Stephen T. Stone 's Techdirt Comments
Latest Comments (26960)
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On the post: Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2025 @ 02:45pmPsst. You can find articles and books on organizing, be it for political protests or building community, all over the Internet. I suggest starting with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s “On Organizing” and go from there. Seek out, first and foremost, articles and books written by women, queer people, and people of color—not to say that men, cishet people, and white people aren’t knowledgable on such matters, but they’ve rarely faced the kind of oppression that marginalized communities have faced, so it’s people from such communities that you’ll want to give your attention. -
On the post: Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2025 @ 01:13pmI’ve made my position clear on the matter, but I’ll do it again so it’s on the record. Violence in the name of a political cause should always be the absolute last resort—the option to be used when all other non-violent methods of affecting sociopolitical change have failed, become unavailable, or been exposed as preëmptively ineffective. In such cases, violence should remain non-lethal until lethal force becomes the only option left on the table. None of this is to say that I believe physical resistance is completely off the table. I have no problem with people fighting back against ICE agents and other such acts of self-defense. But if we’re talking about the indiscriminate mass murder of ICE agents or Republican lawmakers or whoever else is deemed an “enemy”? Yeah, no, I’m not signing on to that shit. Yes, an interpretive dance protest—which happened months ago and would’ve gone unnoticed by everyone else here if not for a certain someone bringing it up over and over and over again as if it were happening every hour of every day and was the only form of resistance happening in this country—will be ineffective. That still beats picking up an AK and trying to mow down a bunch of people before catching a bullet to the brain. Ain’t no use in being a martyr because you’ll still be fucking dead.
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On the post: Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2025 @ 01:01pmExtreme inequality is the price we pay for freedom, and I thought you were all about that.
No, I’m not. Maybe stop assuming facts not in evidence, especially when I’ve made my feelings about wealth inequality and billionaires known on this site for a good long while.you argued the well-funded, industrialized flooding of of America with misinformation and vilification around topics … is all completely acceptable collateral to you
oh ooooooooooooooooooooooooh so you’re gonna be a sassy little smartass about this, okay For all the good that banning Fox News from the airwaves would do, you can’t guarantee that any law designed to that would prevent a future government administration from going after MSNBC or CNN—or changing the rules so Fox News can come back. That level of power cannot be trusted in the hands of any government (but especially the hands of Republicans), which is why the government shouldn’t have that power. That reason alone is the only reason I stand against any kind of law or idea for a law—e.g., a “harmful lies” law—that would seek to censor Fox News. Do I like that such a position means Fox News can continue its bullshit effectively unabated? No. Do I like the idea of giving the government enough power to make Fox News either express government-approved speech or go off the air? Also no. I said it before on a different article, but I’ll repeat it here: Please don’t think I’m trying to be an asshole without a reason. I understand how you feel about Fox News. Deep down, I feel the same way. But I can’t and won’t believe that giving our government the power to shut down Fox News (or MSNBC) is the correct solution to the problem. Once the government has such power, it won’t easily give up that power—especially if the GOP is the party that gets that power first.in your mind, at least when it comes to speech … it’s either absolute freedom or absolute tyranny; you made it clear you cannot accept arguments that any acceptable balance points exist anywhere inbetween.
Funny how you mention “balance”. Tell me, what’s the balance between Fox News being allowed to continue unabated and Fox News being forced to shut down? Is it “the government gets to tell Fox News exactly what to say and how to say it”? Because if any such law against “harmful lies” ever goes into effect, Fox News wouldn’t be the only outlet affected by it. You know that’s the truth. I know that’s the truth. Rather than see government control of the media as a bad thing, you’re willing to sacrifice a free press so you can silence Fox News. And you think that’s actually better than my position?the real harms happening now, inflicted by the status quo, will never outweigh the potential harms in some possible future caused by change
If there were a way to stop those real harms right now without also risking all those potential harms in the future, I’d sign right on to that. But there isn’t. You’re talking about giving the government a power of censorship—a level of control over free speech—that I can’t, don’t, and won’t ever believe the government should have. I mean, consider the following: If the Trump administration had that power, it could decide that this site is telling “harmful lies” about Trump and his cronies. Sure, Techdirt might win in a legal battle, but that could take months or even years to resolve—and the site would likely either go offline or stop posting new content in the time between. How eager are you to let the power that would stop your ideological enemies fall into the hands of those same enemies and let them silence your allies? That is a question I haven’t seen you come close to answering. Maybe you’re incapable of answering, since all you do is focus on trying to bring down Fox News even if it means putting other people’s free speech rights—yours, mine, Techdirt’s—at risk of being violated or annihilated.How many of those ultimately monstrous campaigns would your adamantine principle of “absolute free speech always regardless of cost” have hindered, even slightly? Hell, how does your stance not help such disasters happen?
