Is Free Speech Under Attack in this Country?

nsacpi said:
for example, a librarian in Louisiana testified before the local board of her parish (that's what counties are called in Louisiana) about book bans

for that she has suffered all sorts of abuse, including accusations of peddling pornography to children and of wanting to teach 11 year olds how to have anal sex.

there have also been some death threats

would this be an example of society creating a culture of censorship
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any of my libertarian free speech absolutist friends want to take this one?
 
Carp said:
Of course a movie theater can make their own rules regarding that. But the government can't mandate that the same speech is against the law or prosecute you for it. And certainly, it cannot pressure the movie theater into making policies to kick you out for saying it.
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Wait a second. I want to take this in and enjoy it.

Inciting a riot is a crime in many states and can be leveled on people for simply speaking.

Free speech isn't absolute, and hasn't been.

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/new-hampshire-police-arrested-man-being-mean-them-internet

https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/...news/army-veteran-arrested-holding-sign-raise

https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-internet-first-amendment/

https://pen.org/press-clip/6-journalists-arrested-washington-dc/

Now should it be absolute, that's a different discussion, but it's not absolute and in many cases is clearly made illegal by the states and sometimes the federal government.
 
nsacpi said:
any of my libertarian free speech absolutist friends want to take this one?
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Yes, death threats are not cool. And they are not protected under free speech. Pretty simple.

If you want to complain about "book bans" then ****, why have any rating systems in America. Let's just stream porn right into the classrooms. Of course Dems do have a history for being into that sort of thing....

If you can't tell the difference in that and what the government did in regards to FB and Twitter, you probably just shouldn't post in the thread.
 
Carp said:
Yes, death threats are not cool. And they are not protected under free speech. Pretty simple.

If you want to complain about "book bans" then ****, why have any rating systems in America. Let's just stream porn right into the classrooms. Of course Dems do have a history for being into that sort of thing....

If you can't tell the difference in that and what the government did in regards to FB and Twitter, you probably just shouldn't post in the thread.
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i have no views worth sharing as to what school districts should have in their libraries

i'm just wondering about what happened to this librarian who was attacked in this way

it seems to me this is a fairly common thang...and reflects a culture that tries to silence people for their views (the topic of this thread as the poster who started it just reminded us)...curiously this same poster never seems to get exercised when people like this librarian get attacked in this way
 
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Carp said:
Individual vs company. And he didn't threaten anything.

Next.
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... a few months before the Justice Department filed suit, Trump ordered Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council, to pressure the Justice Department to intervene. According to a well-informed source, Trump called Cohn into the Oval Office along with John Kelly, who had just become the chief of staff, and said in exasperation to Kelly, “I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”

Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, evidently understood that it would be highly improper for a President to use the Justice Department to undermine two of the most powerful companies in the country as punishment for unfavorable news coverage, and as a reward for a competing news organization that boosted him. According to the source, as Cohn walked out of the meeting he told Kelly, “Don’t you ****ing dare call the Justice Department. We are not going to do business that way.”

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/4/182497...re-new-yorker-jane-mayer-gary-cohn-john-kelly

y'all would be on much more solid ground complaining about censorship if y'all could acknowledge that this happened and is an extreme example of improper pressure being brought to bear on a news organization for more favorable coverage

Trump regularly threatened Jeff Zucker (then head of CNN) that harm would befall him (both personally and as head of a business) if he did not change his coverage.

The Trump administration was notably lax in its antitrust enforcement. His interest and demands for scrutiny of the AT&T-Time Warner deal stood out as unusual. To put it mildly.
 
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nsacpi said:
Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, evidently understood that it would be highly improper for a President to use the Justice Department to undermine two of the most powerful companies in the country as punishment for unfavorable news coverage, and as a reward for a competing news organization that boosted him. According to the source, as Cohn walked out of the meeting he told Kelly, “Don’t you ****ing dare call the Justice Department. We are not going to do business that way.”

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/4/182497...re-new-yorker-jane-mayer-gary-cohn-john-kelly

y'all would be on much more solid ground complaining about censorship if y'all could acknowledge that this happened and is an extreme example of improper pressure being brought to bear on a news organization for more favorable coverage

Trump regularly threatened Jeff Zucker (then head of CNN) that harm would befall him (both personally and as head of a business) if he did not change his coverage.
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Sounds like he should have listened to trump. Was good advice. Maybe if they'd have listened they wouldn't have had to pull their anchors off the air after the assignation attempt.
 
Tapate50 said:
Sounds like he should have listened to trump.
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Actually the DoJ DID end up suing to block the deal. But they lost.

It was unusual for the Trump-era DoJ to do anything other than to rubberstamp these kinds of deals.
 
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