You are paraphrasing me, and then claiming you’re quoting me.
Try using the quote feaure. Then compare what you said, and what I said, enclosed by quote tags. Are they the same words? Or are they simply in your judgement the same meaning?
My argument is: the courts will decide that at least one of the FDA-proposed pictures, when tobacco companies are compelled to use it on ciagrette packaging, violates the First Amendment.
Actually, don’t bother responding. I’m done with you in this thread. You’re fired as my debate opponent.
Yet again, false.
I quoted you, and stated what you said. Which happened to be in the quote. Your snark about “trying the quote feature” is amusing, considering I did. I suppose you can claim that by “not so much” you didn’t actually mean “no”. As this is a board for people who speak English, most of whom are native English speakers, will you have much luck?
Not so much.
Of course, you also ignore how I just cited and quoted you agreeing, explicitly that your argument was that photos (not “the photos” or “some photos” or “a few of the specific photos” just “photos” were not accurate or factual, and refusing to retract that argument.) Just like claiming that by “not so much” you didn’t really mean “no”, I suppose you can also claim that “Uh… no, I don’t retract it. Obviously.” really means “I never made that argument.” Generally people only say that they will not retract an argument if, well, it actually exists, however.
I also note that you’ve ignored the (repeated) request to show how I actually committed the fallacy of equivocation, rather than changing the subject to Michelle Bachman’s breadcrumbs, or some such. Obviously, that is because it would take a few keystrokes for you to convincingly and clearly prove that I am in fact wrong and did in fact commit the fallacy of equivocation, but hey look over there!!!
Quite odd, then, that you posted again and again claiming that pictures were not legal to use as warnings on cigarette packs and insulting people’s understanding of the relevant law/facts when your first post should have read “Of course it’s legal but I see a potential challenge to three of the FDA’s proposed pictures. But if they were changed then they too would be legal. But yes, the majority of new FDA warning pictures do not violate the first amendment and the others can be changed through a trivial substitution of other photos so that the entire raft of pictures will then be 100% fine and beyond rational legal challenge. Also Finn is dead sexy.”
I will admit, that is one of the more inventive ways I’ve ever seen anybody try to get the last word in a GD thread.
Not only will I have to content myself (as I sob myself to sleep, no doubt) with being fired by you, I will have to content myself that I have addressed the actual facts and cited your actual words and not, ya know, done something like tried to change the subject to Newsweek’s cover of Michelle Bachman. I will also content myself with the fact that I can continue to eviscerate the nonsense in your argument even without your permission.
It may make a difference. In this thread, in a prior post, I listed several cases in which the government was prohibited from making people engage in speech, including speech they disagreed with. Of course, these cases did not involve a commercial context. However, compelling the tobacco companies to enage in speech they disagree with, indeed is contrary to their own speech, i.e. buy my product is their message, but then have labels with the message of do not purchase my product, do not use my product, may be unconstitutional.
It seems we are preventing the government from its right to free speech, assuming it has one. The warnings are not all over the package. The cigarette companies are free to put whatever they want on the rest of the package. So the company is not being prevented from free speech at all. They are merely prevented from having the whole surface 100 percent for their own use.
The company can print whatever advertising lies it wants on the rest of the package.
No. The government is free to produce speech to whatever degree it likes, in media that it owns. When the government forces a cigarette manufacturer to use package space the manufacturer owns, that government’s right to speech is not at issue.
The issue is known as “compelled speech.” Several court cases cited in this thread have discussed it already.
So all warning labels should be ended because the company has a right to lie and cover up on whatever they sell, even if the product is poisonous? What if the manufacturer lies about the damages to a persons health about the product?
If that is correct, then all the contraindications of pharmacy products are infringing. Why should they have to include all the side effects on the bottle and include a list of potential health impacts in an insert?
Uh, Gonzo, it helps if you follow along the thread.
It has been upheld in court cases that the government CAN compel speech regarding factual health and safety information for commercial products
It has been upheld in court cases that the government CANNOT compel speech that is merely taking a position of a certain opinion (the examples of this is New Hampshire license plates saying “Live Free Or Die”–there must be an option for a plate without that logo).
The argument in this thread is solely about whether the specific imagery proposed meets the standard of the first statement, or whether it is in the grey area between those two and closer to the “cannot be compelled” side.
No one is seriously arguing that the government shouldn’t be allowed to compel health and safety warnings.
The Surgeon General’s warning that quitting smoking greatly reduces serious risks to your health has been on packs for a quarter of a century now, and it’s very hard to argue that it does not, in fact, advocate quitting.
That wasn’t the question. The question, to make it even simpler for you to comprehend, involves whether “a final court decision” always places those who argue a different interpretation of the law in “error”.
You have repeatedly insisted here (and in threads relating to other matters) that posters whose views differ with those of a court are committing errors - not just that they’ve disagreed with a particular set of characters wearing robes, but that a court’s ruling renders those posters’ views erroneous/illegitimate and that they should retract them and admit error.
So I ask (pay close attention now): since your oft-repeated anti-abortion rights views conflict with those of a “final court ruling” (that of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973) which upheld a woman’s right to an abortion, are you conceding that you’ve been in error on this matter, since the court decided that the Constitution does indeed guarantee this right?
Or (as I said earlier) you don’t regard Roe v. Wade as a “final court ruling” on the basis that future courts may decide something different entirely. In which case it is silly for you to demand of posters that they admit error if a court decision on the cigarette pack photo question goes against their beliefs, since there is no such thing as a “final court ruling” and some other judge(s) might in the future feel differently.*
So which is it?
