this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Bro you're thinking way too hard it's literally just saying don't be a bigot
Pretending that you can't specifically outlaw explicitly violent and hateful bigotry without someone else outlawing your own peaceful ideology is the mother of all slippery slope fallacies and is almost exclusively trotted out by people who agree with a lot of the ideology of the bigots.
There's nobody forcing us to go down any "bad path" just because we protect minorities from extremists. Just like there's NOT always two valid sides to an issue (see for example flat earthers, young earth creationists and other science deniers), you don't have to ban democracy in order to ban fascism.
People conflate "ban bad actions" and "ban speech" when discussing tolerance; separating those is important. We should ABSOLUTELY ban violence and refuse to acknowledge laws and systems that advocate for those things. We should be both vocal and active in our rejections.
Speech is a separate issue. As stupid as antivaxxers are, as hateful as TERFs are, I don't want government telling them they can't speak. Any law we pass, we should ask ourselves how it might be abused by a bad actor. Better, at least to me, is to out and ruin anyone who expresses hateful, bigoted views.
To be clear, free speech does NOT protect from social consequence. Let them speak. Let them be ostracized, ridiculed, and demeaned for their hateful speech. Use your own free speech to ensure there are 10 voices of reason for every "loving" Christofacist telling them exactly what we took our stance for in 1865 and 1944. All humans are equal. All humans deserve life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and every soapbox is at once a platform and a social noose.
100% agree, and this is where I come out. Speak your mind as a fascist and get wrecked with social censure.
try explaining that to eg. the terfs
If I had a dollar for every time I've argued with terfs about the stupidest of misconceptions, I'd probably buy a house..
Someone hasn't been paying attention to all the laws deliberately victimising and discriminating against racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, poor people, unemployed people and all immigrants (not just the undocumented ones) coming out of Congress, the white house and the states for the last 250 or so years 🙄
'For the last 250 years" means continuously, not that it stopped 250 years ago.
As for current laws which support racial discrimination? gestures towards the entirety of the "justice" and voting systems
Here's an overview article
Tbf, anyone claiming that every sector of state and federal level American governance isn't dripping with systemic racism and other discrimination is either arguing in bad faith, wilfully ignorant or an idiot. I have a feeling you might be the trifecta.
You cannot have equality for everyone if you allow intolerance to exist. You have to be intolerant to the intolerant in order to preserve a tolerant society.
Equality for everyone requires the suppression of those who would take away that equality, otherwise you eventually lose equality for everyone. This is similar to how maximizing freedom for everyone requires restricting your individual freedom to harm others, because in doing so you remove their freedoms. Your individual freedom is less, but the total amount of freedom in the system is greater for it.
Furthermore, it is not a moral failing, or even a difficult moral quandary, to suppress people for their actions and choices. We do it all the time to murderers and other criminals, or even people who don't shower. This can be done in multiple ways, including ways that do not involve state power. We frequently use social means to suppress people, for good or bad. A society simply works that way. And if they don't like it, they can simply choose to stop trying to take away equality; I cannot similarly choose to stop being the kind of person they want to take equality away from.
To protect equality we must win every fight; to lose it, they need only win once. Everybody is protected by equality so long as they believe in it. I do not believe that those who do not believe in equality should be extended its benefits, for they will seek to destroy it from within like a parasite.
Now hold on. Nobody said not tolerating meant suppressing. It means opposing.
That.... that's bigot rhetoric, and is full circle to the issue here. "You can't call me out for using the N word because MAH FREE SPEACH"
I agree with you about free speech -- and I would also argue that it extends to forums wanting freedom to choose what they contain.
There's always other forums. Private forums controlling their content isn't silencing. That's not how it works.
You're trying to tie a different issue to the discussion here and it's simply non sequitur.
We're not talking about restricting speech at a legal level, we're talking about opposing bad speech with good speech or by cultivating private fora where good speech is encouraged and bad speech discouraged.
You literally jumped down the pitfall of the rhetoric of the bigoted folks that I alluded to. Excellent aim, wrong target.
I'm intolerant of beliefs that harm people. That's the line. If what you want to do or what you believe harms another person, it shouldn't be tolerated.
Any action or inaction that physically, financially, or mentally damages another human being through malice or negligence.
In a democracy? The people.
If you believe hurting a group of people, for any reason, is righteous you're more likely to commit crimes against that group. If we're going to start talking about slippery slopes, let's talk about the slippery slope of allowing hate to take root and spread in any society and how that's turned out in the past.
I thought the article did a pretty good job of addressing those points