Why did I start this thread if I choose not to engage with clods like Bryan Ekers? ***It’s a placeholder for posting links to views of people who agree with me!
Here’s a quote and a YouTube; I’ve lost track of how I chanced upon them. I probably got the links from SDMB threads!
New lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (When I checked this link just now, YouTube recommended another great song with revised lyrics.)
I’ll tell you what, if you can write a fresh post summarizing your position on the inherent hazard of the First Amendment without insulting your readers or suggesting their negative reaction somehow validates your argument, I’ll be glad to respond in an entirely serious, thoughtful manner.
As an act of good faith, and picking the one clear adult comment I can find in post #159 to respond to, your suggestion of modifying perjury laws is, I admit, interesting. It would be tricky, to say the least, to do so in the interest of fighting falsehoods without stepping on the concept of expert testimony, which involves getting someone who is not a witness to the specifics of a particular case to venture an opinion on the value of evidence gathered for that case. For the expert witness profiled in the Oliver segment, probably the best defense is Google itself, where the opposing side can research the witness’s background and compile a set of video clips (such clips being publicly available, as court transcripts should be barring some particular reason why they should not) showing a tendency of this witness to make stuff up, impeaching the witness’s credibility. This impeachment itself will get added to the public record, making it easier for future lawyers to challenge the witness, including bringing up whatever corporate interests are paying the witness. The response is increased disclosure, not regulation.
Interestingly, I’ve been flipping through some old magazines my late father had collected and found a 1982 issue of Newsweek that contained a two-page ad from The Tobacco Institute, ostensibly to answer the question “Does cigarette smoke endanger nonsmokers?”
The ad uses a lot of vague language and includes what I consider to be a pretty blatant lie: “The researchers we fund are encouraged to publish whatever they find. Whatever the outcome.” Yeah… I doubt it. Fortunately, if such an ad was published today, anyone could quickly look up the studies cited including, as the ad oh-so-artfully reports, “A recent Japanese study made claims about lung cancer raters among nonsmokers. This got wide press coverage. But the validity of the study was seriously questioned in the medical literature by a variety of experts around the world.” No further details, including what the study actually concluded. For all we know, it might have said second-hand smoke was good for you, except we know that it if it did, The Tobacco Institute would have been happy to publish extensive details about it.
By the way, the advertisement in question can be read here. It is the one marked as “Question 5”. The Newsweek issue where I found it is from June 21, 1982. I count three full-page tobacco ads in the magazine itself, including the inside front cover and the back cover, plus a half-column ad for Ronson fuels and flints.
I’ve gotta thank you, septimus. You’ve given me the inspiration for my next children’s book, Timecube Goes Drunk Posting.
You don’t.
You surely don’t have a distillation.
At the rate you’re going, you could wind up with a suspension.
You’re definitely all wet.
Oh, and since this is The Pit and you made a very clear distinction in your O.P., you’re another long-barrel sucker who strokes his 30-bullet magazines while looking at homicide porn. Nothing new here. You detest people who use their right to free speech but see exactly zero problem with all of those “very, very good people” who go around murdering children in schools.
Yep. Thanks. We’ve all got your number.
And you’re all wet.
Thank you for your thoughtful, almost kindish response. But a man must know his limitations and I cannot produce a good GD-style thread. Plenty of Dopers could do so; maybe someone else will pursue the message after they tire of ridiculing the messenger.
Anyone? I think what you mean is that some motivated intelligent people could do so, though they would attract only a very tiny fraction of the lying ad’s audience unless they got a major network interested. And there are so many lies flowing at us that truth-tellers are swamped playing whack-a-mole.
As further evidence that my communication skill is beyond salvage, look at this:
It appears that Cartooniverse thinks I’m a gun nut. What do you think of that, Bryan Ekers? Do you see why I get frustrated and resort to ever-increasing font sizes? 
Would small fonts work better?
Yeah, I’m not seeing that the conditions I requested are being met.
You making a pretense to victimhood neither supports nor validates any arguments you might be making.
Yes, but the *power *to instantly research and verify claims is, if anything, far more advanced than in 1982, but of course only those interested in putting in the effort will bother to do so. I’m not sure what modifications to perjury law you had in mind (of if you had any beyond a vague notion that modifications of some kind were needed), but we’re far closer to instant fact-checking than ever before. Lies, including corporate-greed-driven lies, have always been with us, but disclosure power has dramatically increased, suggesting the First Amendment is actually not making the United States a worse place to live, let alone placing the republic in jeopardy.
I stated earlier that I didn’t see what relevance the 2nd Amendment had to an analysis of the hazards of the application of the 1st Amendment, and that included whatever your personal feelings on the 2nd might be. You might be a gun nut or not a gun nut; I don’t care either way, it’s as irrelevant as any aspect of the 2nd Amendment to this discussion. I didn’t care for the what-aboutism of invoking the 2nd in the OP, which I read as a variation of “All you people who care about abuse of the 2nd Amendment, what about the much much much worse abuses of the 1st Amendment?!?!” but if you don’t mention guns or the 2nd again, neither will I.
Be this as it may, it has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. Lies and propaganda have existed since well before the First Amendment, and they are alive and well in totalitarian dictatorships. North Korea, for instance, has the toughest laws prohibiting free speech on Earth. Would you say that it’s any more truthful than the US?
And on that note, septimus, I’m having a hard time believing that there’s nothing you can do. You seem to have enough free time to go online and complain about the right to free speech. You have enough free time to create these whackadoo responses involving fonts and . . . well, OK, not much else, but you still strike me as someone with a lot, and I mean A LOT, of free time on his hands.
You told us in big bold fonts about how you don’t have a solution. The solution, my man, is staring you right in the face. Have you tried getting together with people to get the message out? Have you tried joining the ACLU, doing volunteer work, or basically attempting things that people seem to have had no trouble doing in the past 250 years since we formed the US? Get the hell off the webz, do something with your life in favor of the truth, or the Truth, or maybe even “The Truth,” and then come back and lecture us how stupid the First Amendment is.