Anti-Gay Funeral Protesters Win Case at U.S. Supreme Court

Originally posted by Aloysius the Gaul
reply to post by Wyn Hawks

 

You jsut aren't angry enough -

...i'm quite capable of being very angry - but - not angry enough to physically harm someone because they said something that i didnt like...

Originally posted by Aloysius the Gaul
violence is a pretty normal human reaction.

...yeah, uh-huh - more often than not, thats an excuse for throwing the first punch...

Originally posted by curious7
That's BS right there.

I'm all for free speech etc but these insane Bible thumping crazies that give their religion a bad name (along with the other ignorant and hate filled sections of Christianity including some on ATS) really need taking down a peg or two for such disgraceful behaviour.

Shaking my head that they actually won this case. Something ain't right with the world when this happens.

Here's the thing... Though I agree with your idea of taste, the ruling here was simply that these people couldn't be sued for damages.

That's a far cry from saying what's going on here is somehow ok. So far, 44 states have passed very allowable laws which allow for protests, but far enough away that it doesn't interrupt the services.

At the same time we have a lot of great groups counter-protesting these people and drowning them out, which I applaud.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

I would say they're self evident only in retrospect. Meaning evidence supports the need for rights of all peoples.

This is no different than saying that in retrospect, if planets are to orbit a sun then gravity would be a real good idea.

A → B doesn't necessarily mean B → A. For instance in a simulation I can setup a bezier curve and use that path as a way to cause an object to move in relation to another. More to the point I can model a solar system without any need for gravity. Curvature of space just happens to be one way that a system can perform a similar function. More concretely you're asserting that a decision made in retrospect is the same as one that's established based on a universally "self evident" concept founded on no preceding basis. This is technically speaking a false analogy.

There is no biconditional relationship here.

It is fallacious to argue that what is self evident requires no thought. What is self evident means it is obvious.

Self evidence is a proposition that something is known to be true by understanding its meaning without proof, or technically a situation where denial is self-contradictory. If we hold the idea of "freedom of speech" up to this mantle and ask, "If free speech isn't afforded by law what would be the result?" I imagine we'd arrive at an argument somewhat similar to Ghandi's "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" rephrased as "if no one is free to speak then everyone can be made to be mute." This exposes that there are conditional components that don't necessitate the predicate. So it's not self-evident by definition, but something that we as a people would like to accept as self-evident. A truly self-evident statement is, "I'm alive." The concept of "freedom of speech" isn't quite on the level of being a contradiction when one negates the statement (p ∧ ¬p).

A closer truth to an unalienable right ‒ afforded to us by nature itself ‒ is, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Or as Sartre put it, "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. ... Man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen."

What your example demonstrates is just how dangerous democracy can be, and when one is arguing that democracies, after some retrospective consideration, "granted" the "privilege" of self defense, it is only a matter of time before a majority, or some well oiled minority decides this "privilege" to self defense is no longer allowed.

This is why I agree with the phrasing that it should be an unalienable right not some temporal right afforded us by government. The point of contention isn't that this should be the case, but rather the "unalienableness" of it. I see it as violable though I wish this weren't the case.

Also, for the sake of future discussions, the quotes here aren't used to diminish the contents, but are instead used as a way to call attention to a segment of text that happens to be the focus of the conversation.

Justice is not self evident, and is only evident in its absence. It is injustice that is evident.

Brilliant phrasing ‒ I agree wholeheartedly. This is a general theme where the negative is what's visible and the positive is something that's emergent as a result of the negative. So again the inalienable right is established post observation not pre-, making it by definition "not self evident" (otherwise we would have had justice to start) but this isn't to contradict the necessariness of the right.

So I would say "unalienable rights" are a vehicle for representing rights which should have preexisted the self evident nature of criminality.

This is exactly what I have said ...

Not exactly. You wrote, "You want to dismiss their evident nature by pointing to the self evident nature of criminality, but criminality does not preexist unalienable rights, quite the contrary, rights preexist criminality." This isn't the same as "should have" preexisted the self evident nature of criminality.

ever seen a funeral brawl???

now thats a brawl

reply to post by Xtraeme

A → B doesn't necessarily mean B → A. For instance in a simulation I can setup a bezier curve and use that path as a way to cause an object to move in relation to another. More to the point I can model a solar system without any need for gravity. Curvature of space just happens to be one way that a system can perform a similar function. More concretely you're asserting that a decision made in retrospect is the same as one that's established based on a universally "self evident" concept founded on no preceding basis. This is technically speaking a false analogy.

