Or those made for jailing black people for sitting at white only diners, or jailing gay people for engaging in “sodomy” before those laws were made illegal. (DADT would be an even better example, since those people chose to join the military—but that didn’t make the rule a just one.)
Now obviously this is nowhere near as serious a situation. But sometimes it takes larger examples to convey a principle. And the principle here is that you can’t just fall back on “The rules were openly declared, therefore when they are enforced the fault is all on the person receiving the punishment.”
The key question is not whether a procedure was followed, or someone was warned not to break a rule, but whether the rule is fair. And to say that one type of ideological perspective cannot be brought to bear in a debate on a fucking debate board? That is not a just or equitable rule.
Once again, a private message board is not a government, and a private message board restricting speech is not violating anyone’s rights or freedoms. It’s fine to quibble about the rules of the board and the application of these rules, but it’s ridiculous to compare this to broader politics and discussions of rights and freedoms. The actions of a private message board, in a free society, on what kinds of speech to allow, have nothing to do with governmental policy regarding speech rights, and nothing to do with governmental oppression. It’s utterly ridiculous to compare the two.
So I guess those who fall back on the “private message board” angle agree with Rand Paul when he was momentarily and accidentally honest? For those who don’t remember, he admitted that he only believed federal civil rights legislation should have applied to governmental institutions but should not have forced private businesses like restaurants and hotels to serve black people if they didn’t want to.
Do you think it’s possible that someone could have a dissenting or unpopular opinion AND also be a disruptive jerk unwilling or unable to follow board rules that are reasonable and necessary for constructive debate? Because that’s how most of us see it. The former is acceptable, the latter is not.
Does it bother you at all that virtually everyone here including the moderators disagrees with you? (“Moderators”, plural, because the banning decision AIUI was a consensus of the moderators.) You might want to take a moment to consider the old adage that if everyone tells you you’re wrong, maybe the problem is you. Trust me, outlandish statements evincing total unawareness of reality like “I would hope the Powers That Be will … remove Bone as a Mod immediately, due to his inability to stop his personal feelings about posters affecting his modding” do nothing to help your credibility.
You keep coming back to this - shutting down opinions - but it’s not accurate. As a threshold matter I think it would be illustrative if you could answer a couple questions:
Do you believe that moderators should enforce rules to prevent thread hijacks?
Do you believe that topic bans should be an available tool for moderators to impose?
Okay, how about nightclubs that ban as “disruptive” fashion choices that technically anyone can avail themselves of, but which are very disproportionately chosen by black people? That’s A-OK with you?
Fair enough. My example of DADT was better, then. As long as military members kept their mouths shut and didn’t engage in homosexual activity, they could not be kicked out for “being gay”. They knew the rules going in, amirite?
ETA: We can also bring in McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklists here. Private entities who chose not to do business with people who attached themselves by their own choice to a radical political ideology that made most people uncomfortable. There is simply no way to say “that’s different” about that one, so instead I will predict it is met with resounding silence and maybe a thread closure. :dubious:
Projection much? Are you ever going to actually cite where Will introduced a libertarian ideology into a completely random topic like “the weather”? Or do you keep making these vague remarks because you don’t have any such evidence? It certainly is not true about the topic that incited his final warnings.
