Caltrops - Tansin A. Darcos's Alter Ego





	[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos"][quote name="Vested Id"]<b>Original Title: </b> You're a retard The First Amendment <strong>recognizes</strong> your freedom of expression. [/quote]All I said was that it provides no protection from non-government actors who attempt to suppress others from speaking. I did not say I approved of those responses. What we are seeing now is the lack of tolerance, although in a much more limited fashion than from the days of common use of violence and threats of same to intimidate journalists and others from writing or speaking. A practice which is still employed by the Muslims of the Middle East, as shown by the Fatwa death sentence against Salman Rushdie; the murder of the Japanese translator of his book, <i>The Satanic Verses</i>; the rioting over and death threats against the authors of the Danish Mohamed cartoons; the attack and murder of columnists for <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> in France; <i>et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum</i>. [quote]If it's not honored by your fellow Americans, you don't have it. And anybody who tries to trade off on their civic responsibility to allow others to speak their minds by saying it's not directly provisioned by the Constitution deserves to die an extremely violent death.[/quote]But it's not! When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution the biggest danger to others was from government action. Business was small, local, and most businesses weren't big enough to hire more than maybe an apprentice. Mass communication was unheard of except maybe newspaper articles carried on horseback and reprinted, a response time measured in days or even weeks. If your neighbors didn't like you or you got a bad reputation, you could just move a few towns away and start over. Private action wasn't even an issue back then. With the possible exception of the 13th Amendment, no part of the Constitution of the United States applies to private individuals. Wishing and hoping it did doesn't make it happen. Before you start throwing 'moron turds' at others, you might want to take a look at your own intellectual capacity. Did you ever consider that doing <i>ad hominem</i> attacks on other people because you don't like (what you believe to be) their ideas (as opposed to criticizing their ideas directly) is very similar in nature to the very thing you are criticizing others for? [quote]The supremacy of free expression was a truth accepted by everybody until it became inconvenient. You can still affirm free expression while being disgusted with the speech. Or you can be a complete piece of shit and say "well I didn't actually mean that" and allow mob rule to snuff out undesired voices.[/quote]The fight over freedom of speech has been a long, slow, and agonizing process. The First Amendment wasn't even recognized to be applicable to actions of state government until the Supreme Court decided <i>Gitlow v. New York</i> in 1925, and not even mandated to be until <i>Stromberg v. California</i> in 1931. [quote]There's never been an acceptance of all utterances in any free speech society, the point is if you perpetually affirm the importance of free expression you will discover the boundaries. What's important is the hard part of agreeing to allow speech you really don't want to hear.[/quote]I've made that point quite clear in my own writing. Here's a sample spoken by Supervisor 246 from <a href="http://paul-robinson.us/instrument.pdf">my book</a> <i>Instrument of God</i>: <font face="times new roman"> “I find your take on this incident completely strange, Supervisor 246." “Would you like me to explain myself, ma’am?” “Yes, I would.” “I’ll give you the short version. He wrote something stupid, a bunch of words that say something we don’t agree with. It’s only words and ideas, it’s not like he beat someone up, he’s not committing violence or hurting people, he’s simply saying something offensive that we do not want to hear because we don’t like it. If we suppress ideas we don’t like, the proponents of those ideas will probably fester in secret societies and explode in double-plus ungood ways and we will like those results even less. If we allow people to see their ideas, and we ignore them, they’ve had their chance and they don’t have to feel cheated about not getting exposure. Or if we really don’t like their ideas and really need to keep them from convincing other people to believe in them, the answer is to tell people why and they’ll learn. “But you can’t just beat people up because you dislike their stupid opinion. If we go that route, then anyone who is willing to use force can suppress any opinion they don’t like, and maybe support opinions we don’t like. Then what you get is a society of brutality where it isn’t the best ideas that are seen by others, it’s only the ideas that have the most vicious thugs to back them up. And it becomes very hard for people to be willing to express any opinion if someone can just pop them one because they say something someone else doesn’t like."</font> When I wrote that it would be <i>years</i> before that incident where some punk punched neo-Nazi sympathizer Richard Spencer in 2017 in front of cameras and a reporter. Not for anything the man who was assaulted did, but because <i>someone didn't like his ideas.</i> I expanded my defense of free speech more thoroughly later in my book: <font face="times new roman,sans-serif"> "Some crackpot has a stupid opinion that is really insulting. Really, really insulting. It’s so bad that it makes people sick, so we don’t allow it to be seen in public. So he becomes miserable, perhaps. So he privately goes around looking for people that are interested in his sick ideas. Maybe he gets a cabal together who fester their hate among one another and eventually they go out and commit some crime against some other people because they need publicity for their cause, since the only way they can get exposure is to commit violence. “Some crackpot has a stupid opinion that is really insulting. Really, really insulting. You don’t like it when you see it on a sign. You walk by and ignore him. People keep doing this. Eventually he sees that nobody cares about his opinion. He goes away. But at least he’s had the same fair and reasonable chance to let people see his opinions; he can be happy he’s had his turn. No muss, no fuss and everyone can be happy about it. He can get exposure without violence. “Some crackpot has a stupid opinion that is really insulting. Really, really insulting. You don’t like it when you see it on a sign. So you put up a sign of your own where you explain why you think he’s wrong. Now maybe people see both sides of the issue (or all three, or more) and you’re able to make people see why he’s wrong. Or maybe people will come to realize that <i>you</i> are wrong. But nobody’s hurt, nobody feels - and rightfully so - that they have been silenced, and nobody has to be upset about it. Both sides can get exposure without violence. “It is the intolerance to other people’s ideas that has essentially caused a large chunk of all the suffering in the world. Maybe all of it that isn’t a result of natural disasters. “The worst thing you can do to an idea you disagree with is try and suppress it. What you need to do is try and let others see why the other guy’s opinion is wrong. Then maybe more people learn something. And you know what that makes you, it makes you an <i>innoculator.</i> You’ve inoculated people against the virus of that opinion that you don’t like, and because they’re educated about it, it can’t take root in their minds and spread. And maybe you’ve made the world just a little bit better place as a result. “But you haven’t tried to stop him from peddling his stupid point of view, and he should have no reason to be upset at you for you expressing your opinion. You may not like the other person, you may not think he’s got all his oars in the water, but you respect him as another person who has the right to express his ideas even though you don’t agree with them. “So that’s all that I am saying is, that by tolerating other ideas, even where we disagree or don’t think they are right, we promote more tolerance of other people, and of ourselves, and maybe make things a little less intolerant. And definitely make the world a better place.” </font> [/quote]