All of this is just smoke and mirrors in hopes of reaching the end of the magic trick and declaring "viola presto magic". It is not a false analogy. I have done my best to show you how it is false to say that rights were created in retrospect. Because this is false, it is as false as saying that gravity was created in retrospect.

I will try to explain this one more time. If rights are a retrospective creation, then they have to follow some set of circumstances that gave cause to this retrospection. You seem to be in agreement with me that it is criminality that is the relationship between rights. You are putting the cart before the horse by asserting that rights were created because of criminality. Criminality exists because rights exist and if there were no rights, then there would be no criminality. This is in terms of law, not legislation, and here is the problem with your stance. Your stance justifies the absurd proliferation of legislation acts that are on the books today. However, legislation is not law, it is merely evidence of law. If it were law, the courts would not have the authority of judicial review, which is not expressly granted to the federal courts, but is self evident just the same.

Judicial review is the authority to strike down legislation that is not lawful. That courts do strike down legislation as not lawful only demonstrates that legislatures are prone to write acts of legislation that are not lawful. However, too many people want to believe that any act of legislation that comes down the pike is law, and when you make the arguments you make, you are supporting this belief system. The laws of justice can be no more arbitrary and capricious than the laws of science, and in both cases, when assertions are made as law, but are arbitrary and capricious in their nature, respect for both science and government wanes dramatically. It does so not because some wise group retrospectively decreed that people should have little respect for the law when it is arbitrary and capricious, this happens as a natural phenomenon, and observably so.

The rule of law is not the same as the rule by law. The rule of law demands that everyone is equal under the law, and in doing so, it makes law universal. The rule of law is not an invention of humanity, it is a discovery, just as all laws are. The rule by law, on the other hand, is an invention of humanity, and it is a justification for tyranny. The quote of yours I posted above tends to read in the same way modern day legalese reads, as if they are utterances coming from a priest class set. It is language intended to baffle with bull puckey, in lieu of dazzling with brilliance.

Law is not complicated, it is simple, true, universal, and absolute. The Patriot Act is not simple, true, universal and absolute, it is bull puckey intended to baffle. The same goes for most legislation that numbers in the thousands of pages, if not all. The legislative acts regarding murder, theft, rape, trespass, and any other crime that creates a victim are not so artfully written, and they are easy to read and understand. This is as law should be, not because I say so, nor because some wise people long ago said so, but because it is. If there is a crime, there is a victim. The so called "victimless crimes" that exist today are not law, but merely acts of legislation. They are attempts at an aggregation of power, and in attempting to aggregate this power, the system by which civilization operates becomes more and more a closed system, as opposed to an open system, and just as surely as heat will tend towards entropy in a closed system, so will justice, economics, and even ethics. The priest class lawyer set have endeavored to mystify the laity with their legalese in hopes of baffling with bull puckey, but ignorance of the law is no excuse, and for anyone who understands the law, no amount of mystical incantations will frighten the well informed.

You may be able to, by force, silence me, but even if you have legislation behind you supporting this suppression of speech, it is not lawful. Those who understand law, understand this. Those who buy into your mystical incantations will shrug their shoulders and wonder what has happened to society, and wonder where their freedoms went.

Self evidence is a proposition that something is known to be true by understanding its meaning without proof, or technically a situation where denial is self-contradictory.

And this is precisely what you have done by asserting that rights are a retrospective act in response to criminality. You are contradicting yourself by making this assertion. Rights as a retrospective act do nothing at all to prevent, or stop in its track criminality and people still murder, they still steal, they still rape, and even though the First Amendment makes it perfectly clear that Congress may not pass any law abridging speech, they still do. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is a good example, and the Supreme Court in Citizens United struck the portion of that legislation down which violated the First Amendment. Of course, President Obama, touted as a "Constitutional expert" declared the SCOTUS wrong on this ruling, but in doing so all he managed to do was reveal his profound contempt for the prohibitory nature of the First Amendment.

