Has everyone forgotten that America used to do things like imprison anti-war protestors?
You fight for free speech for everyone because you may find that you are the person being targeted by the state for unpopular speech.
See my previous comment on why.
Honestly, there are many possible reasons to justify making such distinctions. The most obvious is that campuses are explicitly intended to be venues for free speech and debate among diverse views, while a bake shop is intended as a venue for the free expression of only the baker.
Compelled action, versus compelled inaction. One requires you to force someone to do labour to further a cause they disagree with, the other requires you to stand aside and not physically prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want.
Seems pretty clear cut and easy if you ask me.
Basically yes. The left has now become the war party, it’s the right that has more anti-war protestors so it’s totally cool to censor them now.
Another is that we should support democracies everywhere. This coming from the super power that has meddled with other countries and overthrown more democratically elected governments than any other.
These are really BS reasons. Why do you feel it is in the best interest of the US? Especially considering that Ukraine is way more important to Russia than it is to the West, they are willing to fight tooth and nail for it, and possibly risk nuclear war. Is it really worth it?
It doesn't have to be either or, multiple of these arguments can apply or partially apply.
> Why do you feel it is in the best interest of the US?
I mostly agree with the state department, their statement can be found here: https://www.state.gov/united-with-ukraine/
To summarize what I think is important:
- We should support sovereignty, as you said. As the US should be against slavery today though they were for it in the past, poor decisions don't make you a hypocrite when you take the correct course of action in the future.
- Ukraine is a somewhat ally of the US, though not in NATO. You support your allies.
- A weaker Russia is good for the US, especially a weaker Putin. Putin and Russia are not neutral with their actions against the US.
- Appeasement doesn't work. You may be correct that Ukraine is more important to Russia than Ukraine is to the west, but it was the same with Poland and Germany during WW2. Things change, but appeasement doesn't work. And before you say that was a long time ago, appeasement already did not work with Russia with Crimea.
- The US did win the cold war. The soviet union failed. This was much due to the same tactics being used today with Ukraine: containment and deterrence.
- Not good to encourage countries to invade each other.
"The American right's inability"
free speech !== discrimination
The argument is, as I understand it, self-expression even in the form of discrimination is protected. If it's not, then that leaves 1A venerable.
The foundation left by the Founders is complicated. Yes, sometimes that looks like hypocrisy. Similar is the left's anti-gun / pro-abortion stances.
For instance, Indiana locked up an anti-war protestor:
>The case involved an antiwar protest on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. Between 100 and 150 protesters were in the streets. The sheriff and his deputies then proceeded to clear the streets of the protestors. As the sheriff was passing Gregory Hess, one of the members of the crowd, Hess uttered, "We'll take the fucking street later" or "We'll take the fucking street again." Hess was convicted in Indiana state court of disorderly conduct.
The Supreme Court reversed Hess's conviction because Hess' statement, at worst, "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time."
In addition, Hess' speech was not directed at any particular person or group. As a result, "it cannot be said that he was advocating, in the normal sense, any action."
Secondly, your personal ethics are absolutely relevant because ethics advances by persuasion in rational debate. Everyone's views on such matters are relevant, if not persuasive.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html
2. Sometimes people will try to argue for an indirect threat of violence. E.g. that opposing trans men in female sports amounts to a call of violence because it reduces respect for trans people, which in turn increases likelihood of violence perpetrated against them. But this is a very indirect relationship. As a general rule of thumb, if someone is making a claim that some speech is probabilistically increasing violence, it's not a incitement to violence.
On a side note, since it seems to be the question of our era, what do you think the appropriate sports league for trans men would look like?
What I think is going to inevitably happen in sports is that the gender segregated (but not sex segregated) women's leagues will become dominated by trans women, and cis women will leave and form their own female-only league.
It came close to this in a British cycling race back in March: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/30/trans-cyclist-...
"The UCI's decision came amid a growing backlash from within the sport, with the Guardian understanding that a number of female riders were talking about boycotting the event in Derby because they felt that Bridges, who was on the Great Britain Academy programme as a male rider until being dropped in 2020, had an unfair advantage."
Yes, but Americans often don’t like them very much. In Germany, we routinely punish people for wanting to forcibly overthrow our government.
Easy. Speech that is hurtful aims at portraying someone as lesser compared to other people, speech that incites actual violence tells you to do something about it.
Me disagreeing with gay marriage (I would never, but let’s entertain that notion) is very different from me saying we need to forcibly imprison homosexuals as criminals.
It absolutely was a cornerstone value for American liberals in the past.
A documentary about the director of the ACLU, back before the ACLU abandoned it's principles, looks at how far the organization went to protect the speech of literal Nazis. The ACLU winning a Supreme Court case for their right to hold a public protest march was widely celebrated by those on the left.
>[The First] Amendment assures that even the most odious among us (with “odious” being the term that we apply to those we loathe, but who might view us as odious) the right to express themselves either orally, in writing, or by demonstrating or marching.
It was the freedom to march that caused a major flare-up back in the late 1970s, when members of the American Nazi Party, in uniform and bedecked with their decorative swastikas and stormtrooper boots, applied for a permit to march through the town of Skokie, Illinois...
To Glasser and the ACLU leadership, including David Goldberger, who headed the local Illinois chapter, freedom of speech is meaningless if it is not accorded across-the-board to all those along the ideological spectrum.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/10/22/mighty-ira-a...