[Ellahn]

So let's just allow people to lie and promote violence or even committing crimes 'cuz there's an ammendment that protects that.

BTW does anyone in Amerikka even understand what the heck "ammending" even means...?

If it's not working, change it. Not that I expect people who think Texas' electricity bills aren't fucked up to understand that "maaaaybe you're not actually right"...

But yeah. To be plain, maybe you're wrong. Probably. Most likely.

[nitsky]

There are many Americans who understand that the first amendment protects bad behavior, but support it nonetheless. Their support usually boils down to:

1. The alternative, censorship, is worse when it inevitably is turned against you.

2. Even if censorship is better, it violates individual rights, which are sacred and cannot be abridged except in a narrow range of cases.

It is possible that people with viewpoints that differ from your own are not “wrong”, they just have different values.

[mpalmer]

You are sorely mistaken if you think society would be better off with laws against lying. Crimes are already illegal. There is already an accepted legal definition for inciting violence.

[underseacables]

Crimes against lying are bordering on thought crimes, because eventually people who support such laws lose control of what is truth and what is not.

[revscat]

We would be better off with laws against lying… if they could be made to work. But they cannot, so we must live with lies being legal.

[disposekinetics]

> So let's just allow people to lie and promote violence or even committing crimes 'cuz there's an ammendment that protects that.

Yes, rights are not up for a vote or negotiation, and the existence of bad actors does nothing to negate my rights.

[yowlingcat]

> So let's just allow people to lie and promote violence or even committing crimes

There's a difference between a demagogue and an individual who threatens or assaults another. Nobody is arguing the latter is not a criminal.

But for the former, what I've often observed is that demagogues are very good at dog-whistling; they're adept at finding the razor's edge between dog-whistling and outright calls to violence. They're also great at spinning any perceived censorship into proof of their righteous "dissent" which plays right into their hand.

So to come back to the statement you made, presumably in exaggeration -- yes, we do have to allow people to lie if we want free speech. The destructive viral effect of such lies can only be addressed scalably with some kind of an immune system.

You cannot solve societal or cultural problems with legislation. Then you will have two problems. Solving the root of America's problem with demagoguery requires solving the root. That is very tricky considering America's history as the world's police force. These aren't problems that can be fixed in a generation even when there is a common desire to fix them.