That people have the right to defend themselves is known to be true and its meaning is understood without proof. The same is true in regards to speech. People do not need to prove they have the right to speech, they just know they do. This is why you will find members in this thread that qualify their calls for a chill on speech with the assertion that they are "all for freedom of speech", because they know it to be true that all people have this right. No one is questioning this right exists, and the real debate is how it exists. Your stance is that it is a retrospective invention of humanity and that some other people some where at some time granted you this "privilege". My stance is that it exists for the same reason gravity exists, it exists because it is central to a properly functioning system.

If we hold the idea of "freedom of speech" up to this mantle and ask, "If free speech isn't afforded by law what would be the result?" I imagine we'd arrive at an argument somewhat similar to Ghandi's "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" rephrased as "if no one is free to speak then everyone can be made to be mute."

Instead of getting lost up in the aether with your imagination, why not try coming down here to the planet Earth and observing the phenomenon of free speech. Do you honestly believe shushing a newborn infant wailing and crying will convince that infant it does not have the right to his or her speech? That child is communicating something and you can either listen to that communication or ignore it and shush in vain. That child need not prove a damn thing when it comes to their freedom of speech, and will wail and cry until their needs have been met, or the tire out and give up. Once that child reaches the age of 16 years of age, do you think you as a stern parental figure can convince that child they do not have a right to speech? You may be able to, by threat of force or coercion, convince that child to mind their tongue, but anyone who has had a 16 year old teenager knows full well that at some point, even threat of force or coercion is not going to keep that child from speaking freely. No amount of legislation to the contrary will change this.

So it's not self-evident by definition...

Yes, it is.

...but something that we as a people would like to accept as self-evident. A truly self-evident statement is, "I'm alive."

"I'm alive" is speech, and if a person chooses to make such a declaration, try and convince him that the only reason he can is because some one long ago granted him the "privilege" to make the statement. See how far you get with that one.

The concept of "freedom of speech" isn't quite on the level of being a contradiction when one negates the statement (p ∧ ¬p).

What are you doing, trying to disprove the self evident nature of speech? Can you not see the self contradiction in that? Why are you trying to disprove that which needs no proof?

A closer truth to an unalienable right ‒ afforded to us by nature itself ‒ is, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Or as Sartre put it, "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. ... Man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen."

Oh, I see. So, if I choose to be a tyrant, then this would be a closer truth than an unalienable right. Hmmmm, you are backing yourself into a corner here, and the side you are choosing is not by any stretch of the imagination a heroic side, and easily lends itself to villainy.

This is why I agree with the phrasing that it should be an unalienable right not some temporal right afforded us by government. The point of contention isn't that this should be the case, but rather the "unalienableness" of it. I see it as violable though I wish this weren't the case.

You do understand that violable is that which can be violated, don't you? This means that there is no criminality as all rights are violable. You have placed all faith in legislative acts, instead of recognizing that if someone were to threaten the life of your children that you would act to defend them, regardless of what legislation has to say about it. At least, I would like to think you would. Not all people would, but then, not all people act lawfully, some act criminally.

Just because rights are trampled upon does not make them violable any more than jumping off of a cliff makes gravity violable. There are consequences to these actions. Your argument is not an argument for freedom, it is an argument for governmental control, and freedom rarely flourishes under governmental control.

Also, for the sake of future discussions, the quotes here aren't used to diminish the contents, but are instead used as a way to call attention to a segment of text that happens to be the focus of the conversation.

Then perhaps you might consider using the bold or italic feature instead, as those features come much closer to accomplishing your intention grammatically speaking than placing quotation marks around them do.

Brilliant phrasing ‒ I agree wholeheartedly. This is a general theme where the negative is what's visible and the positive is something that's emergent as a result of the negative. So again the inalienable right is established post observation not pre-, making it by definition "not self evident" (otherwise we would have had justice to start) but this isn't to contradict the necessariness of the right.

