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Author Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread  (Read 1285764 times)

Strife26

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9690 on: March 26, 2015, 02:51:14 pm »

I suppose that I'll be a black sheep and say that I've got no problem with a Indiana's law. A private business owner should have the right to refuse service to someone for whatever damn reason he chooses, be it gender, intoxication level, or choice of payment. No one is going to starve because of intolerant business owners, especially with public concern and the free market both pointing the other direction.


Freedom to run  business trumps the concern of equal access to non-public services.
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Angle

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9691 on: March 26, 2015, 02:53:26 pm »

Sure, though I might pass a law requiring them to clearly state what sorts of discrimination they engage in, so that people can know what sort of business they're supporting.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9692 on: March 26, 2015, 03:19:37 pm »

And the problem is that Americans are too finicky about their sacred constitution to make it comply with the UDHR? I know that it is a problem, but I cannot understand why it should be a problem. :(     
You realize that pretty much nobody complies with the UDHR, right? Because nobody does. It was a document drafted in the post-war idealism glow of crushing the Nazis (and the drafting committee was headed by Elenore Roosevelt, for the record). And also, the primary purpose of the UDHR was to create a document that showed what "human rights" were. Before that point it was fairly vague and rarely used as a rhetorical device.

Don't get all up on me about the constitution. Without it America would long since be lost to a horrific alternative.
A lot of people in America already view the UN as an imposing world government. Changing the Constitution because of them would be letting not just big government win, but the biggest government.
Let's not be dishonest here, most anti-UN people in America (I would say rightfully) understand that the organization is on the near-side of useless, and occasionally clusterfucks everything into being worse *coughPeacekeeperSexSlaveRingcough*. The world government loonies are rare by comparison.
A No discrimination based on political opinion for example could mean Germany would have to stop throwing Holocaust deniers in jail, which we hopefully all agree is an understandable course of action given our history.
Disagree. Strongly. Germany's complex about Nazis may be understandable, but that doesn't make it right.
Quote
More generally, any corrosive and intolerable political opinion would have to go unsilenced, even those calling for direct action against state and society or against segments of the population.
Ah yes, "corrosive and intolerable". Sure, it's racists today, and since racists aren't people it hardly matters if they're silenced, but I wonder whom it will be tomorrow whom the state puts on the chopping block. It has no right to wield that power, not for any purpose. Violence is another matter, but speaking is quite another.

You're reminding me strongly of the Christian right in America here, they also have a tendency to say that certain messages have no right to exist because they're contrary to the national purpose.
That way you'll only achieve a muffling of those voices, to stretch the metaphor a bit. But some people shouldn't even be given the opportunity to become active politically.
Because only the hard power of jailing all those whom stray into extremism does the job. You're already clearly not able to do that, what with the number of neo-Nazis in Germany and the existence of the NPD. Frankly, you're making them stronger. The whole rhetoric of fascism is based on retribution of enemies of the people keeping them from their true potential. I wonder who's filling that enemy role these days, for the European right to be steamrolling so well...

It's not immigrants, not really. They just say that to get people riled up. It's the oh-so well meaning state apparatuses deciding they really can tell people what to think because they're social/liberal democracies and not fascist dictatorships. It's for their own good, after all.
I suppose that I'll be a black sheep and say that I've got no problem with a Indiana's law. A private business owner should have the right to refuse service to someone for whatever damn reason he chooses, be it gender, intoxication level, or choice of payment. No one is going to starve because of intolerant business owners, especially with public concern and the free market both pointing the other direction.


Freedom to run  business trumps the concern of equal access to non-public services.
Two counters to this. Firstly, the public concern/free market argument is already clearly untrue, since it was Southern business owners who most strongly fought for segregation even though they had the most money to lose from it as they lived in the locale with the greatest number of black people. Ideology comes before profit (and occasionally the two synergize, hence the businesses with "Segregation Forever" posters outside to rile up white customers).

Secondly, we live in a capitalist society. These non-public services make up almost the whole of our society. So yes, being denied service in that way is harmful. You don't need to starve, you just need to get the message that you're unwanted and constantly have your life disrupted because of the hatreds of other people. In a society like ours, when you open a business, you are making yourself a provider of our society. You get profit, sure, but the role comes with responsibilities. Just as you can't rightfully serve rotten meat because you're a private restaurant, you can't not serve people based on your personal biases which are divorced from business logic.

If we are going to be capitalists, we should at least actually be capitalists and not capitalists-unless-inconvenient.
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Leafsnail

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9693 on: March 26, 2015, 03:23:30 pm »

I suppose that I'll be a black sheep and say that I've got no problem with a Indiana's law. A private business owner should have the right to refuse service to someone for whatever damn reason he chooses, be it gender, intoxication level, or choice of payment. No one is going to starve because of intolerant business owners, especially with public concern and the free market both pointing the other direction.


