This sounds good in theory. Freedom of speech should mean freedom to lie without any consequences, right?
The problem is that in practice, allowing people to lie with impunity creates things like:
a. global warming deniers
b. anti-vaxxers
c. voters who believe that Trump is a stable genius or honest
And so on. The theory is that anyone should be using multiple sources of information and the truth should drown out the lies. In practice, as it turns out
a. People who *don't* do any research and just vote from ignorance get an equal vote to people who are intelligent and well informed
b. There seem to be a very large number of people in category (a). Not the majority but huge numbers, enough to swing elections.
c. The nature of modern internet business has made it where people live in bubbles where **lies are all they personally see**.
I don’t have a solution. I will comment that the freedom of speech is not unlimited, and openly saying things like “vaccines cause autism” or “global warming is a Chinese hoax” is dangerous. Probably about as dangerous as shouting Fire! in a crowded movie theater. Real people die from these lies.
Yeah well the problem with that is, who gets to determine what a lie is? People have opinions, people have opinions about what other people say, people have opinions on what other people do. I watch someone say something and I get the feeling they are full of shit, then to me they are full of shit.
I truly believe that Democrat politicians want to allow illegal immigration and let it continue in an effort to change demographics in their favor. I truly believe this. They vehemently deny this. But their actions are at odds with their words. Should people be able to say that Democrat politicians are lying? Fuck yeah they should. Should people be labeled as ‘racists’ and have their words censored using ‘hate speech’ laws? Fuck no.
Just because people have completely different opinions and positions on things and you disagree with them, does not mean they are lying, or dumb, or whatever. They have just as much of a right to say it as you do for calling them liars.
The left has taken it upon themselves to be the arbiter of what a lie is and who is lying, and want to shut those opinions down and drown them out. Thats a dangerous precedent and anti democracy.
I might point out that your statement is something you can back up. It’s not an outright lie. I don’t know enough about the issue to judge whether it’s totally accurate - I will point out that politicians on both sides of the aisle mainly worry about the here and now. It takes decades for immigrants to actually stay here long enough to for their children to be able to vote, and not all Hispanics vote democrat. They are the majority of the population in Texas but enough of them vote Republican that Texas is a red state still.
Instead, usually the reason democrat politicians *say *what they say is if they say negative things about illegal immigrants, this is perceived as an attack on Hispanics, who are a large portion of their voter base. Under the Obama administration, there was an increase in deportations vs the GWB administration right before him. So, at least that *specific *democrat politician was not doing what you are saying.
“Global warming is a Chinese hoax” is an outright lie. There is such an overwhelming number of scientists who are in no way connected with China who have produced the data, and many other scientists have checked that data, that say global warming is in fact happening. Also it appears to exacerbate certain forms of negative climate event - completely expected if you add more energy to a system - such as hurricanes. Note that while the hurricane:warming connection isn’t 100% certain, there is a clear mechanism of action and a clear trend in the data, it’s almost certainly happening.
“Trump is honest” is an outright lie.
“Trump is a stable genius” is an outright lie. While he may be putting on a show and acting even dumber than he is, he’s made some catastrophic errors as president. He is not a genius.
Be careful. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
“I don’t have a solution” either, but will note that propagating ‘fake news’ need not be done with malicious intent. In fact, those who believe what they are claiming may actually have good intent - simply to announce ‘the truth’. You seem to be suggesting that it might be a good idea to prohibit people from doing so unless the truth they wish to assert (or provide evidence in support of) has passed some test for being ‘good’ or ‘helpful’. I’m sure you can see the danger in such an approach. As I said, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
Those are opinions. A lie is when you say something with the intent to deceive. If you truly believe something, it is not a lie. Just because you do not agree, does not make something a lie. Are you a lie detector? No you arent.
Regardless, should people be allowed to say it? Yes they should.
Should the left get to label people ‘white supremacists’ using their own definition and use that label to filter people? No they should not.
And even if something is a blatant lie, its still protected speech.
The left has this disturbing little infatuation with controlling what people should be allowed to say and its quite the shocking little shft they’ve taken over the last few years.
