# I am a bad American. I do not fully support the 1st Amendment. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 1, 2012, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080 "2012-08-01T17:57:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/21 "2012-08-02T00:18:01Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Where _would_ you draw the line? What’s a lie and what’s merely spin? Preponderance of evidence. Juries make decisions like that a hundred times a day in civil court. 6 reasonably normal folks hear a tale told from both sides, decide which they believe and whether certain standards have been met and \* viola \* a verdict is rendered. And no, **Shodan**. Their option would be to publicly admit to the lie, explain why it was a lie, and to ‘go and sin no more.’ Alternatively they could allow themselves to be removed from the public ear. Like lying in the first place, it would be entirely their own choice. And just to be clear, I know this cuts both ways, and I really don’t care. There will always be multiple ways of looking at things, and topics people will be passionate about. But outright lying is childish and destructive. If you don’t have facts to draw from, maybe you should grow up and admit the other side has a valid point. General you. Not necessarily anyone in this thread you. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/22 "2012-08-02T01:49:02Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Let me be sure I understand you - if anyone lies about taxes related to Obamacare, especially to affect their support for it, that person is scum and deserves jail time? > > Regards, > Shodan Here, let me throw a [bone](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-a-trap) to the liberal douches. (Nice one, BTW, Shodan.) Also, I could find 5 similar deliberate exaggerations/obfuscations from the liberal douche side of the aisle without even pointing my browser away from this here messageboard. Also, there are severe implementation and enforcement problems with any law designed to stop people from saying things the OP doesn’t like, so severe that it would be impossible to do really. So tilt at windmills all you want, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/23 "2012-08-02T02:57:40Z")
> [@Enkel](#): > > How 'bout split the difference, the C-Level Executives of the company who placed the add get to walk around a public street corner wearing a billboard that says “I’m a Liar” with text of a full correction on it on it one hour for each showing of the proven lie. So, if the ad was shown 30 times and they have 5 executives, each one gets 6 hours. You would really be in favor of letting Republicans enforce those those types of laws when they are in power? I sure as hell wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Enkel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/df705f/32.png) [@Enkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enkel)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/24 "2012-08-02T04:31:56Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > You would really be in favor of letting Republicans enforce those those types of laws when they are in power? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Why not. I wrote **proven lie**. They have to objectively prove the message was a lie. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/25 "2012-08-02T04:34:44Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > I think we should bring back peer opprobrium - we have the technology now. No we don’t. Facebook won’t let us have a “dislike” button. > [@Enkel](#): > > Actually, Fox has already wrangled that one through the courts ( [Jane Akre - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre) ). It seems that the FCC has no teeth to speak of: > > So the FCC just really, really suggests that you don’t lie to the public. God Bless America! That’s a Florida court interpreting an FCC regulation as it relates to Florida law. The ruling is not binding on the FCC or any federal tribunal. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/26 "2012-08-02T04:48:06Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > I flinch at the merest hint of censorship, and I consider opposing threats to the 1st Amendment to be my #1 political priority - and yet, having said that, if someone could come up with a reasonable system that could smack down people’s lies while not affecting their ability to express their opinions? I’d be all over that. > > Maybe when technology moves along a few more years, we can have versions of the Jeopardy-robot that can do instant fact-checking of anything people say on national television, and when they say something that isn’t true, it can sound a klaxon and put a giant red ‘WRONG’ over their face for a second. Te problem is defining “truth”. What board would be in charge or do we just use Wikipedia as our source? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/27 "2012-08-02T05:17:07Z")
If we’re chipping away at the First Amendment, saying it doesn’t apply to lies, let’s start with religion! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/28 "2012-08-02T05:38:06Z")
There’s way too much crap out there for the courts to police. More to the point, if a Republican gets hammered by the courts, fair play implies that false equivalencies be invented and a Democrat needs prosecution. First up: Paul Krugman. He’s actually pretty careful with his claims, which annoys conservatives and thereby makes him vulnerable under such a regime. They wouldn’t need to win: SLAPP suits work pretty well, especially when filed consecutively. Now I know you guys are just venting. And it’s probably the case that JS Mill’s _On Liberty_ has some claims that could be shown to be empirically problematic. But those Americans who desire the advancement of human welfare and a natural environment capable of sustaining continued economic growth have two tasks. 1. Wait for demographic shifts to make the Republican’s lock on angry middle aged white males irrelevant, and 1. Up their rhetorical game. The theme for lesson one might be: … Repetition! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/29 "2012-08-02T09:00:39Z")
