Nice strawman. Do you understand the difference between passively wishing harm on another (ex. “I wish some politician would die”) and actively threatening another? (ex. "I am going to kill that politician.) Because the only way I can see your thought police comment making sense is if you are mixing those two very different things up.
Where do federal agents draw the line? Honest question. How does the SS decide a threat is credible enough to go visit someone? Do you know? Is there any limit?
Well, a guy publicly claiming to be an ex-Secret Service agent (and take that for what it’s worth, I haven’t checked this claim in any way)* asserts that the credibility bar is set extremely low for threats against official protectees:
*Actually I did later go back and check, and this guy seems to be very well known as an ex-federal agent who has published a lot about his service.
Thanks.
So it is not a strawman as Crazy Canuck suggests.
The strawman assertion was because in a thread about the implications of free speech rights of students who threatened to shoot up a school (which is an active threat), you switched the argument to the implications of the government interfering with the free speech rights of people who passively wish harm on others. That’s a different argument which is (coincidentally I’m sure) a lot easier to defend. That’s a strawman argument to me.
Huh?
I said, “I hope you need more than, “I wish president “X” would drop dead” to get a visit from the SS. I imagine a lot of people make similar statements regardless of who is president.”
You said that was a strawman.
Kimstu posted that it actually happens. The SS does go after that.
So tell me again where the strawman is?
What does and does not constitute a threat is pretty well defined in law (and has been for centuries), without having to dig into the innermost thoughts of the person making the threats.
As a grown adult I have no problem with having to understand where the line is between a threat and an opinion, and facing legal repercussions if I cross it. The key point in this case is these are children we are talking about.
It is certain not impossible. If you are in charge of enforcing the law at school (as police or school authorities) it is literally your job to work out whether the threat is credible. Both the decision to prosecute or not to has risks. If you unnecessarily prosecute a child that is a failure just as much as letting a child who poses a genuine risk continue unchecked.
I realize in the current atmosphere there is probably a tendency to err on the side of caution. But the track record of authorities in these kind of cases is not a good one. And there a countless incidents of the legal system getting involved in cases where it absolutely should have remained a school discipline matter. Not that this cases is definitely one of them (we know none of the details, it could be completely justified)
Maybe it would help your confusion if you would read the post where I said nice strawman, read the the portion of your post that I quoted for context, and notice that I was replying to a separate comment that you made two posts earlier. Let me try again. You said …
Now this is a strawman, because in this thread no one was talking about “wishing” that people would die. The discussion was on actual threats. So if you have said something like this …
That wouldn’t be a strawman. Do you see the difference between the two quotes? Do you notice how one seems a lot more reasonable than the other? Do you see how the version you are using is a lot easier to defend? That’s the shit I’m calling out. Does this help your confusion?
Warranting a visit from the Secret Service does not mean you have committed a crime. Whatever they may consider a threat. Have there actually been successful prosecutions where just “wishing harm” on someone alone was considered a threat?
Who said it did? I was answering Whack-a-Mole’s question:
Any limit on any right makes society less free, in some sense. But limiting a right ought to be for the purpose of avoiding infringing on some other right.
Should someone whose aims include taking away free speech from some other person, have free speech himself? In my opinion, denying free speech for those who aim to infringe on important rights of others is not necessarily wrong. (I guess it would be if free speech was the single most important right, above every other right in every case - but that doesn’t seem sane to me.)
If they don’t then society does not in fact have free speech.
Free speech that doesn’t cover view points that society considers offensive or unpleasant is not actually free speech.
This is not true. Speech is already restricted in several ways - that is, there are already a number of offensive and/or unpleasant things that you yourself are not permitted to say, because saying them would take rights away from others.
Words cannot “take rights away” from anyone. Yeah there are a very few, very well defined areas such as actual threats of violence, which we, as a society, have historically said are excluded from the right of free speech. But any time society adds to the words that that are not covered by the free speech it is become objectively less free and more oppressive.
What you’re claiming is not true, if the words no longer covered by freedom of speech are in themselves oppressive.
Or - to put it another way - please show exactly why it’s acceptable to you that certain things are already excluded from freedom of speech.
That’s correct, and is why you guys in America can’t ask several types of questions in job interviews, where in other countries you still can.
You can ask whatever questions you want in a job interview, without fear of prosecution.
OK!
You may be mixing up what’s allowed to interviewees with what’s allowed to employers. There are most definitely certain specific questions that it’s illegal for employers to ask interviewees in the US.