For anyone interested, here is an update on Sailboat’s wife’s condition (recovering and tentatively expected to recover fully).
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20414475&postcount=37
The Army won’t be specific, but confirms he was “released from active duty due to a failure to meet training standards.”
How many more do *you *think are the more-genteel type of racists, who do think terrorism is associated with Muslims who need to be kept out “until we figure out what’s going on”, and who do support a wall to keep out the illegal Mexicans, and who do think blacks shot by cops probably deserved it, and so forth? You don’t have to wear khakis and a white polo shirt and a MAGA hat, and carry a tiki torch from Pier One while chanting “Heil Trump!” to be deplorable.
Given Trump’s conduct since becoming PotUS, you have to do some serious soul searching if you still count yourself among his shrinking base of supporters. And no, you can’t continue to use the excuse that you only support him because he is more likely to accomplish tax, immigration or trade policies you agree with. No, he isn’t. And I think you know that. Trumps base is like a salt solution. The more it evaporates, the more concentrated and corrosive the deplorables become.
This is what would and should happen in a good society, IMO. White supremacists can feel free to play video games and be white supremacists. But no other service is required to offer a venue for white supremacists to spout their hateful rhetoric. If white supremacists want to start their own video game service (or other service) that allows such rhetoric, they are allowed to do so.
IMO, the same goes for (privately owned) web-hosting services, radio and TV stations, cake bakers (whould should be required to sell cakes to anyone, including gay couples and white people, but not required to write messages they find distasteful, whether in favor of gay marriage, blasphemy, or segregation), billboard companies, etc.
It’s so nice to see liberals turn libertarian all of a sudden. I just hope this sentiment of “a business should be able to refuse service to anyone they want” holds in all other cases as well, and I will applaud your sentiments.
By the way, the comparison with cake bakers you gave is invalid. The equivalent would be bakers selling cakes that people later write on. So if a baker refused to sell the cake to a gay couple, contending that they would write distasteful messages on it - that would be similar.
I never said “a business should be able to refuse service to anyone they want”. If you want to respond to what I actually said, please read and try again.
Discord banned groups and individuals because things they said violated their terms of service. They just looked a lot closer in the last few days.
So the comparison is fine – bakers can’t turn away a gay couple, but they can have rules that they don’t write gay messages on cakes. So the gay couple can get a cake, with a non-political message (say, “Congratulations to Pat and Leslie”), but the baker doesn’t have to write “Congratulations to the super-gay Pat and Leslie” if they don’t want to.
Again, wrong analogy. The correct one would be - the baker has the rule that no one can write “gay messages” on their cakes. If a gay couple buys one, and writes a “gay message” on it, then the baker will refuse service to the gay couple from now on.
I’m fine with that (and with Discord, and with GoDaddy), since I think businesses should be able to refuse service to whoever they want.
The correct analogy would be no one can write “gay messages” on their cakes and display those cakes in the baker’s window.
I suspect this internet debacle will raise a number of thorny issues about free speech as it pertains to the web. I honestly am not sure what to think. Obviously, I don’t want hateful messages to proliferate, and these assholes need to be sent a message in some way. Of course, it will only feed into their persecution complex. I want to say businesses should have the right to discriminate against anyone who damages their brand - so Fox news can discriminate against liberal advertisements, for example. But that shouldn’t hold true for bigotry against minorities. But how do we define bigotry and how do we define minorities? It’s hard to think of a categorical rule to apply fairly.
The KKK is the easy case since they advocate violence. But there are harder cases with a lot more gray area.
That doesn’t follow. Cake-buyers don’t buy cakes and write messages on them in front of bakers. If they do it themselves, they take it home and do it there, not in discourse with other cake buyers.
I’m fine with this within the limitations of the Civil Rights Act, due to the long history of sundown towns in America.
Yes, this puts it better than I did.
The “free speech” as it pertains to the web is an issue when you are talking about censoring what you can access. Like China does.
It is not an issue when a service provider doesn’t allow someone to use his service to promote views he doesn’t like. Like when SDMB bans people.
The great thing about the internet is that if someone refuses you service, you can find it always somewhere else. Even if every host in the United States refused you service, you could always get it from a foreign company.
Yeah, I know it’s not free speech in the legal sense, but I’m thinking more of a “tyranny of majority” kind of thing. I guess I’m interested in the ethics involved.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
The 82nd Airborne has disavowed the Nazi who was wearing their hat.
I think we’ve already got the framework. We just use discrimination (i.e. refusing service in part or whole) and the suspect classes. All then we need to do is keep adding to the classes anything that is an immutable characteristic of a person. So we throw in sexuality and trans status and disability and so on.
A list for what should count as a suspect class is given on Wikipedia, and I think it’s a good start:
[ul]
[li]The group has historically been discriminated against or have been subject to prejudice, hostility, or stigma, perhaps due, at least in part, to stereotypes.[/li][li]They possess an immutable or highly visible trait.[/li][li]They are powerless to protect themselves via the political process. (The group is a “discrete” and “insular” minority.)[/li][li]The group’s distinguishing characteristic does not inhibit it from contributing meaningfully to society.[/li][/ul]
Holy shit.
I’m having difficulty copying a direct link to the video but it’s on the page if you want to see it.
To be clear, you oppose Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Some of the comments are far more shocking than that footage. I can’t help but wonder how many of them are sincere and how many are just trolling for reaction. Either way it’s depressing.
Useful video from the New York Times about the symbols displayed by the various far-right groups present at the gathering, and their meaning.
It’s true, most people who voted for Trump aren’t white supremacists. Most of them are just stupid.
However, Trump ran a campaign entirely rooted in bigotry, sexism, hate speech and intolerance, mostly against Hispanics and Muslims. He may not have directly courted the KKK and its offshoots, but he didn’t turn his back on them either. It’s safe to assume that the vast majority of white supremacists in this country did vote for him, instead of a DEMOCRAT WOMAN (gasp!)
And while the true number of hardcore American racists may be small, they were just enough to give Trump that razor-thin victory without even winning the popular vote. Trump knows that fact full well, hence his mealy-mouthed statement about “violence on all sides” instead of specifically condemning them, as he should have.