OP felt a compulsion to protect our virgin eyes & ears.

There are better text editors. Swearing by that one is kind of a joke.

I like this. Too bad no alt text. 😞 (OP, please set alt text for great justice.)

We can disagree, but I’m not all that interested in getting scholarly about it - the writing’s on the wall, we have real - not theoretical - fascism headed our way within this 4 year presidency and we’d better be ready to fight.

1. Scholarly: you brought scholarship into this by invoking paradox of tolerance. I had to point out that people whose vocation is to think harder & longer than you on this have drawn conclusions at odds with yours. Therefore, your reasoning is not on firm, settled ground.
2. Realism: your conclusion is not only theoretically challenged. Cracking open a history book reveals it’s unnecessary & ill-advised in practice.

The civil rights movement overturned defacto ethno-fascism & advanced equality by using & promoting civil liberties, not opposing them. Freedom of expression & the free speech movement were instrumental.

Even when the threat is real, compromising civil rights to combat it spills beyond the threat & backfires. Read about the Red Scare & McCarthyism to see government restrict civil liberties in the name of security (the Soviets were spying in the Manhattan Project & Federal government), Congress seize the chance to wield a partisan weapon against anyone they flimsily accuse of “Un-American” activities, the lives ruined through rights abuses, the work it took to wind back those laws. Truman criticized those restrictions as a “mockery of the Bill of Rights” and a “long step toward totalitarianism”. For his reckless witch hunt against communists, Joseph McCarthy was criticized as “the greatest asset the Kremlin has”. Persecution ultimately harmed anti-communist efforts more than help them, and critics argued it distracted from the “real (but limited) extent of Soviet espionage in America”.

Read about how basic freedoms like speech & assembly were indispensable for disenfranchised activists to advance universal suffrage as they fought to lift restrictions due to property ownership, race, poll taxes, tests, sex, age.

Read about the considerable work those activists performed using their civil liberties to organize, picket, resist, & act in civil disobedience to gain the expanded freedoms you take for granted today. Look at their work & struggles from the abolitionist movement to black lives matter, and look at the work the activists of today are not doing. Notice how they didn’t organize to weaken basic protections whereas people who think like you argue we should.

Arguing to squander basic protections with some wishful thinking that elected authority will reliably fight your causes for you without as easily turning against you

1. is a lazy failure to understand the limitations of authority & its risks for abuse when you tear down protections against it
2. spits in the face of everything past generations of activists fought for.

Like you, I oppose fascists and (more generally) authoritarians, but I’m very clear about why. Authoritarians don’t respect limits to authority: they would tear down those pesky rights & liberties that protect free society & stand in their way, and they would readily crush people & everything we hold dear for their unworthy cause.

“Resisting” authoritarians chipping away at free society by chipping away even more is exactly what authoritarians would want. How thinkers like you don’t see that is beyond me.

Your prescription is wrong & serves authoritarians: I cannot abide it.

Those new-fangled memes are watered-down trash, though. Vintage memes slapped harder.

it would be a paradox because this tolerance ultimately ensures the unbridled spread of intolerance. Folks weakly on the left have misunderstood this forever.

While I can’t read what you’re responding to, that doesn’t follow (it can be ignored or protested) & no, they haven’t.

The paradox of tolerance doesn’t lead to a unique conclusion. Philosophers drew all kinds of conclusions. I favor John Rawls’:

Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: “While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger.”

Accordingly, constraining some liberties such as freedom of speech is unnecessary for self-preservation in extraordinary circumstances as speaking one’s mind is not an act that directly & demonstrably harms/threatens security or liberty. However, violence or violations of rights & regulations could justifiably be constrained.

A point of clarification: tolerance has a number of paradoxes identified in the SEP, and the paradox in discussion is more precisely called the paradox of drawing the limits.

Opposing basic civil liberties like freedom of expression is very authoritarian & small-minded. Basic rule on policymaking: don’t give yourself powers you wouldn’t want your opponents to have.

Quoting A Man of All Seasons

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake!

Sacrificing basic civil liberties when they don’t suit you is a threat to everyone. Their willingness to do that is why everyone hates authoritarians. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There are better ways to beat these shitheads, and it’s been done before. Contrary to what you wrote, defending civil liberties regardless of whose is high-minded & defends everyone.

I mean my generation as kids, we had stupid hair too, but this is just inexplicable.

Really? Don’t remember the 80s?

Other 80s musicians

• Soft Cell
• Talking Heads
• Duran Duran
• Wham!

Overton window

People here sure are obsessed with this. Turning it into a buzzword & using it in the oddest places, too.

I still blame the algorithms.

And I think that’s a lack of memory. Where were those “algorithms” in flame wars on news groups, mailing lists, fora on the Internet & Web 1.0?

Even when the web became highly commercialized, there remained non-commercial sites of largely unmoderated, anonymized discussion & imageboards driven by the “hivemind”: where were “the algorithms” there?