No, it is not unalienable rights that is established post observation, it is justice that it is established post observation. Justice is not self evident, it is a causative act established by people when confronted with the absence of justice. The absence of justice becomes evident when self evident rights are disparaged or infringed upon. People who do not lock their doors do so because the right to their property, and the understanding that theft is criminal is self evident. People begin locking their doors as a post observation after being a victim of theft...unless they are thieves, as thieves always lock their doors.

Not exactly. You wrote, "You want to dismiss their evident nature by pointing to the self evident nature of criminality, but criminality does not preexist unalienable rights, quite the contrary, rights preexist criminality." This isn't the same as "should have" preexisted the self evident nature of criminality.

Okay, point taken. In the future I will be more diligent in placing significance on each and every word. Hopefully I have done that with this post.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Allow me to ask? Do you concede that no one has the right to not be offended? A simple yes or no will suffice~

Originally posted by Whereweheaded
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

Allow me to ask? Do you concede that no one has the right to not be offended? A simple yes or no will suffice~

Why would I concede such an absurdity? Let's be clear here, while this site may be, to some degree, a court of public opinion, I am not a witness on the stand and you are not some litigant cross examining me. You have no authority to demand I reduce my answers to "simple" yes or no's.

"No one has the right to not be offended" is such a preposterous presumption. People have the right to either be offended, or not be offended. What is wrong with you? Everyone has these rights. If someone wants to be offended, how does that harm someone else? If someone chooses not to be offended how does this harm anyone? I have made it clear in this thread that the only justification for harm is self defense, defense of others in peril of harm, and defense of property. Outside of this, if what a person does causes no harm, then they do that by right.

"No one has the right to not be offended" indeed.

Freedom of speech works both ways. When I attended a funeral for my friend who died in Iraq, the Westboro gang was there, kids, and all, and I called their head office and had a talk with them, giving them some choice words of my own, exercising my own freedom of speech.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

It is all the same to me...whether it is your own opinion or not. It is the argument itself that I wish to probe, though it may turn out that both I who question and you who answer are equally under scrutiny.

– Plato, Protagoras, 333c

The problem with your argument is you believe in absolutes. You clearly follow a dentological position and as a moral absolutist believe that some actions are wrong no matter what consequences follow. Kant (even as the author of the dentological categorical imperative) argued that the only absolutely good thing is a good will, and so the single determining factor of whether an action is morally right is the will, or motive of the person doing it. I think it can be agreed that Laws are usually based on moral positions that hardly measure intentions.

You've fallen in to the trap of believing Law to be absolute and immutable. By this argument you would seem to favor a position that all countries that aren't the United States are therefore not lawful. I suppose that makes you an imperialist. I don't actually believe this, but I say this to point out that you frequently put words in other peoples mouths much the same as I just did here. Don't do that. It makes you look like a prick.

Getting back to the point, in the United States Laws are bedrock ideals that we take for granted. They're assumed to be correct even though they may in fact not be self evident but are rather truths we wish to be treated as such due to our inability to measure intention. "Freedom of Speech" is one of these. "Freedom of speech" is not self evident in the case of hate speech. This gets to the fancy "mystical incantation" that you keep referencing (A → B doesn't necessarily mean B → A, or B is not commutative with A over the conditional in every instances). "Freedom of speech" is conditional in how we wish it to be applied. The majority of sane normal reasonable people are for freedom of verbal expression so long as others do so in a way that isn't purely for the purpose of churlish instigation towards violence. This is the reason why WBC is in the cross-hairs of almost every normal human being because their public display is disgusting breach of pluralistic morality ‒ not just etiquette.

The majority of people who oppose their message, operating in good faith with good intentions, silence WBC by drowning out their message with counter-protests. This is equivalent to canceling WBC's conveyance of their message because they can't be heard. Granted this isn't the same as taking away their freedom to speech, but it's tantamount to nullifying WBC's actions. So Westboro Baptist Church has "freedom of speech" in form, but not in function.

In this case "Freedom of Speech" truly is conditional even in reality (functionally speaking) where ideally we see it as something that has no conditions. Thus the only reason this absolutist position of the 1st amendment works, even though many people feel "hate speech" should be muted (as enacted by many countries, e.g. Moureaux's Law), is because there are hack'ish implementations to negate the effects of various hate groups detestable spewage. Thus we have no need to enact legalization against it, and this is to say nothing of the slippery slope argument.