My position is neither popular nor widely accepted. Yes, banning Fox News’s brand of bullshit from the airwaves or punishing bigoted speech with jail time would feel pretty goddamn good. But as I said elsewhere, swinging the pendulum one way means it’ll swing back the other way unless you have a plan to stop that swingback. Not once have you said that your idea has such a plan. Please don’t think that I like being in this position. Fox News is a blight upon this world and I’d very much like to see it gone. But I don’t see a way to stop them without putting everyone else at risk of government interference (including prior restraint) in their speech. This position sucks for multiple reasons, but my morals and ethics won’t let me take any other position until someone can guarantee a way to shut down Fox News that won’t risk everyone else’s free speech rights.Just the price we must pay, right Stephen?
Two things.- Don't use my name as a form of backsass, son.
- That “right?” rhetorical trick doesn’t work on me.
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On the post: Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2025 @ 03:41amPeople are good…too damn good. Thus, to protect humanity, I must protect humanity from itself—from the hearts that start dripping red at the latest token underdog, from seeing themselves in those who would use their same hearts against them. Tolerance is extinction. But even worse is empathy.
That’s not a quote from a Charlie Kirk speech or a Trump political rally. It’s a quote from a cartoon adaptation of a comic book villain—Bastion in X-Men ’97, to be precise—that could just as easily sound like conservative bullshit. (Kirk bemoaned empathy and plenty of conservatives think it’s a literal sin.) That quote, by the by, is what your months-long schtick feels like it’s aimed at turning me into: a person who sees empathy as worse than tolerance, so much so that I become a killer—or, at the least, someone who endorses murder as a legitimate political tactic. But it ain’t gonna happen, my dude. You can pull out every emotional manipulation tactic you can think of, from “won’t you think of the queers like you” to “if you don’t endorse political violence, you’re letting the next Hitler gas everyone”. But it hasn’t worked so far, it isn’t working now, and it won’t work in the foreseeable future. This schtick of yours might be a desperate cry for attention from one of the most prolific commenters on this site (in which case I’d question why you have a parasocial obsession with a middle-aged dipshit you’ve never met), but it comes off as more and more pathetic each time you do this “not believing in violence as the best and first option means you’re a suicidal pacifist” act. You keep acting like there aren’t people out there opposing Trump in ways other than “holding up signs” or “doing a single interpretive dance event months ago”. (For example: People are fighting the administration/regime/whatever in court—and they’re not all losing.) But more than that, you act like people finding ways to build communities and strengthen bonds with their friends and neighbors, which is an important form of cultural resistance, isn’t worth noticing or even trying to encourage. For all your rage at nobody going on a killing spree that targets all the people you hate, you’ve got nothing but apathy for the people who are trying their best to resist the Trump administration and the knock-on effects of its policies, even if their resistance is limited to “I’d prefer to not let everyone in my social circle become doomers” kinds of social activity. Maybe you view tolerance and empathy as sins. I don’t know you well enough to know that. But you keep implying that the only way to fight back against the darkness is to set everything aflame and let the burning sort everything out. That shit won’t work on me—not now, not ever—so take that shit back to whatever dark web cesspit you got it from and stay gone, you genocidal motherfucker. -
On the post: Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 08:24pmWanting to be wealthy with no perception of a comfortable limit should be diagnosed as a symptom of an antisocial personality syndrome because extreme wealth is inherently against the interests of society as a whole.