It’s a cultural issue, really. I’m not sure how comes we accept that politicians lie, or even merely spin. In fact we don’t only accept it, we expect it. We’re giving them the greatest responsibilities and we give them a pass for a behaviour that wouldn’t be acceptable coming from the lowliest employee. Maybe it will change someday (after all, for instance, how acceptable corruption is varies a lot from one country to another). Passing laws to correct the issue would be impractical at best. What should happen in a mature democracy is that people would be outraged when they learn that they’ve been lied to and the responsible politician wouldn’t have much other choice than resigning in disgrace. We’ve quite a bit of work to do to achieve that. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/30 "2012-08-02T09:48:06Z")
> [@Enkel](#): > > Why not. I wrote **proven lie**. They have to objectively prove the message was a lie. Yes, but if you had people like Arpaio making the arrests for it, and crazy Teabaggers as prosecutors, don’t you think that would be bad enough even if the judges ultimately found the person innocent? Of course, if someone like Roy Moore is your judge… ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/31 "2012-08-02T12:00:31Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > Te problem is defining “truth”. You gave me a Jesus Christ Superstar earworm :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: (Jesus back before Pilates) ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/32 "2012-08-02T12:04:38Z")
I thought Jesus did hot Yoga. ---
**Author:** ![PrettyVacant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/49beb7/32.png) [@PrettyVacant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PrettyVacant)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/33 "2012-08-02T12:13:02Z")
A 220 years old law, made by some guys who had no idea of universal suffrage, never mind that electricity would be invented and begat the digital revolution. Really, really good idea to just keep pretending it’s relevant to the modern age in current form. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/34 "2012-08-02T12:51:11Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > Te problem is defining “truth”. > > What board would be in charge or do we just use Wikipedia as our source? Funnily enough, I don’t seem to have any problem defining truth. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/35 "2012-08-02T13:01:28Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > I don’t trust people to vote honestly. There would be too much partisan slide - Republicans pretending Democrats are liars, and Republicans pretending Republicans aren’t. 😃 Not cynical enough, dear - the corporate backers of this or that politician (or simply the politician himself if he’s loaded, which most of them are) would also hire people to vote up or down, similar to how people get hired to do good “consumer reviews”, shit all over the competition’s reviews and so forth. Hell, if the interweb rumour mill is accurate, Romney’s already bought himself about a 100k followers on Tweeter. [QUOTE=Bosstone] Should we make allowances for honest mistakes, thereby creating a loophole where Fox can make ‘honest mistakes’ day after day? [/QUOTE] Nope. Fuck “honest mistakes”. If you’re not \*sure \*what you’re talking about, shut yo mouth. The signal-to-noise is YOU. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/36 "2012-08-02T20:10:03Z")
I too think the provisions of such a law would be overly broad. I have fairly fundamental political beliefs I think most members of the US would rate as lies. For example, I think that if workers appointed and wrote the contracts of their managers, the country would be better off as a whole. Most would disagree with me. I believe that value is a result of socially average labour time (labour theory of value, more or less), but I have no doubt that most would disagree with that. I do think advertising is pervasive though and I’d have no problem with electioneering communications being consigned to a channel designed for them. That way the populace would have to actually seek for them, rather than be confronted by them. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/37 "2012-08-02T20:22:58Z")
**gamerunknown** , you do know the difference between opinions and facts, right? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/38 "2012-08-08T14:02:24Z")
There are just too many avenues of expression to begin to police any of it. Sure, we could require those in the broadcasting or cable media to retract anything which is demonstrably false. But there will always be ways to spin the news to push a viewpoint without being technically false. The media is but the tip of the iceberg, we all have a brother in law or two or in my case about five, who will forward anything negative they get about Obama. Whether it’s true or not (and they are always not) makes no difference- the rule is that if it smears Obama, you hit the forward button. It will probably taper off a bit in 2017 when Obama leaves office. Of course, the anti-Hillary emails will take over where the anti-Obama emails leave off. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/39 "2012-08-08T14:19:48Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > It will probably taper off a bit in 2017 when Obama leaves office. Of course, the anti-Hillary emails will take over where the anti-Obama emails leave off. The Hillary stuff will be amusing. I don’t see her as being anything near as good-natured as Bill or Barack. She’s evidently diplomatic enough, but I get the idea she is just keenly aware of where the microphones and cameras are and that when all is clear she can be terrifying. I think one would attack her at one’s own peril. I’d love to see her set loose on Newt or Palin. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080/40 "2012-08-08T14:41:54Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#): > > Funnily enough, I don’t seem to have any problem defining truth. You know who else had no problem defining truth? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-a-bad-american-i-do-not-fully-support-the-1st-amendment/630080.md?page=3)