I remain unconvinced that he's not simply a troll playing a very long con. When I read him as such, I have found him very enjoyable, but as of late, overexposure is really causing the joke to wear thin.
Fair enough. I am actually one of those people, but there is a wide array of beliefs about him among my brothers and sisters, ranging all the way from indifference to disgust.
>Freedom of speech also means that others have the freedom to criticize that speech, too.
I sometime feel like people forget this. It comes up every time someone gets dropped by sponsors or their TV network for saying something outrageous (Duck Dynasty, Donald Trump, etc.). Freedom of speech means the government can't arrest you for saying it. It doesn't mean you get an automatic criticism free platform to say whatever you want. All of us (media owners included) are allowed to make our own assessments or business decisions about it as well.
> Freedom of speech means the government can't arrest you for saying it
As I mentioned above, that's overly simplistic to the point of being wrong. Yes, there are statutes in various legal systems throughout history preventing the government from limiting expression. No, that doesn't mean that freedom of speech only exists in that regard.
Man...I'm really, really sick of this lame, lame, lame defense of lousy behavior. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that anybody other than the government has to have anything to do with you and doesn't apply to anybody here in their personal judgments of somebody who's choosing to act shitty.
And maybe it's just me, but it strikes me that, when the best defense or excuse that you can trot out is that hey, it's actually going to get you arrested to do it, the moral argument is not exactly strong.
> Freedom of speech doesn't mean that anybody other than the government has to have anything to do with you and doesn't apply to anybody here in their personal judgments of somebody who's choosing to act shitty.
Man... I'm really sick of this lame, lame, lame misunderstanding of free speech. The first amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal embodiment (among many others throughout history) of the ideal of free speech, but that's not where it ends. Attempts to shame (or otherwise coerce) unpopular speakers into silence is still a violation of that ideal.
You are wrong both in the textual sense and the historical sense of it. "Freedom of speech" has never in the history of the United States been anything but a governmental restriction; it has never been a moral calling for the citizenry. Nor should it be: while there is a compelling argument for the government's agnosticism with regards to the viewpoints of the citizenry, there is no serious or compelling argument for the citizenry's agnosticism with regards to the viewpoints of each other.
Shame is a tool for fixing shitlords or, if they are unfixable, rendering them powerless. It's a good tool. It gets a bad rap when the powerful are powerful no longer, but--strangely enough--never does when the powerful are powerful.
Sounds like you need to do a bit more reading on the subject.
> "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise." -Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent
But of course, you probably already do understand this and are just willfully ignorant.
> Shame is a tool for fixing shitlords or, if they are unfixable, rendering them powerless.
This has told me pretty much everything I need to know about your viewpoint. You're a bully and you relish silencing opinions you don't agree with, while thinking you hold some kind of moral high ground. Whatever gets you through the day, I guess.
Sure, if you think it's satire. I am intensely skeptical of the idea that it's an attempt at satire--both from reading his stuff and from knowing people in the circles he's traveled in--and have never seen anything to convince me otherwise.
It's not a ringing endorsement when one's supporters best argument is "it's not illegal to say what he said in this particular point in time and space."
At this point, I'm not sure. If he didn't have a track record of making deliberately misleading statements and admitting that he enjoys goading people into reactions by saying things that are patently offensive, I might take him seriously.