Extreme wealth is also a failure of government policy. The government should be taxing the fuck out of anyone worth at least nine figures, not giving them tax breaks and other “outs” to paying back their fair share. Elon Musk’s net worth is reportedly $500bn. If he sent a check for $1,000 to every adult in the United States between the ages of 18 and 65, he’d still have over half his net worth left. He could double that amount and still have over $100bn left at the end. Most people don’t even realize how hard it is to spend a billion dollars: After you buy a mansion or two and some fancy cars and whatnot, you’ve still got hundreds of millions of dollars left in your Cayman Islands bank account. Musk can live the rest of his life in comfort and ease without doing any work whatsoever—but his becoming a billionaire required so much exploitation of the poor that it should be illegal for him to be worth that much money. Taxing the rich would be great if we can put aside all our cultural and political differences to look at the people who are really fucking up society. And if we can’t? Well, when the people have no food left to eat, they’ll still have one thing left upon which they can gorge.🎵 Believe in all the good things that money just can't buy Then you won't get no bellyache from eatin' humble pie I believe in rags to riches, your inheritance won't last So take your Grey Poupon, my friend, and shove it up your ass! 🎵
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On the post: Chicago And The End Of American Liberty.
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 06:13pmCivilization is the process of forgetting that you can pick up a big rock and kill someone. Society stays together because we collectively agree to forget—and Trump is determined, regardless of the cost, to make sure we remember.
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On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 05:22pmLet’s see…fully armed and fully masked agents of the federal government, who ostensibly answer to a direct lieutenant of the government’s central authority figure, are going into buildings and arresting people (including children!) who said authority figure considers “undesirable” to have in “his” country. They may not be the Gestapo, but they’re damn close to it. And yes, people who are in the country illegally are still people, even if you and Trump don’t like that fact because it prevents ICE agents from doing what they and Trump really want to done to those people (including children!), which is “on-site extrajudicial executions”.
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On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 04:04pmAnd Elon Musk is responsible for at least a quarter of it. The man has so much Divorced Dad energy that if harnessing it were possible, he could power an entire state for at least a month.
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On the post: The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 02:46pmBut enough certainty for man? Yes.
Just to be clear, let me lay this out for you: You’re saying you can guarantee—without any doubt in your mind—that the destruction of Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, and other Republican-friendly media outlets will inherently prevent any victory by any Republican in any democratic election across the entire nation, no matter how high or low the office is within the hierarchy of government, until the end of the party, the country, and/or humanity. Am I getting that right? Oh, and, uh, sidebar question: How do you plan to stop new ones from cropping up and throwing your plans into disarray?Republiscum
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On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 12:41pmYou seem like the kind of person who would watch the mass murder of people of color and laugh about it.
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On the post: George Washington’s Worries Are Coming True
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 12:34pmAh, you’re one of those “I don’t care who gets hurt so long as it ain’t my people being hurt” kinds of people. Are you a libertarian, by any chance? Because not caring about the Epstein files would track for someone who thinks their girlfriend shouldn’t have to sit in a car seat.
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On the post: DOJ Demands Removal Of ICEBlock App; Why Are The ‘Free Speech Warriors’ Suddenly So Quiet?
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 12:20pmYeah, see, that would still pose the problem of “the government is going to ask ISPs to either stop hosting or refuse to host that site”. The base idea is solid, but it ain’t bulletproof.
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On the post: Sinclair Broadcasting Takes A Break From ‘Protecting Local Communities’ (By Banning Comedians) To Spread Tylenol Disinformation
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 08:42amNo law will ever be or could ever be perfect. There will always be ways even innocuous laws and regulations can get twisted and used by bad faith actors.
Yes, I’m aware of rules lawyering and such. But if the initial sketching out of any idea on regulating speech doesn’t start with “how could my idea be used to hurt marginalized people and how would I avoid that as best as possible”, your idea likely comes from a seat of privilege where you subconsciously believe, maybe without intending to, that everyone has equal access to (and equal protection for) their rights. Always do the power analysis—including where you are in the picture and how that affects the frame.Do you think we wouldn’t keep working on it to slowly (and imperfectly) make it better and slowly (and imperfectly) make it more abuse-resistant?
I think you initially overlooked the potential for abuse a “harmful lies” law could raise because you were focused on how much pain you wanted to cause your sociopolitical enemies. That’s another trick of censorship: It gives you so much tunnel vision that you don’t see all the people you could be hurting while you’re going after the people you think should be hurting.governance, as far as stuff like this goes, is– should be– about finding the balance point between freedom and safety.
