Of COURSE you can, and we do in many ways. It's simply not okay to limit the speech of the RICH because, as we all know, those with more money are simply better than us. Intrinsically. Otherwise they wouldn't be rich, because money is an objective measure of how smart, good looking, and worthwhile one is as a person.So we can limit the right to yell fire in a crowded theater because it would affect others but we cannot limit someone's ability to drown out others right to speech?
Someone has clearly read Ayn Rand. (emoticon that denotes I'm joking!)
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Thejeff, I think its pointless. When you're arguing against someone who bases everything on an arbitrary set of "good" and "bad", completely ignoring reality or consequences, theres just no point. Especially when their ideal society is the perfect Hunger Games arena, where the elite trained killing machine can pray on the 11 year old farmers daughter and its all fair and good. The only important thing is that there isn't a written rule forbidding the 11 year old from winning. Reality doesn't matter, theoretical rules is the only thing that should be considered.
When the outlook is like that, instead of more like "hey lets aim for society to be as good a place as possible", there's just no discussion to be had. They're religious fundamentalists, but their commandment is "survival of the fittest/richest" rather than stuff like "thou shalt not bear false witness". Because lying is fine - after all, it's their right by the first amendment.
So we can limit the right to yell fire in a crowded theater because it would affect others but we cannot limit someone's ability to drown out others right to speech?
Durgrun, I already answered this, too, but I'll do it again.
Shouting fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire endangers people's lives in a very immediate and direct way.
Your right to free speech is not "drowned out." Your right to free speech does not entail the obligation on others that you be heard.
Or look at it this way: "Only those who meet predefined and arbitrary criteria may shout fire when in fact there is a fire (i.e. if you have more money than I think you should, you are not allowed to shout fire)." While it's not a perfect analogy, it is just as ridiculous.
Your right to free speech is not "drowned out." Your right to free speech does not entail the obligation on others that you be heard.
Not even elected officials in a democracy?
You do remember what this is really about, yes? The metaphors and analogies about commercials and amps turned to eleven were not the real discussion.
If money equals speech, is it still a democracy if you don't have the money to talk to your elected representative?
No, power corrupts. Money is a tool, nothing more. It can be used for good or ill.
So money = speech but money != power. Sure thing bud.......
Finally, you said you wanted all parties to have an equal chance to speak. So, you want the Pansexual Peace Party to share the stage with the Knights Party, while also sharing time with the Communist Party USA, at the same time having "equal time" with Republicans and Democrats?
Not all ideas are equal. Poor ideas (like the first three political parties I mentioned) don't get airplay not because they don't have money, but because no amount of money will attract people to those parties.
My stance is very simple, Davick. "Congress shall make no law respecting the freedom of speech" is pretty unequivocal. Are you so proud of your own position that the words of the people who lived through tyranny mean nothing? Political speech, even though you don't like the message, should not be restrained in any way by government, or you have a bureaucratic inquisition set up for those who wish to exercise their right to speak freely.
I know you don't believe in that concept, and you'll just have to live with the fact that, luckily, the Constitution was written by people who had lived through far more than you'll ever experience.
Wow, the irony, the internal contradiction. You're putting your words in my mouth and then saying you disagree with me. I'm beginning to think you're pulling a Poe or something. This is crazy.
YES! Yes I want the Pansexual Peace Party to have equal time with republicans. Because at the point that you appoint yourself dictator of good and bad speech, you open the door to any form of censorship. I just don't understand the premises you're coming from or what you're trying to argue anymore. It's like saying "2+carburator-Uruguay*-4^penguin=free speech." You keep making arguments that hinge on money=speech and you're forgetting that you're the only one here who thinks that. We demonstrate not only why speech as money is a horrible idea but also an incorrect one, but you keep lobbing arguments that presuppose it and then you just veer right off the cliff anyway.
If I wanted to be this confused I'd watch "The Magic of Spell"
"To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason, is like administering medicine to the dead." - Thomas Paine
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Shouting fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire endangers people's lives in a very immediate and direct way.
It's ok to endanger people, but only if you do it slowly.
Nope. But better speakers tend to attract more money than bad speakers.
You seem to be flip flopping. So are you concerned with good and bad messages or good and bad speakers? The two don't necessarily align.
The government just told you "we will punish you if you continue speaking your mind." So, we both have less freedom, because if the government can punish you for speaking your mind, there's nothing stopping them from punishing me from speaking mine.
Except that it would be limiting money, not the ability to speak your mind. This argument would invalidate all libel and slander law, and your fire example.