Freedom to run  business trumps the concern of equal access to non-public services.
So you would have supported white-only businesses in the 60s?

There are pretty obvious reasons why allowing businesses to do this is a terrible idea - it creates de facto second class citizens.  The rights of people to participate in society trumps your right to express your bigotry.
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Urist Imiknorris

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9694 on: March 26, 2015, 03:26:11 pm »

*coughPeacekeeperSexSlaveRingcough*
Wait, what the hell?
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9695 on: March 26, 2015, 03:26:57 pm »

There might be some interesting semantic confusion going on around here...
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, "discrimination" is either (1) "unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people" or (2) "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another." What I meant by "discrimination" was limited to the first sense of the word.     

We have to discriminate between, for example, members of the military and civilians as part of determining whether or not a shooting was murder or an act of war.
In this example, it is entirely justifiable that the two categories of people receive an unequal legal treatment. There is absolutely no reason why this type of "discrimination" should or could be avoided, and that was not what I had in mind. I am woefully ignorant about legal matters, but my general idea was that it should be strictly unconstitutional to pass any law which places any group of people on an unequal footing with others -- without a just cause. That way, there would be less state-level wrangling over protected classes and less conservative abuses of law (?).

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MetalSlimeHunt

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Quote from: Thomas Paine
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9697 on: March 26, 2015, 03:49:39 pm »

You realize that pretty much nobody complies with the UDHR, right? Because nobody does. It was a document drafted in the post-war idealism glow of crushing the Nazis (and the drafting committee was headed by Elenore Roosevelt, for the record). And also, the primary purpose of the UDHR was to create a document that showed what "human rights" were. Before that point it was fairly vague and rarely used as a rhetorical device.
The only constitution that I am familiar with is the Finnish one, so I might as well quote some of it:
(but I'm not saying it's "better than others," mind you!!)
Quote from: Constitution of Finland
Section 6

Equality

Everyone is equal before the law.

No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age,
origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.
...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is fairly "compliant" with the UDHR, and the bit about any other reason that concerns one's person is a particularly nice addition. (How well the law is respected in practice is another matter entirely, by the way.)   
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Bauglir

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9698 on: March 26, 2015, 03:59:31 pm »

it should be strictly unconstitutional to pass any law which places any group of people on an unequal footing with others -- without a just cause. That way, there would be less state-level wrangling over protected classes and less conservative abuses of law (?).
Okay. It is unconstitutional to do that. Protected classes aren't a concept relevant to how the law treats people - they compel entities other than the government to refrain from discrimination on the grounds of people belonging to that class.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9699 on: March 26, 2015, 04:07:24 pm »

But if discrimination against a protected class is a crime while discrimination against a non-protected class isn't, can you really say that the concept isn't relevant to how the law treats people?
Sorry about being thick and non-American. :-[

No discrimination based on political opinion for example could mean Germany would have to stop throwing Holocaust deniers in jail, which we hopefully all agree is an understandable course of action given our history. More generally, any corrosive and intolerable political opinion would have to go unsilenced, even those calling for direct action against state and society or against segments of the population.
Eh? Those people are guilty of hate crime, which is a perfectly acceptable reason to "discriminate" against them by throwing them in jail. There is no inequality before the law, because the law states that injuring others is a crime. Captain Obvious to the rescue!
Besides, I don't see how being a sick fuck is in any way comparable to ethnicity or sexual orientation.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2015, 04:23:36 pm by surqimus »
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Bauglir

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9700 on: March 26, 2015, 04:30:45 pm »

But if discrimination against a protected class is a crime while discrimination against a non-protected class isn't, can you really say that the concept isn't relevant to how the law treats people?
Sorry about being thick and non-American. :-[
I can, yes. The alternative is inane - the law would create a legal obligation for each person to explain why they treat people differently. Wanna fuck your wife? First you gotta explain to a judge why you don't want to fuck your brother-in-law. It's impossible to create an exhaustive whitelist of permissible distinctions, because at some point you're going to get down to personal life experience and "I just don't like the guy" is both a poor legal argument, and a perfectly valid reason for not inviting somebody to your wedding. The only reason the law can be held to a higher standard is because it's both finite and subject to judicial review, and the reason it should be held to a higher standard is because of the vast power government wields over a person's daily life.

Technically, I guess there is relevance. But I don't think that level of hair-splitting is what people really mean when they talk about equitable treatment.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
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i2amroy

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9701 on: March 26, 2015, 04:43:13 pm »

Note: At first glance it might seem like I'm saying something vastly abhorrent to some. Please read the whole statement I'm making before you begin throwing rotten fruit at me. :P

Personally, no offense to anyone here, but I don't see much problem with people saying that they deny the holocaust. (I agree that the instant they try to do something other than just saying things about it, it is a problem though, and should be punished accordingly.) It's one of those things where I might not agree in the slightest with what you are saying, but I'd agree with your right to say it. Note: That is not to say that if they call other people liars and whatnot that that slander is ok, but rather that if they were to say something like "I don't believe the holocaust happened" I'd see no problem with them making that statement.

