A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by orf on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:20PM (#17211377)

Couple of thousand fines in a city of 8,700,000 seems sensible to me.

Not everyone values free speech quite as highly as the USA. It's important, sure, but it's not live or die. There are limits and spreading vile hate speech is one of them.

I also like the complete focus on the free speech aspect, completely ignoring the "we actually deal with racists here" aspect. How narrow minded.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by seibelj on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:40PM (#17211518)

“Vile hate speech” can cut both ways unfortunately. Both of us agree that racism is a bad thing. But the American South during Jim Crow declared progressive speech as “hate speech” and tried to ban it.[0] So it’s better to not empower the government to decide what is hate and what isn’t, or you may elect a government that decides what you say is hate speech.

[0] “As we have seen, during the days of slavery and later segregation, laws suppressing free speech were often aimed at abolitionists and civil rights advocates, not at slave owners or Jim Crow advocates. This reflected social and political power in local states and communities where attitudes towards race were very different than today.“ https://www.hoover.org/research/harm-hate-speech-laws

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by orf on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:51PM (#17211574)

> So it’s better to not empower the government to decide what is hate and what isn’t

The government cannot just arbitrarily expand hate speech to include something which is patently not hate speech. The courts would not uphold it, neither would the judiciary or the public at large.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by abstrakraft on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:20PM (#17211712)

10 years ago, I would have argued the same about the gov't just arbitrarily expanding asset seizure laws, but here we are.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by stordoff on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:28PM (#17211759)

If they made it law (which strictly speaking requires parliament, not the government), the courts _would_ uphold it.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by steve_musk on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:44PM (#17211843)

Unless you get an extreme president who stacks the courts with extreme judges...

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by mlazos on Saturday June 02, 2018 @03:15AM (#17213225)

So I would agree except judges are even elected in some places in the south. The judiciary is not always insular.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by core-questions on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:40PM (#17211509)

Let's keep in mind here that there are many definitions of hate speech. In Canada, it's carefully defined as speech that actually incites people to a criminal act - so racism or other "vile speech" on its own doesn't qualify, you have to be actively making a credible threat or incitement to have others commit real actions.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by refurb on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:43PM (#17211529)

Couple of thousand fines in a city of 8,700,000 seems sensible to me.

As someone who values free speech, even one fine is abhorrent.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by orf on Friday June 01, 2018 @07:45PM (#17211534)

Do you speak for all people who value free speech?

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by DuskStar on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:27PM (#17211754)

I think that by his (and my) definition of "people who value free speech", yes he does - because that is a part of the definition.

Everyone values speech they like. Valuing Free Speech means valuing the speech you don't like, too.

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