I would call this the conspiracy of silence surrounding the first amendment. Our bedrock foundation just like every other nations founding principles (whether Stoic, Confucian, or anything that followed) are not necessary but contingent on accepted norms amongst a group of people. This is Ayn Rand's "contract society" at its finest.

Criminality exists because rights exist and if there were no rights, then there would be no criminality.

Criminality exists because people have an innate sense of fairness. Rights exist as an enactment of a sense of fairness. I'd rephrase this as "if there was no sense of fairness there would be no criminality."

Like your example earlier "All laws work in the negative. ... Justice is not self evident, and is only evident in its absence. It is injustice that is evident."

The sense of fairness isn't exposed till a negative action provokes a counter force. Does this mean fairness existed in advance? Hardly, fairness was emergent from the negative action. If we can't explicate the obviousness of something in advance it doesn't preexist or have a more essential nature than the thing that instigated it. This is why poets like Gerald Massey write, "... in the darkest hour The greatest light breaks out ..."

The necessariness of redacted rights comes in to existence after seeing something gone terribly wrong. For example, imagine trying to argue than an ant-line preexists the pheromones that allow other ants to find the food source. In both cases "fairness" and the "ant-line" are emergent properties of a more chaotic system. This isn't the same as saying "gravity didn't preexist Einstein's description of it." The difference is that Hominidae's base behaviors, like force and coercion, preceded our genealogical development of fairness ‒ which is only necessary in a group environment.

Here's how we can verify this:

1. If there was no criminality [c] there would be no need for rights [r]. (True, where [c]=True and [r]=True )
   
2. If there were no rights there would be no criminality. (False, where [r]=True and [c]=False )

This isn't the same as:

1. If there was no criminality [c] there would be no need for people to be fair [f]. (False, where [c]=True and [f]=False)
   
2. If there were no need for people to be fair there would be no criminality. (False, where [f]=True and [c]=False)

Which is different from your usage:

1. If there was no criminality [c] there would be no conception of fairness [f]. (True, where [c]=True and [f]=True)
   
2. If people had no conception of fairness there would be no criminality. (True, where [f]=True and [c]=True)

And this is precisely what you have done by asserting that rights are a retrospective act in response to criminality. You are contradicting yourself by making this assertion. Rights as a retrospective act do nothing at all to prevent, or stop in its track criminality and people still murder, they still steal, they still rape, and even though the First Amendment makes it perfectly clear that Congress may not pass any law abridging speech, they still do.

The confusion seems to be that you seem to think that I'm arguing that Law or even legal acts somehow always work to enact fairness by causing the enumeration of rights. Not all laws and or legal actions are setup to make allowances and abridge restriction, but are set out to impose punitive measures on those who violate others rights.

Rights are a positive statement. In our default state at birth all rights are afforded us. I have the right to tell someone off, hack them limb from limb, to steal their property, and do any other horrible thing I wish. This shows us that giving a person unfettered access to "all rights" is just as bad as saying a person should have none. It's better to say people have all rights and then enumerate the good ones (which is subjective) and, as circumstances require it, later restrict the bad ones (again subjective).

We only make these distinctions between which is which by observing the negative effects that rights have on society and those around us.

... it is as false as saying that gravity was created in retrospect.

Amusingly you're on the money. Though I'm not sure you realize the murkiness of the mechanics of gravity. If gravity existed up to and at the moment of the big bang the universe should have recollapsed. However the universe didn't thermalize, requiring a counter force greater than the effects of gravity. This is likely some form of dark energy (or a cosmological constant) which causes the universe to continue to expand instead of contracting. In this case gravity really is emergent or secondary to a more essential structure.

Law is not complicated, it is simple, true, universal, and absolute.

Are they? So given locality, causality, Lorentz invariance and all known physical data about the universe since the 1860s we should be able to have a simple statement to describe "the Laws" of the universe? The equation below measures everything ever observed by humans (sans gravity). I doubt anyone would say this Lagrangian of the standard model is "simple." But it has so far held up as being universally true.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/40e6a6fa962c.png[/atsimg]