Quote:
Originally Posted by Funnygurl555
weren't you all mad when some baker said it was his constitutional right not to make a cake for a gay couple? no matter how you see it, if you boil the stories down to their essence they're the same deal
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I think this is a false equivalence but yeah
If I can give my two cents on a larger matter.
I think there are just some situations that are impossible to reconcile in a logically consistent manner. The government emboldening these hate groups hurts the civil liberties of others. The government denying these hate groups -potentially- hurts free speech. Is there a middle ground? Probably, but I sincerely doubt that any concessions made will result in a logically consistent system.
As a specific example:
I've started to think that sexual assault cases are fundamentally incompatible with the current legal system (or, at the very least, the legal system's reliance on forensic science). Somewhat axiomatic in forensic science is "Locard's Exchange Principle", which states that any two bodies that come in contact leave trace evidence of the contact. This is remarkably difficult to apply in sexual assault cases for obvious reasons. Rape kits are unreliable, and other trace evidence is difficult to prove "beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt".
And yet, a fundamental principle of law is that defendants are innocent until proven guilty.
I've been thinking for a while that something's gotta give here. Should there be a different protocol for handling sexual assault cases? Maybe. It just seems as if the legal system is inherently contradictory sometimes. "Justice for the victims" and "innocent until proven guilty" can sometimes be diametrically opposed.
Coming back to this example:
There is a philosophical incompatibility with "securing the civil liberties of Americans" and "free speech." That's why the meaning of free speech has changed over history -- we now know that you can't incite violence, directly endanger others, etc. So I would imagine that in cases like this, censoring hate groups might be a thing that happens. It -does-, strictly speaking, violate free speech, but it instead values "civil liberties" for historically oppressed groups.
I know Arch is more well-versed in law than I am and he probably won't like this answer, but, I wholeheartedly believe that philosophical incompatibilities exist, and, through some means, we as a society dictate what values are more valuable than others.