Marginalized people will always be victimized for speech no matter what so no matter how powerful the first amendment is it will only ever protect the most powerful people from consequences Because go figure it was born out of slave economy enlightenment ideals
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @brightstrangely and
Eeeenh The First Amendment itself originally only applied to federal law It was up to the states whether they wanted to put similar protections in their own constitutions - northern states typically did and southern states didn't, in order to specifically ban abolitionism
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
The most famous flagrant violation of the First Amendment was John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, sure But those were much more short-lived than most Southern states having official legislation against abolitionist newspapers
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Hell during Jim Crow it was actually illegal in Mississippi to even advocate for equality, as I recall. Free speech, like many constitutional rights, is a wonderful thing, but liberal discourse around it is trying to *avoid having to take a side* on ideological correctness
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Replying to @loudpenitent @Nymphomachy and
Well sure but it isn't actually a closed question over whether these "meta" debates over legal principles are completely meaningless
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
If you really believe that laws are never enforced for the benefit of the marginalized and are always enforced for the benefit of the rulers then it doesn't matter what the law says one way or the other does it It could say anything at all
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
But most of us do think that, cynical Foucauldians as we may be, it makes a difference whether we live in a country that says freedom of speech is a universal right and one that says the state has a sovereign right to prevent and punish all forms of sedition
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Lots of Chinese people fighting hard for the prize of US citizenship and the various guarantees that come with it, even at the potential cost of renouncing their PRC citizenship Not a lot of people going the other direction
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
(There's a lot of people who want to *live* in China but not a single one of them, whatever their ethnicity, has applied to gain PRC citizenship at the cost of renouncing their US or Canadian or Australian citizenship It's not a thing that happens)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Sorry if this sounds conservative but Orwell, who got attacked a lot for being a Red Tory for this attitude, nonetheless was fond of challenging his fellow socialists in the 1930s "If Hitler invades Britain are you personally going to flee to New York or to Moscow"
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And got really annoyed at how elaborately people ended up trying to avoid directly answering this question
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
I mean I realize my take here is intemperate and probably not useful but idk I fundamentally don't accept that the existence of Fox News et al is some inevitable pillar of a world that maximizes the nourishment of my well-being and that doing anything about it would imprison me
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @loudpenitent and
Yeah but Fox News' existence is the contingent result of a lot of factors in our society, not just the existence of the First Amendment Repealing it wouldn't let you just wave a magic wand and ban it either
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