And for the record, I've handled a 40lb block of uranium. Not really that exciting.
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To equate the totalitarianism of the catholic church with peer reviewed science is a statement that is so far off base as to not even be wrong. You clearly do not grasp the concepts you are attempting to discuss. But while we're talking Galileo, you do realize he wasn't vindicated for around 200 years. And wasn't apologized to until, what was it, the 90s? That's the corrupting influence of money (and religion) in politics. It kept an integral idea shut out for centuries. That's what you're arguing for.That's because in essence Galileo WAS fully guilty of what he was accused of. Galileo wasn't prosecuted for presenting a theory. He was presenting a theory AS fully proven science which it was not, and he made fun of a Pope who was just as prickly about being offended as he was.
Galileo was told that he could publish his works as a theory. He presented them as proven science. WHICH IT WASN'T. because the science to back up his observations would not be around until Newton and Kepler who were still the better part of a century into the future. He was fairly arrogant during his trial because he was confident that the Church couldn't do anything to him and he was right. Submitting him to anything more than house arrest would have made him a martyr and contributed to the growing unrest caused by the Reformation. So Galileo could even get away with spreading more fiction about himself. (such as the rumor of him saying "Yet it moves" during the trial when he did not.)
While Galileo was right in his claims... he was right for the wrong reasons. The only reason he's held up as a hero today is largely due to his own self-promotion.
You are entirely distorting the events. It wasn't theory versus proven science, it was "hypothetical calculating device" vs "physically real phenomenon".
Not only did Galileo present enough evidence to support the claims he was making in "Sidereus Nuncius" but a theory IS proven science. Galileo's observations combined with Copernicus' work is compelling. The church wasn't concerned with Galileo's scientific integrity, as you seem to be saying. They were concerned with his ideas contradicting scripture. His charges were brought under a decree that stated anyone who disagrees with the church's interpretation of scripture is a heretic. It had nothing to do with theories or science at all. The idea at the time was to use heliocentrism as a way to calculate time, because it just so happened to make those calculations work a lot better. Galileo's crime was saying maybe it works better because it's true. And he provided evidence for why he said that. And no one had any evidence to prove him wrong. That's a theory and a theory is proven science. Sure Newton's work further solidified the idea, but Galileo's assertion was still far ahead of, and better supported than, any claim a geocentrist could make. (Even if there is a new movie coming out about how it's true)
I'm unaware of what "wrong reasons" you're talking about. But it is utterly impossible that his ideas were less proven science than those of the church whose only foundation was theological and not scientific at all. So if that was sufficient to condemn him, then the whole church should have been condemned as well.
This is very much a thread derail. Forgive me please.
Is it bribery to financially support a candidate who has already had stated positions that you want to be enacted. The candidate isn't changing positions or acting outside of a method they had already committed to, merely your contributions help to get them in a position to enact those views, which you happen to agree with. Is that really bribery?
No. But that wasn't the scenario.
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Guys, this really isn't hard.
The more money we allow in politics, the more money is necessary to be competitive. Candidates, at least those that aren't sitting on a few hundred million dollars, have to get this money somewhere. It would be stunningly naive to believe people who fork over that kind of money aren't buying access and influence, just as it would be stunningly naive to believe that candidates who accept that kind of money don't end up beholden to their benefactors.
All of the "Why do you hate freedom of speech?" nonsense is a red herring. White noise. Don't take the bait. Instead of fruitlessly trying to reason someone out of an unreasonable "money=speech" position, we should be focusing on how to fix the problem: Money in politics.
You don't stand outside a burning building arguing about whether putting out the fire violates the rights of arsonists.
1. Really?
2. Are you sure?
1. Uranium is toxic, as well as radiactive, and the effects you're citing are from the former, not the latter. With a half-life of over 4 billion years for U-238 (>700 million years for U-235), uranium is very weakly radioactive, and can easily be handled safely if you take precautions against the toxicity (ingestion/absorption/inhalation). Remember, they make tank armor out of the stuff.
2. That was cesium, not uranium.
Your overall point is good; don't ruin it by citing a bunch of stuff that undermines your credibility.
Is it bribery to financially support a candidate who has already had stated positions that you want to be enacted. The candidate isn't changing positions or acting outside of a method they had already committed to, merely your contributions help to get them in a position to enact those views, which you happen to agree with. Is that really bribery?
If you send them a check directly, yes. Your money may keep them from changing their minds.
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You don't stand outside a burning building arguing about whether putting out the fire violates the rights of arsonists.