It’s unrestrained people uninhibited from putting their unfiltered thoughts online to stir discussion: no “algorithms” required. “The algorithms” steers even the least sophisticated users to the content that captures their attention. And moderation serves to protect that attention by subduing those elements that would result in users ragequitting the Internet & missing those ads they scroll past.

Maybe we need to bring back ragequitting?

and the hegemonic internet platorms bias their algorithms against it

Is there any sign that they’ve tried? The Right churn out volumes of viral ragebait against the Left & spread it through troll farms & bots on social media while promoting themselves with right-wing podcasters. I don’t think “the algorithm” cares about the political orientation of ragebait as long as it keeps users online.

Part of the problem is less “algorithm” and more self-sorting as people migrate to online communities they align with more & shut out dissent. Nearly everyone was on Facebook & Twitter before. Instead of migrating, we could stay put and deploy similar tactics as (or better than) the right to manipulate social media.

Do explain. It seems to me they’re winning.

The way we have before? Maybe crack open a history book & read about the civil rights movement? Or read about the Enlightenment era development of liberal political philosophy leading to Western governments founded on individual rights, rule of law, liberal democracy, secularism defeating authoritarian & traditional governments in opposition to all of it.

Whats your view on Germany then?

Misguided, wrong, and slipping into trouble.

[…] In 2021 politicians tightened the rules further, worried by the spread of abuse and disinformation on social media. Courts may now punish insults against politicians especially severely, if their work is “significantly impeded”. In Mr Bendels’s case the court ruled, dubiously, that an impartial observer would not be able to tell that the image of Ms Faeser had been altered. That ensured her right to protection from defamation was given priority over his to freedom of expression.

Prosecutors are happy to argue that defamation may impede politicians from exercising their duties. A Bavarian court has ruled that insults “beyond the absolute minimum of respect” can be punished. And more may be to come. The governing agreement between Germany’s incoming coalition partners pledges to empower a regulator to crack down on the “deliberate dissemination of false factual claims”.

Last year police searched the flat of a pensioner who had shared an image on X calling Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice-chancellor, an “idiot”. Mr Habeck had filed a criminal complaint about the image, although the prosecutor was acting on a separate notification.

[…] Germany is not an outlier in freedom-of-expression rankings. But it is not just foreigners who are worried. In 2024 just 40% of Germans told Allensbach, a pollster, that they felt able to express themselves freely. The figure has halved since 1990 (see chart).

In Germany, as in America and elsewhere, free-speech crusades are often regarded as the preserve of the dissident right. Mr Bendels is close to the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, which often complains that its views are unfairly suppressed. Yet left-wing activists, especially pro-Palestinians, have also fallen prey to police and prosecutors. Police in Berlin have shut down conferences and demonstrations in attempts to see off hate speech. Academics who supported pro-Palestine students have been threatened with a loss of funding. The risks to free expression do not go only in one direction.

While the US has many flaws, its free expression policy isn’t one of them. Its policy is more coherent & faithful to those liberal philosophic foundations that limit expression more closely to the harm principle (eg, threats, imminent lawless action, defamation). It was crucial to the advances of the civil rights movement.

Giving an authority power to decide which harmless expression we’re allowed to observe or produce is what authoritarians do. And no, offending someone isn’t harm.

My advice is to quit lazily threatening everyone by arguing civil rights are the problem, and to use those civil rights (& civil disobedience) to organize & get shit done like the activists of before.

Wtf isn’t any confederate symbolism illegal and punishable by prison time? I’d support this.

Basic rule on policymaking: don’t give yourself powers you wouldn’t want your opponents to have.

Quoting A Man of All Seasons

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

Sacrificing basic civil liberties when they don’t suit you is a threat to everyone’s liberty. Their willingness to do that is why everyone hates authoritarians. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There are better ways to beat these shitheads.

Even if it successfully shielded them from 100% of civil rights cases (which it objectively has not)

Objectively, the planets sometimes align, too: the odds are highly against it.

it provides no protection from criminal charges

Also exceedingly rare: we’ve only seen any decent prosecution recently. It’s likely to fail.

While that fight should continue, society has more mundane tools to ostracize & make people’s lives hell.

In addition to suggesting more dramatic work on delivering effective government that aides & protects people, I’d complained they need to engage the people where they at

Frankly, adapting a message isn’t enough. They need to beat Republicans at social media, have their own answer to right-wing influencers & podcasters like Joe Rogan, probably pump out their own viral bullshit, answer Republican troll farms with Democrat troll farms.

to be answered on here with

This is such a boomer take. This is like trying to claim Clinton lost in 2016 because she didn’t tweet enough or use the right young-person slang, skibidi

The Right loves to organize & build a long-term strategy to “own the libs”, stack the courts, pass anti-abortion legislation at the state level. It seems the Left’s answer to “own the libs” is to also “own the libs”. “The libs” don’t catch a break.