That’s why I’m wary as hell of censorship: It often asks for too much freedom in exchange for the allure of more safety. The Newspeak of Nineteen Eighty-Four is an effective example of that principle, for it was created to stop people from expressing ideas and thoughts beyond what the government approved of them saying. For whatever safety from “bad ideas” that Newspeak promised, the cost paid by society was way too high.A steady diet of Fox News– and then other sources when Fox wasn’t being extremist enough– led some of my family members to a place so toxic and anti-reality that those of us left on the other side can no longer recognize them. I’m sure you’ve at least heard about this kind of thing
Yes, I’m aware of the conservative media bubble and what it does to people who sumberge themselves within it. But that’s what happens to anyone who falls into a specific media bubble. Any such bubble can be dangerous on a long enough timeline—even one that is ostensibly leftist. (You ever hang around left-wing doomers?)Should these media businesses really be able to do that to people and suffer no consequences whatsoever?
Fox News is already an unofficial propaganda wing of the Trump administration. Would you really want MSNBC and CNN turned into the same thing because Trump decided those networks told “harmful lies” about him and his administration? My whole point in this argument is that no one who suggests these kinds of laws tends to think about the future. They see the immediate, the here-and-now, and never think about what their laws could do to speech in five, ten, twenty, or even one hundred years. Is making Fox News illegal worth giving the government an opening with which they could eventually turn the Newspeak concept into a reality? And I know I’m doing the whole “everything is the apocalypse” thing here, but that is also part of my point: Censorship laws don’t tend to stop where their creators want them to stop. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion in Schenck, later dissented from rulings that cited the case in question when he thought the court was departing from the precedent set in Schenck. Even he recognized, regardless of whether he intended to, how overreach was possible with a law or court precedent that was meant to censor/punish speech.Look at the collateral you’re accepting.
I’m well aware of what I’m accepting. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. Do you really think I want to defend gutter trash like Fox News and the Westboro Baptist freaks? Shit, there were probably people at the ACLU who didn’t want to defend the Nazis in their case against Skokie. But again, the whole point of defending their rights is that you can better defend your rights if and when the time comes. Strip them of their rights because their speech offends you and that same reason could be used to strip you of your rights—which is precisely why I defend the right to speak freely for all people rather than defending it only for the people I happen to like. It’s an unpopular decision; I’m prepared to deal with its consequences.They shouldn’t be able to do all the harm they’re doing. Not without consequences.
How would you limit those consequences to only “the bad people” and their speech? How would you prevent the government from altering the definition of “bad people” to include you or me or anyone else even an inch out of lockstep with the government? Please don’t think I’m trying to be an asshole without a reason. I understand how you feel about Fox News. Deep down, I feel the same way. But I can’t and won’t believe that giving our government the power to shut down Fox News (or MSNBC) is the correct solution to the problem. Once the government has such power, it won’t easily give up that power—especially if the GOP is the party that gets that power first.Everything’s broken and no one will ever pay the price and nothing will ever be done to safeguard it from happening again because god forbid we bend, we change, we rebalance
Two things, one short and one long.- Stop with the doomer shit; it doesn’t work on me.
- I really do understand that things have to change after Trump is out of office, and I know that the work to affect that change will require more effort and time than many of us want to put in—but is attacking free speech really the route we must take because it would be an easier and, in the short term, more satisfying route?
you don’t care about any harms but the potential ones
I’m aware of the harms caused by Fox News and the right-wing mediasphere. But if you want to argue that those harms are real, a Republican government would want to argue that it isn’t Fox News, but MSNBC and other “leftist” media outlets that really cause those harms. You can’t swing the pendulum one way and expect it not to swing the other way unless you’ve got a plan in place to stop that from happening. That, in a nutshell, is my argument: How can you give this government the power to tear down Fox News without giving it the power to tear down MSNBC? I have sympathy for those who’ve had family members fall into the right-wing media bubble. I know that my position can be unpopular and seen as unreasonable. But my position is rooted in the idea that even the people I despise deserve the right to say “look at that asshole, look at how much of a bitch he is” to my face and walk away with no legal consequences. (Physical consequences, maybe not so much…) The worst people deserve all the same rights as the best; believing otherwise would make me a fucking Republican. -
On the post: Trump Publishes Enemies List To White House Website, And It’s Just Democrats Speaking The Truth
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2025 @ 03:52pmThe funny thing is, I know the OP of this thread is intentionally targeting me. The funnier thing is, I bet they’d expect me to whine about something like, say, a video of a right-wing shitheel disrupting a college class with Nazi salutes and bigoted slurs, only to receive a bigger reaction than he expected—including a bit of violence. The funniest thing is, I’m okay with what happened to him because he had his pride hurt more than his body and…well, FAFO, you Nazi prick. Like, I’m not gonna say “yes, every Nazi needs to be chased down in the street so they can be punched and maced”, but I ain’t gonna fuckin’ cry about it if and when it happens. If he’d been beaten bad enough to send him to the hospital, maybe I’d have an iota of pity for him. As it is, the fucker got what he deserved. Were I less cynical, I would hope he learns the right lesson from this. And side note: Hell yeah to that class on standing up to that fucker. That’s how you fucking show solidarity, people! You wanna chase Nazis and assholes out, you gotta do it together!