If it was a tenement house that was supposed to get turned into an office building I'm sure the right would bring up that argument just for the 15 second delay of "wait...what?"
The rights trick isn't in convincing people that their arguments are good, but that they even have an argument.
1. Really?
2. Are you sure?1. Uranium is toxic, as well as radiactive, and the effects you're citing are from the former, not the latter. With a half-life of over 4 billion years for U-238 (>700 million years for U-235), uranium is very weakly radioactive, and can easily be handled safely if you take precautions against the toxicity (ingestion/absorption/inhalation). Remember, they make tank armor out of the stuff.
2. That was cesium, not uranium.
Your overall point is good; don't ruin it by citing a bunch of stuff that undermines your credibility.
Did he say it was only exciting because it was radioactive? I'm not a doctor, I don't know the relation between its toxicity and radioactivity and which one was at play in the referenced account. But he was making a point that "nuclear weapons" aren't a big deal, using uranium as proxy. I don't think that makes citing cesium disingenuous.
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Did he say it was only exciting because it was radioactive? I'm not a doctor, I don't know the relation between its toxicity and radioactivity and which one was at play in the referenced account. But he was making a point that "nuclear weapons" aren't a big deal, using uranium as proxy. I don't think that makes citing cesium disingenuous.
In any event, I don't think most people need help figuring out that the argument "I have touched uranium, therefore private citizens should be able to own nuclear weapons" is suspect. ;-)
Did he say it was only exciting because it was radioactive? I'm not a doctor, I don't know the relation between its toxicity and radioactivity and which one was at play in the referenced account. But he was making a point that "nuclear weapons" aren't a big deal, using uranium as proxy. I don't think that makes citing cesium disingenuous.In any event, I don't think most people need help figuring out that the argument "I have touched uranium, therefore private citizens should be able to own nuclear weapons" is suspect. ;-)
Aye, most people....
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A theory is not "proven science" it's a model, frequently in contest with other models to explain the same phenomena. It's an important distinction.
No, that would be a hypothesis.
A theory is as close to certain as it gets in science. As is often pointed out, Gravity is "just" a theory, too.
"Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth-floor window."
-- Richard Dawkins
Tell me if im wrong, but gravity is an observable fact; the theory ofgravity deals with the details of how it works.
One more point. A theory is not "proven science" it's a model, frequently in contest with other models to explain the same phenomena.
No, it's only a theory after it has already withstood sufficient testing to convince the scientific community, and after the other competing models have been proven incorrect. Until then it's a hypothesis, not a theory.
If you're going to correct people, at least be right about it.
Tell me if im wrong, but gravity is an observable fact; the theory of gravity deals with the details of how it works.
Correct, with the caveat that any old model doesn't qualify as a "theory" -- in science the term "theory" has prerequisites in terms of testing, falsifiablility, and so on. Unfortunately, the term is grossly misused by almost all non-scientists, so that most people have no idea what it actually means.
Example: To be accurate, I'd argue that the sitcom should be called "The Big Bang Hypothesis."
From the point of view of science, I believe gravity is still considered a theory. Most scientists would recognize that the experiments supporting our current understanding of gravity are sufficiently extensive and reliable that they can use them to build other work on them. However, it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that a scientist could develop a hypothesis that would change our understanding of gravity that would stand up to the standards of experimental support and peer review.
From the point of view of science, I believe gravity is still considered a theory. Most scientists would recognize that the experiments supporting our current understanding of gravity are sufficiently extensive and reliable that they can use them to build other work on them. However, it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that a scientist could develop a hypothesis that would change our understanding of gravity that would stand up to the standards of experimental support and peer review.
Getting past your garbled terminology, that has already happened.
Newton's laws of motion hold for pretty much all earth-standard conditions; when they were tested and tested and no exceptions were ever found, they went from hypothesis to theory.
Einstein found that, under extreme conditions not found on Earth (e.g., noticeable fraction of the speed of light), Newton's laws had to be modified somewhat. After all the best minds tested his math and, more importantly, tested his hypotheses using physical observations, we now have the Theory of General Relativity. It modified (did not supersede) Newton's Laws.
P.S. You can't say "still a theory." In science, a theory is as good as it gets.
Tell me if im wrong, but gravity is an observable fact
As is evolution -- it's just not as intuitive. :)
Tell me if im wrong, but gravity is an observable fact; the theory of gravity deals with the details of how it works.Correct, with the caveat that any old model doesn't qualify as a "theory" -- in science the term "theory" has prerequisites in terms of testing, falsifiablility, and so on. Unfortunately, the term is grossly misused by almost all non-scientists, so that most people have no idea what it actually means.