I mean we have people out there who hold the belief that the world was created in seven 24-hour periods despite all evidence science and history has to the contrary, and we've certainly managed to get along with them for hundreds of years. There's people out there who believe the world is flat, and everything they've seen with their eyes that shows otherwise is a trick, and we get along with them ok. I don't see why we can't get along with people who hold beliefs that a particular large historical event didn't happen despite all evidence to the contrary.

Again I'd like to note that the instant they cross into libel, slander, or active discrimination against a group that that is no longer okay, and as such should be persecuted appropriately. But just the fact that someone says something does or doesn't exist, or happened or didn't happen shouldn't be a reason to punish them. IMO no voice deserves to be "silenced" by force, regardless of how "wrong" or "abhorrent" they are, as long as they don't actually act on what they are saying or focus that voice as a weapon. Freedom of speech is a rather important thing, after all, and what one group considers "wrong" might not necessarily fit in with what another group does.
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misko27

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9702 on: March 26, 2015, 05:04:32 pm »

the drafting committee was headed by Elenore Roosevelt, for the record). ...
Elenore?
... we've certainly managed to get along with them for hundreds of years...
This is very oddly phrased. Who is we? When did this start? You speak as if your view has been a majority for much longer than it has even existed.

Let me open my devil's advocate argument: Vaccers. The Anti-vaccination movement. They are a menace to society and at no point should their views be tolerated. Merely by speaking, and thus spreading their misinformation, they are planting seeds of doubt into that one person out of a thousand who is ready for it. And if they decide not to vaccinate their kid, and that kid gets sick, what then? What if a hundred parents do it? A thousand? It's worse than teaching kids that the earth is 6000 years old: there may well be dead children because of something some idiot says, and the potential for more. I'm not arguing of course for legal blocks, but isn't any suppression of their views that occur because of societies general disgust towards them and their ideologies a positive outcome?

Basically, what happens if even pure speech is actively harming people?
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martinuzz

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9703 on: March 26, 2015, 05:22:32 pm »

Being descendant of holocaust survivors myself, I still agree with Noam Chomsky when he says that "if we don't believe in freedom of expression for people whose views we despise, we don't believe in it at all".
I would defend anyone's right to deny the holocaust (although I would debate the view itself), even though it killed most of my ancestral lineage. There is enough evidence to prove them wrong in academic debate, no need to silence them by law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19801011.htm
« Last Edit: March 26, 2015, 05:26:57 pm by martinuzz »
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i2amroy

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #9704 on: March 26, 2015, 05:29:38 pm »

This is very oddly phrased. Who is we? When did this start? You speak as if your view has been a majority for much longer than it has even existed.

Let me open my devil's advocate argument: Vaccers. The Anti-vaccination movement. They are a menace to society and at no point should their views be tolerated. Merely by speaking, and thus spreading their misinformation, they are planting seeds of doubt into that one person out of a thousand who is ready for it. And if they decide not to vaccinate their kid, and that kid gets sick, what then? What if a hundred parents do it? A thousand? It's worse than teaching kids that the earth is 6000 years old: there may well be dead children because of something some idiot says, and the potential for more. I'm not arguing of course for legal blocks, but isn't any suppression of their views that occur because of societies general disgust towards them and their ideologies a positive outcome?

Basically, what happens if even pure speech is actively harming people?
I was referring to the fact that scientists in general have not particularly taken the "stamp out the christians" viewpoint despite the fact that the idea of an actual creation of the earth in 7 literal days declined and died in the scientific community around the 1700's. With the exception of a few notable rabids (which would be present in any community) the main viewpoint has been "just wait, sooner or later they'll come around to the fact that our method works and we have evidence supporting it" as opposed to "kill the nonbelievers!".

As for anti-vaccers, I'd say that passing laws mandating vaccination and punishing those that do not have their children vaccinated is certainly a viable option, but just punishing them because their opinion on something doesn't agree with the majority (regardless of if it contradicts scientific facts), isn't a viable one. Even in your example it's not their opinions that are actively harming people, it's the people that actually fail to vaccinate their children that are directly causing the harm.

In short, laws should be passed based on facts, but you should be free to hold whatever opinion you want. If an anti-vaccer gets thrown in jail, it shouldn't be because they stated that they didn't think that vaccination was required, it should be because they failed to get somebody vaccinated. The problem we run into nowadays is mainly that many of our laws don't get passed on facts, they get passed on misinformation. If the people making laws are ensured to be informed correctly (which is what the committee design is at least supposed to be doing, regardless of the fact that it often fails miserably in doing so), then whether misinformation is spread around in the populace becomes irrelevant, because the laws aren't being passed on public opinion's of misinformation, they're being passed on the known laws of science.
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