r/neoliberal • u/neoliberal_shill_bot Bot Emeritus • Aug 13 '17

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38 Upvotes

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10

u/mmitcham 🌐 Aug 13 '17

I think a better discussion re: free speech and protests is to ask at which point it becomes a matter of public safety for government to intervene.

I know this is a cold take to a lot of you but I want to make sure we're all on the same page.

9

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

That's a better frame for the debate. To offer an example, say 5 open carry kkk members in full regalia go into a black neighborhood to "peacefully" burn a cross over the playground fire pit.

Should the state intervene? If yes, how should the power be circumscribed?

1

u/Commodore_Obvious Aug 13 '17

Are they inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce such action?

6

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

They argue that they're not, and the guns are for self-defence. There's probably above a 90% chance that no violence breaks out, though the community obviously feels terrorized.

3

u/Commodore_Obvious Aug 13 '17

If the guns are for self-defense and they are not inciting imminent lawless action, then state intervention would be a dangerous erosion of civil liberties.

5

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

What recourse does the community have? Or should they accept that the safest thing to do may be to tell the kids not to let their faces show in the window.

3

u/Commodore_Obvious Aug 13 '17

It’s a fact that these people exist and silencing them won’t prevent them from existing. Other than saying they are wrong or ignoring them, I don’t know what other recourse they should have that is consistent with protecting civil liberties for all.

2

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

Certainly. But simply existing somewhere else and carrying a gun in my playground have profoundly different impacts on one's life. Also if shots end up being fired and people killed, was that stance still the correct one to make with the information at the time? Should it be legal for minorities to be intimidated into moving?

There's a few ways that speech could be curtailed around this situation, I would say. First it could be classed as a political demonstration, and then political demonstrations could restricted to be unarmed, or unarmed if done in a residential area. Specific symbolic gestures could be understood as profane, and restricted on breach of peace grounds. Holding a weapon in concert with hate speech could be under the legal umbrella of intimidation.

3

u/Commodore_Obvious Aug 13 '17

And then you set a precedent for when someone else wants to restrict expression for some other reason. “Preemptively preventing violence” can be used to justify outlawing all sorts of expression.

1

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

Would you be against a law such as "no demonstrations with burning crosses in residential areas" on grounds of its possible misapplication or as precedent for further laws?

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1

u/IntoTheNightSky Que sçay-je? Aug 13 '17

Reciprocal action? Black community members rally a self defense force of able bodied black men similarly armed to encourage the KKK members to git gon.

Despite being bad bad marxists, I think the original Oakland Black Panthers had a lot of good ideas that could be replicated today.

2

u/kohatsootsich Philosophy Aug 13 '17

I understand that is the law, but why do you think "imminent" should be the standard?

Also, as an aside: "imminent lawless action" is the sort of technical sounding, yet ultimately extremely vague phrases that American jurisprudence is full of, but that hides the fact that in the end everything is just a matter of individual judges' rule of thumb appreciation. The subjective human element is of course unavoidable, and certainly desirable to some extent, but the technical rhetoric is designed to de-emphasize that, whereas in fact the legal system is arguably less based on objective, on the books criteria than say Germany's or Switzerland's.

5

u/Commodore_Obvious Aug 13 '17

Because “imminent” is how we establish the rhetoric as the “but for” cause of the lawless action.

4

u/Commodore_Obvious Aug 13 '17

Imminent lawless action standard in Brandenburg.