Yeah, I know that. A theory is a falsifiable model for explanation of an observation that is heavily backed by evidence, and that can be used to make accurate predictions without knowing the result beforehand.
Hence why marginalism shouldn't be considered a theory.
Tell me if im wrong, but gravity is an observable factAs is evolution -- it's just not as intuitive. :)
Yes, of course, we can clearly observe species evolving. The theory of evolution is AFAIK the model for explaining the history of evolution, right?
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Yes, of course, we can clearly observe species evolving. The theory of evolution is AFAIK the model for explaining the history of evolution, right?
"The Theory of Evolution" is itself a lay term. We science dorks sometimes go for "Modern Evolutionary Synthesis," implying that natural selection is the most likely mechanism, with evidence in the form of genetics and so on. It explains not only the history, but the reasons it happens.
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That show is about as fun to watch as eye surgery.
I fart in its general direction.
That show is about as fun to watch as eye surgery.
I fart in its general direction.
I dunno, I found this far funnier than TBBT.
(Warning: Might be NSFW depending on your work, also not for the weak of stomach)
Yeah, I'm sure. It was very heavy for its size, and very boring.
It wasn't depleted uranium dust, as your first link suggests, nor was it caesium.
So I don't know exactly what your point was.
Good luck draining the swamp? Good luck finding two honest politicians to rub together much less the thousands who govern Federal, State and Local governments in this and every other country. You place the blame on dishonest politicians making it an individual choice. However, campaign finance laws are designed so that such moral weakness is removed from the equation, or at least they are supposed to anyway. It is much easier to resist moral quandaries if you are not placed in one!
You said you were swamped. I wished you luck in draining it. That's all.
If curbing money speech protects the fundamental rights of the many against the few is that not a strong public policy argument for limiting such speech?
Actually, given that 70% of federal spending goes to the poor and middle class, I think the bigger risk is exactly what Madison warned in Federalist #10:
When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government. . . enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.
The risk (nay, the reality!) is that the majority will destroy liberty in their quest to "punish" those who have more. Many of the checks and balances the Founders put in place to prevent the masses voting themselves largess from the public coffers have been removed, usually as a result of judges like Breyer who rationalize that a "collective" right warrants such action.
So by saying "No speech for you!" what you're really allowing is the majority to ignore the rights of the minority. This will be a detriment to all our rights, as well as the public good.
Please try to rationalize why anyone should have to beg for the privilege of speaking their mind from a government bureaucrat. The only way you can reach that conclusion is to take away the minority's rights.
You wouldn't do that based on race, would you? Or religion? Well, some of you would, based on your previous posts. What about gender? Are the rights of a minority, any minority, only given at the whim of majority vote?
I know what some of your answers will be, so no need to post them here. Besides, I'm working again this weekend, and then taking much needed vacation. But you should really, seriously, think about how quickly you want to strip the rights away from a minority you don't particularly like.
Was it not radioactive (or at least not dangerously so) or were you wearing protective gear?
The naturally occurring metal isn't highly radioactive, so for short periods of exposure you don't have to worry about it. Sort of like x-rays: the technician running the instrument sits 20 feet away from where you're actually getting the dosage, because one zap isn't dangerous to you, but she's doing it all day long.
I can say there was nothing between my eyes and the dull gray block except my normal eyeglasses. We did wear gloves, though.
My initial reluctance was overcome, and I managed to get a great lesson in how nuclear explosions worked. Thus starting my lifelong addiction to things that go boom.
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Doug:
Until you establish that money is speech -- which you have not -- the rest of your argument is moot. Seriously...you keep rephrasing the same argument and ignoring your debunked premise. Did you think no one would notice? :P
How the crap do you figure 70% of federal spending goes to the poor or middle class? Social Security and medicare "goes" to people who are eligible to collect, including the rich, who pay proportionally less into the SS fund than do people of lower income. Since SS, Medicare and Defense add up to about 60% of the budget, that's already a BS figure.
Even if you did somehow did the twist semantically, that 70% of federal money goes back to 90% of the population still seems like a raw deal.
In reality about 13% of the federal budget goes to social safety net programs like unemployment and foodstamps.
Doug:
Until you establish that money is speech -- which you have not -- the rest of your argument is moot. Seriously...you keep rephrasing the same argument and ignoring your debunked premise. Did you think no one would notice? :P
If you'll lose on the issue you yell angrily about anything but the actual issue.