m not saying that everything was perfect before but that the rules and norms from the past need to be adjusted for the present. The way we handled hundreds of television stations can’t scale to millions of websites or social media accounts, especially since you no longer have anchors like geographic proximity or business identities.