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On the post: The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2025 @ 02:21pmIf we banned Fox News and other Republican propaganda mills… They’d lose every election
Can you guarantee that with the certainty of God? -
On the post: Sinclair Broadcasting Takes A Break From ‘Protecting Local Communities’ (By Banning Comedians) To Spread Tylenol Disinformation
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2025 @ 11:53amwhen you’re over there always immediately leaping to catastrophe, to the apocalypse, treating it not even like a slippery slope but a goddamned trapdoor to oblivion… it’s hard to even want to have a discussion with that.
I’ve seen the depths to which the siren call of censorship leads because the groups I’ve called out as censorship groups—Moms for Liberty and Collective Shout—have both shown their own mission creep. At first it was “pornographic filth”, because porn is an easy target. (How many people want to stand up in public and defend porn?) But they didn’t limit themselves to the “filth” they first targeted. Both groups have widened their net to catch content that a significant amount of people don’t find offensive. In the case of Moms for Liberty, that extends to books with age-appropriate mentions of or allegories to queer people (e.g., And Tango Makes Three). In the case of Collective Shout, that extends to mainstream games that plenty of adults play and don’t cross the line into pure pornography (e.g., the Grand Theft Auto series). One foot in the door of censorship is enough to cause a generation’s worth of pain. Consider Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court case that brought us the “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” canard: It held that the government could punish people for speech which intended to result in a crime and created a clear and present danger—and the speech in question was a pamphlet urging men to oppose the draft. The “clear and present danger” standard that case set was eventually overturned, but in the years between Schenck and Brandenburg v. Ohio, that standard was used to punish people (including the eponymous Charles Schenck) for speech the government didn’t like. I hesitate to endorse any proposed regulation for speech because we have historical evidence of how such regulations (and any binding court precedents surrounding them) can be used to fuck up people’s lives because they expressed disfavored speech.the people who hate us are trying to destroy free speech and you’re saying we can’t do anything about it because… well, if we so much as try, we’ll unavoidably utterly destroy free speech?
It’s not so much that we’ll “unavoidably utterly destroy free speech”, so much that we’ll put it in unnecessary danger. It’s also easy to want to strip a disfavored group of their right to speak ideas that are heinous and distasteful to us. Another point I’ve been making is that if that group gets that power, they’ll use it against groups they disfavor—and as I’ve said, look at how trans people are being treated in the US right now if you want to see the canary in the coal mine that is my argument.Isn’t that why it’s a good idea to try to create some guardrails?
The problem isn’t the guardrails. The problem is who gets to build them and where they’ll build them. You want fascistic speech banned; that’s a fine and noble goal. Fascists, on the other hand, want antifascist speech banned—so how do you stop them from doing that if you give them a law that defines “harmful lies” in a way they can exploit for their own heinous ends? My hesitance to endorse your idea is rooted in that question. Nothing involving humans can ever truly be objective. (To wit: How you feel about a lion eating a zebra during a nature documentary can depend on whether the documentary is focused on the lion or the zebra.) Crafting a regulation to define speech in an “objective” manner rarely works out that way because we all have biases and blind spots.don’t you know I want regulations on things like news media, not individuals?
No government with the power to censor speech on that level will ever limit itself to news media orgs. Given the state of the US government right now, I would hope you don’t want to fuck around and find out in that regard.But we know what media businesses are fueling, inflaming, and apologizing for MAGA. The propaganda machines.
How can you trample those without also setting the stage for the destruction of “leftist” propaganda machines that a conservative government believes is telling “harmful lies”?I just don’t see how we somehow can’t do the same here.
