I support people outside of venues of people that are coming to talk giving their opinion on the speaker. I support rallies both before and after, as well as during the speech.
At the same time, in a different setting, when people are in the auditorium, I do think that the audience should be relatively respectful. I have no problem with the occasional disagreement, just as you would have no problem with the occasional cheer, laugh, or clapping. I do somewhat support people being disruptive in the venue, as long as they speak their piece and leave, rather than continuing to cause a scene being dragged out or something.
Do you consider it cognitive dissonance that people act differently at a football game than at their grandmother’s dinner table?
His post was specifically talking about “Shouting someone down”. He didn’t appear to be talking about separate times and places. I imagine that to successfully “shout someone down” basically requires being in the same time and place as them.
I agree with all of this:
I start to have an issue at this point:
Sure, if it was one brief disruption (thinking back to something like Joe Wilson’s “You lie”), I suppose it’s not that big of a deal. But “Shouting someone down” doesn’t imply speaking their piece and leaving. It implies a continued, annoying presence, targeted primarily at making sure the speaker is not heard by the audience (who, presumably came to hear the speaker). I do not support that. It’s unclear to me if BigT supports it or not. Part of his post made me think he does, and part of it made me think he does not.
He said first that it doesn’t infringe on your freedom of speech. This is true. There is no requirement that people shut up and listen.
Then he went on to say, “You can have rules against this, if you want. And people who don’t follow them can be asked to leave, and, if they don’t, they’re trespassing.”
He is talking first about the ideal of freedom of speech, in that your freedom to speak is not infringed upon by my speech, but then goes on to talk about the practicalities of allowing speech to progress constructively.
Kind of, but, Joe Wilson did not leave the congressional chambers after shouting at the president during his speech. I do think that if you disrupt a speech, then you should leave.
Right, and he is not advocating shouting someone down, just saying that it is not an infringement on someone else’s freedom of speech.
I’ve seen protesters who have gotten up, shouted some stuff or held up signs, and then left quietly when asked to. I think code pink was big into that during the iraq wars. It is still disruptive, but it falls more under the level of civil disobedience that I find acceptable than creating a scene and refusing to leave.