You’ve already tried to hijack the thread to talk about your views regarding unfair portraits of Michele Bachmann (and Obama, for window dressing), so you’re in a poor position to complain about distractions.
And since you pride yourself on admitting errors when you commit them, it shouldn’t be that hard for you to answer the above questions.
*yes, I’m quoting myself from a previous post.
So, the argument, as I’ve been able to parse it out as, since the government can compell safety warnings [text], pictures are ok, too.
If the text warnings are factual and convey the necessary info, why is there a compelling reason to change to pictures?
Are the text warnings too small to read?
IMO, the picture warnings are intended for their emotional impact, and not their factual impact.
Seems like a potential slippery slope. Folks, who are not content to let others engage in [legal] activities they disprove of, enlisting the aid of the power of the government to prevent them from engaging in those activities.
What ever happened to the motive/desire behind the “Keep the government out of my bedroom!”?
No, I haven’t. You don’t understand what I’m claiming.
When the topic is, “What is the law?” then a final, precedential ruling by a court does render contrary views in error, and those asserting those views should indeed admit error.
When the topic is, “What should the law be?” then those arguing a contrary view are free to continue to assert that theirs is the side of angels.
So if the topic is, for example, “Do the new tobacco warnings violate 1st Amendment rights?” then a final court decision on the question will settle the issue.
I absolutely regard Roe v. Wade as a final court decision.
But now I invite you to go back over my oft-repeated anti-abortion views and find the post where I said anything contrary to what I’m saying now. Find me a post of mine in which I said that the law was other than it actually is. Find me a post where I said that Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional. Find me a post where I said that a woman does not have a right to a first-term abortion.
In short, find me that post where I did what you’re suggesting I did.
Bricker’s claims about the “errors” of others regarding what laws mean, would only be valid if they were lawyers citing arcane points of law to back their views.
Let’s say a poster here, for example, claimed there was a vital precedent in the case of Longarm v. Drool in 1962 that absolutely vindicated the government’s right to mandate pictorial health warnings, that no other superseding precedent existed and that their side was thus guaranteed victory by a future court visiting the issue. Then, if that court found another precedent overlooked by the poster and which completely changed how the law must be interpreted, that would probably constitute an error on the poster’s part.
Except of course that the posters Bricker is indignantly challenging to commit to a future admission of “error”, have done no such thing. This is not a law school class, it’s a message board. They’re expressing general views on the First Amendment, something ordinary citizens do frequently. Sometimes courts agree with them, sometimes not.
Except in the real world this does not happen, nor should it. I’ve heard lawyers on the losing end of all sorts of cases interviewed, and “Since the court ruled against me, I made an error in arguing otherwise and I’ll just have to accept it for all time” is a line I’ve never heard. Nothing is “final” in law or any other human endeavor, and if you believe in something strongly enough (or in the case of attorneys, at least believe in winning strongly enough), you do not concede “error” merely because of a possibly erroneous court decision.
It’d be one thing if Bricker was living up to a superhuman level of purity unreached by other lawyers, but failure to concede that his anti-abortion views represent error (by Brickerian standards) puts him down in the muck with the other poor slobs expressing personal views.
Bricker should now dispense with haughty demands for other posters to pledge retraction of errors in the event of contrary court rulings, since he is incapable of living up to such a standard himself.
I asked you before to show me an instance of my making any such claim. I said to go “back over my oft-repeated anti-abortion views and find the post where I said anything contrary to what I’m saying now. Find me a post of mine in which I said that the law was other than it actually is. Find me a post where I said that Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional. Find me a post where I said that a woman does not have a right to a first-term abortion.”
There is a difference between saying, “The First Amendment does…” and “The First Amendment should…”
It’s true that this is not a law school class. It’s a message board. But when we discuss the principles of chemistry, no one suggests that it’s all right to claim that hydrogen and oxygen combine to form salt, because after all we’re just discussing general views.
This is a message board devoted to fighting ignorance. You seem to be devoting your effort to fighting to defend your right to spout ignorance, because it’s not a law school, but a general discussion of the First Amendment.
That would be fine for a discussion called “What SHOULD the First Amendment do?”
A discussion that asks what it actually does, though, is a discussion that can be settled by referring to actual cases. I understand your reluctance to do that, since it’s unlikely to support your view. And I understand your desire to shift the discussion from DOES to SHOULD, since “SHOULD” allows you to comfortably wallow in your lack of knowledge and understanding, and then raise that same lack of understanding as a shield.
But I won’t let you do it without pointing the finger at you and explaining exactly what you’re doing.
You want to blather about what you think the law SHOULD be? Go right ahead. You want to talk about what the law actually is, in the real world, with real judges, real parties, and real results that must be really followed?
No, it’s obvious you don’t. I wouldn’t either, if I had only your arsenal of ideas and knowledge.
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld similar packaging laws, rejecting a constitutional challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. See: Top court upholds tobacco ads rules.
I would certainly hope you believe that, seeing as how a contrary position (in Bricker-world) would constitute an error. The anti-abortion rights views you’ve long expressed on this board (i.e. the recent ones defending pharmacists’ refusal to fill prescriptions because they think the drugs might be used for pregnancy termination) makes that dubious in the extreme. But it would be welcome to see you acknowledge that the Constitution does indeed guarantee a woman’s right to an abortion at least during the first trimester. I’d hate to see you wallow in error.
So step right on up, no equivocating, and clarify that you support a woman’s right to an abortion because there’s a Final Precedent that says so.