Until you look at Hale’s history of violence and thuggery and contempt for the legal system and his lack of remorse for it up to and including the time he asked for a law license. Which is what the judge did, but which is what Greenwald studiously avoided looking into himself.
That Hale chose the politics of fascism and white supremacy was only an appropriate ideological gloss on what is – politics aside – a rotten moral character steeped in demonstrable violence and hatred.
The “infantile idea” here is that Liberal Democracy is so stable and strong, like God, or like your daddy when you were four years old, that “civil libertarians” can do edgy rebellious shit like fighting for white supremacy without worrying about the consequences
Nadine Strossen notes
Consistent with the general historical pattern, the first individuals prosecuted under the British Race Relations Act of 1965, which criminalized the incitement of racial hatred, were black power leaders. Their overtly racist messages undoubtedly expressed legitimate anger at real discrimination, yet the statute drew no such fine lines, nor could any similar law possibly do so. Rather than curbing speech offensive to minorities, this British law instead has been used regularly to curb the speech of blacks, trade unionists, and anti- nuclear activists. Perhaps the ultimate irony of this law, intended to restrain the National Front, a neo-Nazi group, is that it instead has barred expression by the Anti-Nazi League.
The British experience is typical. None of the anti-Semites who were responsible for arousing France against Captain Alfred Dreyfus was ever prosecuted for group libel. But Emile Zola was prosecuted for libeling the French clergy and military in his classic letter “J’Accuse,” and he had to flee to England to escape punishment.
There’s a strategy behind defending edginess-- would be censors are not necessarily on your side. Why cede them power?
Those civil libertarians fighting for white supremacy keep saying they’re on my side
I suppose it’s true
I am white after all
Is it? Germany’s anti-hate-speech laws have worked consistently well from what I understand, through various post-war governments.
Perhaps the British experience with their law went bad because, unlike the German governments but like the Dreyfus-era French government, conservative politicians saw some benefit in enabling if not allying with racists and anti-Semites.
Or perhaps the British hadn’t learned about Popper’s Paradox the hard way like the Germans did.
Uh, the reason for Ford to Pardon Nixon was to MAKE THE BAD GO AWAY and help Ford get re-elected. It didn’t work, but the idea there was no quid pro quo is a bit naive …
Bigger question: Should the President have Pardon power AT ALL?
I don’t think so; it’s the most kingly, a-nation-of-men-not-laws B.S I can think of in American govt and it needs to go now.
We have an appeals process in our courts; we have jury trials. What, precisely, is the legal and moral reason the President should be able to negate that?
Also, notice how many people mad at Flynn getting pardoned still want one for, say, Manning or Snowden? Doesn’t that seem like some 'Rules for thee but not for me" stuff?
If pardons are a bad idea, aren’t they a bad idea for everyone?
My supposition is that Watergate was merely the tip of the iceberg. Ford might not have been involved in the Watergate burglary, but he did not want to diminish the bloated powers of his office.
Conspiracists might note that both Cheney and Rumsfeld were members of the Ford administration.
Has that ever worked, though? I mean, if the censorship is due to some underlying structural bigotry, what makes you think that defending the rights of bigots to speak freely magically confers the same freedom to their victims?
I know I’m not going to get a response to this, but; seriously? Conflating Flynn with Manning or Snowden? That’s some truly bad faith argument right there.
As far as I’m aware Popper offers two versions of his paradox of Tolerance. One is in the Open Society and its Enemies– first volume. The other in “Utopia and Violence.” Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Intolerance (or violence) is only permissible to establish by violent revolution, a society based around rational discourse, and as a last resort in defending that society against enemies who resort to violence to overthrow that society. It’s not a scheme to disempower those who present rational arguments for inhumanity. When they reach for their guns, yes you may reach for yours. but not before.
No, no… we just need to hear both sides of the issue! /s
The context was white supremacy, which is inherently intolerant in the most violent of ways.
Popper’s Paradox as applied to free speech and discourse (main force is another issue) basically says that those who use the liberty of tolerance of speech afforded to them and others by the open society to call for the open society’s destruction or for the denial of that liberty to certain classes in the society should not have their speech tolerated.
And there are no rational arguments for inhumanity. There are rational-sounding arguments for policies meant to disguise an inhumane agenda (e.g. Aktion T4, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, old people being asked to sacrifice themselves for the economy during a pandemic, etc.), but making a direct rational argument for being inhumane is extremely difficult even in late-stage capitalist America. Making direct irrational arguments for being inhumane, in contrast, is very easy.
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