As I’ve mentioned before, censorship rarely sticks to its intended targets and scope. And under this environment, believing the Trump administration would use a hypothetical “harmful lies” law to attack individual “disfavored” people (e.g., George Soros, Democrat lawmakers) is more realistic than believing it wouldn’t.But regardless they’re doing their damnedest to muzzle us anyway so I struggle to see how your argument isn’t merely that we aren’t allowed to fight back.
You are allowed to fight back. Alls I’m saying is that you may want to consider the power of the weapon you want to use—and what would happen if that weapon, with all its power intact, fell into the hands of your enemy.They […] get to stoke the fires of ignorance and hate as much as they want and I can’t fight against that. […] But regulation can. That’s what it’s for.
I hate repeating myself this much, but regulating speech is tricky precisely because those regulations (or binding court precedents) can fuck up people’s lives and lead to their rights being violated or revoked without any recourse. One small word or phrase—no matter how innocuous or well-intended—could come back to bite you on the ass and drag you into the Hell your good intentions helped create. Sometimes, I really do wish I could say “yeah, sure, censor those fuckers, who gives a fuck” and support out-and-out censorship. It’s easier than fighting for the rights of those fuckers, that’s for sure. But defending free speech requires defending the worst people and the worst speech because what constitutes “disfavored” (and therefore punishable) speech shouldn’t be left in the hands of people whose own sociopolitical biases would change that definition to suit their ends. That shit is hard to do because it puts you in the position of defending the right of assholes like the Westboro Baptist Church weirdos to hold up anti-queer signs on street corners and preach anti-queer religious dogma in their church. But it is the right thing to do from a moral and ethical standpoint—and it’s also self-serving, since defending their rights makes defending your own rights easier when the people who think you’re “disfavored” try to take away your rights.Call it stupid, call it dangerous, but at this point I am willing to take some collateral damage.
I have made my point clear enough times that I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, so I’ll ask one more question: How much collateral damage to the right of free speech can you live with in exchange for your desire to silence a bunch of motherfuckers who say things you don’t like? -
On the post: Trump, Hegseth Force Hundreds Of Military Officers To Attend Their Two-Person Circle Jerk
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2025 @ 03:11amMimicking both the writing pattern and the antisemitism of a senile 79-year-old bigot doesn’t make you smart, cool, or likeable.
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On the post: The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2025 @ 07:50pmHow would that stop the administration after that from annulling those laws and setting the boat on fire again?
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On the post: Sinclair Broadcasting Takes A Break From ‘Protecting Local Communities’ (By Banning Comedians) To Spread Tylenol Disinformation
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2025 @ 06:15pmyou made basically the same arguments a 2A person makes
Take away someone’s right to own a gun and their life can more or less go on without issue. Take away someone’s right to speak without government intrusion, either before or after they speak, and their life becomes that much easier to control. After all, if someone can’t speak out against abuses by the government, those abuses won’t be so easily uncovered, which means they can keep happening. And if the government bans a specific array of speech without argument from the general populace, that same government—albeit run by worse people—will have no problem convincing the populace that more speech has to be banned to “keep order”. Can you really say the same about the Second Amendment and, say, red flag laws or assault weapon bans? Are those really such a lynchpin to modern living that they should be done away with, even though (A) a bunch of right-wing gun nuts support fascism and (B) no amount of civilian firepower can ultimately stand up to a government with a military that has enough ordnance to level New York City? …but in all fairness, I see your point. I’m a stubborn son of a bitch and I do have blind spots, one of which is “the defense of free speech”. I’m protective of the First Amendment because a bunch of rights that a lot of Americans take for granted—the right to speak, to assemble peacefully, to associate with others, to practice any religion or no religion—are protected by that amendment. Any attempt to fuck with those rights will never sit well with me because a whole bunch of our social and political privileges—e.g., the ability to argue and disagree about controversial political topics—stem from those rights. I’d prefer to keep those rights unabridged and unaffected by the whims of those who think sacrificing a tiny part of those rights won’t fuck over the people they will eventually fuck over.are the European countries that have less-absolute free speech laws than the USA what you would call tyrannies?