That just means your government can’t punish you for saying stupid shit. This protection of which you speak doesn’t shield you from criticism from your fellow Americans. Or me. So get used to it.
You speak nonsense. It was your kind who said people should “watch what they say”. It’s your kind that wanted a football player to be punished because his not showing deference to a song and a piece of cloth made them sad. Also, it’s the head of the Republican party - your kind - that wanted SNL to “answer for” mocking him.
You might think no longer being coddled amounts to being persecuted by those pussies on the left, but it doesn’t.
This is, I think, probably the first thing you’ve ever said on this message board that I agree with. It’s the first time that something you said wasn’t full of shit.
The first half of this paragraph demonstrates just how deluded or stupid (or both) you really are. For the most part, the types of immigration policies being advocated by Democrats show little or no difference from the types of immigration policies that existed under Reagan and other Republican presidents of the past. George W. Bush’s immigration policies are far closer to Democratic policies than they are to Trump and the White Nationalist vision of a monocultural America that is driving current immigration policy, and that goes out of its way to treat poor immigrants and asylum seekers with open cruelty and vindictiveness.
I agree that you should be allowed to say that Democrats are lying, because I believe that exposing your type of idiocy, rather than suppressing it, is the best way to deal with morons who have trouble tying their shoelaces in the morning.
This is perhaps the most hilarious part of your whole post. It’s reasonable to focus on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, because she’s the subject of this thread, but to extrapolate this to your broader claim about the left just shows how selective you are in your use of evidence. The current idiot in the White House has been calling for precisely the sort of regulation and government control of opinion that you’re decrying in this thread. He’s talked about all sorts of ways that he would like to use the power of the government to control outlets that he believes are biased against conservatives. Republican Senator Josh Hawley has been proposing a whole raft of legislation that would reduce freedom of expression on the internet, including a bill that would require large social media companies to get a federal certification of political neutrality if they want to keep the speech protections afforded by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Ted Cruz said that Section 230 should be repealed if social media companies aren’t going to be (Ted Cruz’s definition of) impartial. Republican Paul Gosar of Arizona also introduced an anti-230 bill in Congress, as did Louis Gohmert, Republican of Texas. Away from Congress, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson has spent hours ranting about social media and calling for laws to restrict it, and self-described conservative Christian and head of conservative activist organization American Majority, Ned Ryun, has also called for regulating online speech and repealing Section 230.
If there’s something interesting about the current state of arguments against free expression in America, it’s that they are coming from both the social justice left and cultural conservative right. That fact that you only see it on the left is a marker of your intelligence, and I’m glad that free speech allows your idiocy to be exposed for all the world to see.
Really useless as he did not reply to the items Trump and most Republicans lie about as pointed by SamuelA, climate change is a big one and as for finding who is telling lies, the evidence and experts tell us that the Republicans are the ones that ignore and deny the evidence on that.
So Trump and the Republicans are doing a double lie: on top of denying that humans are responsible, they also lie about the experts that we should be checking to see who is telling the truth.
For less spun evidence, one checks the science too:
The fear of AOC and other strong women, it is thick. With good reason. The times, they are a-changing. So are the demographics. Beware the future! You have nothing to lose but your (imagined) past.
I don’t even understand the vehement hatred of AOC. She’s a photogenic young congresswoman. Policy wise she’s just a younger Bernie Sanders. Nothing she asks for is new, and she has nowhere near the authority to do much more than talk and be popular with the media.
Ted Kennedy had similar levels of fame back in his time. Just not the votes to make his ideas Federal law. Same as now.
It’s like extreme conservatives see her as far more powerful and influential than she is.
She’s well-spoken, charismatic, intelligent, and will probably be a leader in the Democratic party in the future - including a run for the presidency, I’d bet.
Therefore, Republicans and various other reactionary right wing factions are starting up the smear campaign from the get-go. Hey, it worked for Hillary Clinton, amirite? Hillary then, and AOC now, are just too “uppity” to be allowed to speak.
I mean, you have noticed that the people smearing her the most are the same ones swearing that misogyny isn’t a problem on the board, and that trans(whichever) people aren’t “real (whichever)”