In simple terms, some speech is beyond defense and if one finds one self defending it not purely on the grounds that it’s permitted but on the grounds that ‘perhaps it does not mean what you think it means’, then I am forced to question motive and honesty about why one would choose to do so.
Does that answer your question?
Not really. In what ways would a defense based on freedom of speech be other than honest or self-aware?
Regards,
Shodan
If it were reactionary, disingenuous, and used in the service of a terror group?
We already have rules about what terror groups can do. Isis isn’t allowed to hold rallies and raise funds for their pet causes. Why are Nazis and Klanners allowed to do so, after their well-documented history of domestic terrorism.
When you defend the indefensible on the grounds that it’s not prohibited by law, I question your motives. It’s that simple.
To use your the debating technique you’ve employed so liberally in this thread, you didn’t say Nazis were despicable. You said there are despicable people in the world – maybe including antifa, who knows. You didn’t say Nazis were assholes, you said people who run people over with cars are assholes. You didn’t say Nazis were abhorrent, you said said certain acts were abhorrent.
Until now, the only comment you made about Nazis in particular is that you “do not like them,” they were “not nice people,” and they didn’t have good ideas on improving race relations.
And on the other side, you have called people who actually get upset about Nazis to be in a state of “hysteria” and said we just shouldn’t pay so much attention to them.
Finally. Took almost as long as Trump to get that out of you.
Of course everything about the events in Charlottesville makes me sad and angry. But the story of this guy who needed to go publicly denounce his son is just crushing to me. How awful for this family, that apparently tried to raise a decent son, only to have him making jokes about throwing people in ovens. How horrible the parents must feel for their self-described silence as their son moved farther into the fascist world.
The father’s full letter can be read here: http://www.inforum.com/opinion/letters/4311880-letter-family-denounces-teffts-racist-rhetoric-and-actions
I thought it was obvious that my first use of “despicable” was directed at the Nazis. If that wasn’t clear then, I thought I further clarified it later with “… one of my early posts used that exact same word - “despicable” - in reference to the Nazis.” Did you miss that? Not understand it?
I mean, it just has to be exhausting, constantly being forced to jump in and defend the free speech rights of nazis, bigots, racists and sexists, particularly when you are in no way, shape or form a nazi, bigot, racist or sexist. Composing post after post after post, making sure these scumbags are not misunderstood, or that other posters are not jumping to ill-founded conclusions. It has to take a lot of mental energy to get over the disgust, the visceral dislike, of these people that you must completely disagree with. I feel like I should get y’all a gatorade or a protein bar. Really, you must simply be exhausted.
Why don’t you just go say what you really want to in the Pit, rather than trying to be coy about it here?
I said I was borrowing your debating technique, which has a tendency to engage in quibbles when most everyone else understands the general picture.
Infuriating, isn’t it?
Do you have the vaguest idea how often Dopers quibble / nitpick / respond pedantically to what I post on this board? It’s almost a constant. I am rarely given the benefit of the doubt or the courtesy of charitable interpretations. Is it a great surprise that I respond in kind sometimes?
ETA: my response to you wasn’t even about you doing it, but that you did it badly / inaccurately, which is why I quoted the portion of your post that I did. It appeared to be factually-deficient.
Oooooh! I didn’t realize you were covered by the “good for the goose/good for the gander” shield of debate immunity, which according the the Mornington Crescent rules of debate, means that if someone has quibbled with you, you can quibble with others for sake of giving them of dose of their own medicine, but then nobody else can quibble with you again. We need some kind of status icon to light up when someone is covered by that umbrella of protection!
Er, it wasn’t factually deficient. At all. It’s exactly like criticism of Trump’s statement on Charlottesville: if a statement is criticized, and then additional clarification is made in response to that criticism, it does not automatically become fact that the meaning original statement must include the subsequent clarification. But as I concluded my last post, you’ve finally clarified your opposition to Nazis in no uncertain terms.
But I’m still chuckling as the issue that seems to have brought you into this thread was not condemnation of white nationalists or something, but that someone had the temerity to call a picture of an AR-15 a picture of an automatic weapon, and when that poster apologized for the error, you remained kind of indignant about the apology. It’s like you were most concerned about the feelings of guns.
Meanwhile, has anyone at all heard from Sailboat?
Nope, not a peep (and I don’t think any of us blame him. He’s got more important things to attend to than keeping us updated). The only thing we’ve managed to establish on that front is that his wife was not the deceased. The extent of her injuries are still unknown to us.
No immunity at all. I’ve gotten used to people quibbling with me, and have not, in any way that I’m aware of, suggested that “nobody else can quibble with [me] again”. Did you misunderstand something again? Like I said, I had no real problem with you doing it, my complaint is just that you did it inaccurately.
If you think post #116 was intended as something resembling a sincere apology, your sarcasm meter might be broken. And no, I’m not concerned about the feelings of guns. I’m confident that no guns were harmed in the making of this thread.
Obviously, family comes first, but I have this foreboding feeling like his absence may be a sign that her injuries are serious. I truly hope that is not that case, and Sailboat, I am very much thinking about you and your wife. I hope things are alright, and if you need help from this community, you should know that there’s a lot of people who feel the same as I.
Help me understand, H-D, why you felt it necessary to make that correction (auto vs. semi) and to question whether the neo-nazis were* in fact* chanting death threats to Jews/blacks, etc.
Your other points are reasonable. This one is not. Merneith and others who have made the counter-argument have the right of it - dress like a Nazi or wield Nazi paraphernalia and I’m going to assume you think like a generic Nazi.
No one should be all that interested in the moment just what are the fine nuances of a Nazi’s Nazism. If you openly associate yourself with the genocidal, I’m just going to assume you’re genocidal and call it a day. Frankly that IS the logical position to take.
I’m a gun guy. I saw an obvious (and common) error and wanted to correct it. I don’t think I’d describe the correction as “necessary”, but I don’t think really anything that ever gets posted here, by me or anyone else, is “necessary”.
It’s very likely that the correction will accomplish nothing. Some Dopers will probably continue to make the same basic errors about firearm terminology. I suspect many of them don’t even understand the important differences in functionality that automatic and semi-automatic describe, and so they probably see the correction as more of a meaningless quibble than I do.
I don’t see it as all that different from a car guy correcting inaccurate reports about the model of the car, and while those corrections aren’t, perhaps, strictly “necessary”, I wouldn’t take issue with them if it was helping me come to a more accurate understanding.
As for the chanting post that seems to have started all my troubles here: I tried to explain my reasoning to Spice Weasel already:
If that’s not clear enough, let me know and I’ll try to clarify further.
Alex Jones: The people dressed like Nazis and protesting in Charlottesville were really Jewish actors.