Given the way defamation law in the UK puts the burden of proof on the defendant instead of the complaining party, I’m not about to say the UK is better about speech than the US. Also, Germany’s laws against Nazi symbols and such ended up censoring the more recent Wolfenstein games (which are about killing Nazis), so there’s another strike for Europe.who determines what constitutes ‘harm?’ We do, Stephen.
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” (Agent Kay, Men in Black) You might have a good idea of what constitutes harm. I might have one that differs from yours. Who gets to say whose idea is better, how will they decide which idea is better, and what happens if they have an idea that they think is better than either yours or mine? The whole point I’m trying to make here is that even if you have the bestest idea ever for trying to clamp down on “harmful lies”, people will still criticize it. You must prepare for criticism—and the questions that come with it—even if you believe, deep down in your heart, that your idea is foolproof and irrefutable.If we (and there are more non-authoritarians) can’t step on the bigoted toes it takes in order to codify egalitarianism, oligarchs and authoritarians will rewrite the rules for themselves.
Then why not just kill them before they can hold power? I’m not saying that to condone or endorse that idea. I’m saying it because if you believe sacrificing free speech rights to stop fascism is a good idea, believing that sacrificing lives to stop fascism will be a shorter leap than you think. My opposition to your idea is rooted in the notion that you want to regulate human behavior on a level that is, in no uncertain terms, flat-out insane. People lie all the time—and to reword an old saying, lies can travel around the world before the truth can step out the front door. How do you plan to stop people from lying, and from spreading lies, and from believing lies, with a bunch of words on a sheet of paper that say “we’re gonna punish people for lying in a way I don’t like”?There’s just no better metaphor than the Nazi bar problem. We must bend inclusivity to keep the anti-inclusives out lest they break everything.
And in that metaphor, the Nazis aren’t actually prevented from speaking their mind in their own private shitpits—they’re kicked out of places before they turn those places into shitpits. Sure, they’ll go further underground, but that’s a problem for the government, not for the average American who wants to be in public without fucking Nazis around all the time. I’m well aware of the limits of tolerance. I’ve said multiple times that tolerance is a peace treaty; I’ve also linked to the article from which I got that saying. But I tolerate Nazis and fuckers like the Westboro Baptist Church having their speech rights because censoring them puts my own rights on the line if someone who sympathizes with those pricks ends up in the halls of power. Declare a group unworthy of human rights and stripping that group of their rights becomes easier to do over time. If’n you don’t believe me, look at how that battle is currently going for trans people.You think I have The Answer?
You suggested a law to ban “harmful lies” and suggested, again and again despite repeated criticism, that such a law was a good idea. I don’t expect you to have The Answer to the problem you’re trying to solve, but if you’re pushing that idea, I expect you to at least defend it beyond its “it’ll stop the fascists” surface. I expect you to address the criticisms I raised, even if that means saying “okay, fair point” and conceding said point. No, you shouldn’t have to have the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. Yes, you should have answers for criticisms of your idea if you’re being that adamant about its inherent goodness.a single, sweeping, airtight regulation that will satisfy your personal (likely impossible) standards
Well, yes, my standards would be high—but that’s because standards for regulating speech in the US are already high. My standards come from adherence to the First Amendment. They also come from knowing that attacking speech of any kind on the basis of “well, I don’t like it” is how we end up with shit like book bans. That is why I questioned you on how your proposed anti–“harmful lies” law could affect trans people: They’re a cultural scapegoat who certain lawmakers would love to push out of public life (and possibly into an open grave) by using your proposed law. The Devil paves the road to Hell with the best intentions of Man. Maybe you didn’t think through the potential consequences or knock-on effects of that law because you believed the concept alone—crafted with the best of intentions, I’m sure—was enough to carry the day. But now that you know your idea isn’t as bulletproof as you once believed, I’m hoping you take the time to look back at the questions I posed and really think hard about the flaws in your idea. Believe it or not, I want you to give me the goods. If you can come up with a way to ban fascist speech that can’t be used by fascists to ban speech (and eventually people) they don’t like, by all means, do it. I hate the fuckers as much as the next antifascist. But if you can’t find a way to limit the amount of damage your law could do in the wrong hands, maybe consider that your idea isn’t as good as you think—regardless of your good intentions. -
On the post: Trump, Hegseth Force Hundreds Of Military Officers To Attend Their Two-Person Circle Jerk
Stephen T. Stone ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2025 @ 05:13pm…yet.
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