If a law should apply, it should apply regardless of how people feel about following it. If the law infringes on liberty, it should be repealed.
If a law should apply, it should apply regardless of how people feel about following it. If the law infringes on liberty, it should be repealed.
Bingo. Thanks @NovaPrime.
I actually am really big on letting EVERYONE vote. If laws affect you and you are a citizen of a country, and you aren’t a very young child, you should be able to vote. Felons, teens, almost everyone.
I think teens should be able to vote on legislation that would help curb school shootings. I don’t care that their brains aren’t yet fully formed. If that’s specific to your own belief, then you can’t also think the elderly 85 year old woman with Parkinson’s being served pudding in nursing homes are cognitively more capable or whose vote is more valid than that of a 14 year old who rides their bike to and from school every day. I think felons should be able to vote on principle. Nelson Mandela was locked away for 20 years by his political enemies. If your political enemies can take away your right to vote through imprisonment, then they certainly will. The only recourse is allowing all to vote. Otherwise eventually there is no legal means of removing someone willing to lock up you and all others who support the same causes you do.
I’m all for requirements for doing things that - if done irresponsibly - harm others at a mass level. Like driver’s licenses. Like flying a plane. Like buying a gun. We should have the same gun purchasing requirements that countries like Japan have. But you shouldn’t have to - say - “pray to God” before being allowed to have a driver’s license. There’s no scientific reason anyone could legitimately prove why that would need to be done that would somehow result in a better outcome for society.
Voting, done irresponsibly, harms others at a mass level. Take, for example, Trump cultists.
Speech, done irresponsibly, harms others at a mass level. Take, for example, Stormfront.
Religion, done at all, harms others at a mass level. Toke, for example, every goddamned one of them.
You’re doing the Thor Hammer elevator argument. Determining where the line for responsibility falls is not a perfectly clear argument.
Taking away voting overall harms at a more massive level. Making requirements for voting provides far too easy a method for despots to remove who they want from polls.
There is no free speech in an absolute sense - not in the U.S. or really anywhere else. In the US, we DO have laws that regulate speech already to a degree where mass harm is (hopefully) prevented - hence yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is usually not ok to do. And even where it isn’t “regulated” - there are none-the-less real world “consequences” for many violations of speech norms. Calling someone the “n-word” is a great way to lose your job, get punched, etc.
…And I think we might agree on religion. 😅
Debatable. I think that most people want a tyrant as a ruler, as long as that tyrant that does what they believe is just/fair. That’s why Trump cultists support Trump; he was hurting the people they wanted to hurt, and the rule of law was irrelevant to them. Hitler and Mussolini both gained power through elections, so I don’t you can safely say that voting is always the lesser of two evils.
Likewise, dictators aren’t necessarily harmful, although they often are. But it’s not requirement. You could argue that it would be authoritarian to forbid people from deadnaming people, using racial slurs, or otherwise being assholes, and it would be. But it would be pursuant to a greater good, i.e., letting marginalized people feel safe®.
Not really. The ‘fire in a crowded theater’ is a myth, and it was a non-binding opinion that supported the idea that opposition to the draft (in WWI) was not protected speech. That decision was largely overturned by Brandenburg; the superceding decision said that speech was not lawful if it incited to imminent unlawful action. Lying for political gain is absolutely covered by 1A rights; look at George Santos. He’s going to get in trouble for fraud and campaign finance violations, not all of the lies he told to get elected. Or MJT, the pedophile Matt Gaetz, Barbie Boebert, etc.
Fraud is illegal. Defamation (slander, libel) are covered under tort law, and are not criminal. Keep in mind that all the harmful things repeated by Fox talking heads about the election and Dominion Voting Systems was not criminal, despite the harms they did to society; that’s why it required a law suit instead of DoJ involvement.
Obscenity is illegal presumably because the creation of obscene materials requires real harm being done to someone or some thing. (Although there was the case of Boiled Angel, but that was likely a loss for the artist because he couldn’t afford to fight it in right-wing courts.)
You’ve just hit the critical distinction. It’s legal to call someone a racial slur, but it’s not socially acceptable. (Nor should it be!) My workplace can absolutely tell me that I can’t carry a gun when I’m on the job, and if I violate that rule, they’ll fire me. If I pull a gun on someone while I’m on the job, I’ll get fired, and if I’m not legally justified in doing so, I’ll also lose my carry permit and be criminally prosecuted.
The distinction here is what the gov’t can dictate, and what a private group can dictate. Facebook can censor your speech because–rightly or wrongly–they own the platform that you’re using for speech; the gov’t can not. (Fun fact: a gov’t official using an official gov’t account on Twitter or Facebook generally can’t ban you from interacting with that page, because that would be gov’t censorship.)