I’m exceptionally doubtful that clearly established constitutional rights aren’t being violated

Anyone who’s hasn’t lived under a rock the past decade knows clearly established means practical impunity.

Reported in Politico

Some courts have required an extraordinarily precise match between the misconduct alleged in one case and in a prior one in order to find a violation of someone’s constitutional rights.

[…]

When Baxter sued, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out his case. It held that while it was well established that a police dog couldn’t be unleashed on a suspect who was lying down, there was no case addressing someone sitting down with their hands up, as Baxter said he was doing.

From Reason

“I have previously expressed my doubts about our qualified immunity jurisprudence,” writes Thomas. “Because our §1983 qualified immunity doctrine appears to stray from the statutory text, I would grant this petition.”

The judge spoke to a point that qualified immunity critics have been making for some time: The framework was concocted by the Supreme Court in spite of court precedent. It’s a perfect example of legislating from the bench—something conservatives typically oppose.

The Civil Rights Act of 1871, otherwise known as Section 1983 of the U.S. Code, explicitly grants you the ability to sue public officials who trample on your constitutional rights. The high court tinkered with that idea in Pierson v. Ray (1967), carving out an exemption for officials who violated your rights in “good faith.” Thus, qualified immunity was born.

That doctrine ballooned to something much larger in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), when the Supreme Court scrubbed the “good faith” exception in favor of the “clearly established” standard, a rule that has become almost impossible to satisfy. Now, public officials cannot be held liable for bad behavior if a near-identical situation has not been outlined and condemned in previous case law.

Though the original idea was to protect public servants from vacuous lawsuits, the practical effects have been alarming. As I wrote last week:

In Howse v. Hodous (2020), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit gave qualified immunity to two officers who allegedly assaulted and arrested a man on bogus charges for the crime of standing outside of his own house. There was also the sheriff’s deputy in Coffee County, Georgia, who shot a 10-year-old boy while aiming at a non-threatening dog; the cop in Los Angeles who shot a 15-year-old boy on his way to school because the child’s friend had a plastic gun; and two cops in Fresno, California, who allegedly stole $225,000 while executing a search warrant.

In other words, cops need the judiciary to tell them explicitly that stealing is wrong. The aforementioned police officers were thus shielded from legal accountability, leaving the plaintiffs with no recourse to seek damages for medical bills or stolen assets.

Court standards are so strict, nearly any meaningless, incidental difference suffices to grant officials cover of qualified immunity: literally the difference between lying down & sitting is all it takes to violate rights with impunity.

Reminds me of Mashle.

Your concept is better, though.

No, logic does that: showing everyone else you’re wrong is just icing.

You have yet to show that it isn’t derogatory, so far you just have your own oppinion.

Examples have been given, so it’s not opinion: it’s plain observation which you’re denying.

Where’s your evidence? You’ve only given an overgeneralization

that is derogatory

and questionable speculation (not observational evidence) that doesn’t support it.

It is often used to dehumanize women, as the term is mostly used when talking about animals.

Even if a term often dehumanizes, does it follow that the term itself is derogatory (especially if common uses often don’t dehumanize)?

The speculation poses generalizations on observable phenomena.

1. If a term is mostly used to talk about animals, then it’s dehumanizing.
2. Noun female is mostly used to talk about animals.

Some problems with that: where’s your observational, generalizable support for any of it? (Empirical generalizations need that type of support.) Is 2 even true & how would you show that?

Does your overgeneralization withstand observation? No: if it did, then the example given & other refuting instances wouldn’t be easy to find.

What is an empirical claim that fails to account for observable reality? Worthless.

Outright denying observations that conflict with your claim/pretending they don’t exist is part confirmation bias & part selective evidence fallacy. Try respecting logic & choosing tenable claims that can withstand basic observation.

FYI Linguistics and much of science rely on methods other than statistics. Classical & relativistic physics were developed without it. Planetary observations rejecting geocentrism didn’t involve statistics. Much of linguistics is detailed observation & analysis of language samples to identify patterns and rules, so good luck finding statistical studies to support your claims.

Counterexamples don’t require studies.

Refuting the claim “men are generally bald” merely requires the existence of a few men who aren’t. You’re claiming “female is a derogatory noun to humans”: as shown it isn’t. Can you explain what the mother quoted in the news is saying about her daughters if your claim about female is true? No, your claim fails.

Deny observable evidence all you want: your claim is false.

Same applies to your counterclaim.

The fact remains that counterexamples to your claim are common, which wouldn’t be expected if the conventional meaning were derogatory.

Here’s an example quoting a story in the news:

“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. […]"

So your claim is that by referring to her daughters as females, this mother is insulting them?

While I might be able to argue in “bad faith”, the unsolicited speech productions of the community do not. Do you want more examples?