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  1. #1
    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Question Civil liberties (aka the first 10 amendments)

    So in my Poli Sci - American Government class we are on the part about civil liberties and specifically the first 10 amendments. For our discussion post we had to explain if they treat us all equal in front of the law or if certain amendments were more beneficial to one class or group more. Then we had to explain why we felt that way. This is what I had to say:

    The first and second amendments have always favored one demographic in America. The first amendment has within the past few years turned into the right to hateful speech and the right to openly discriminate against a group of people under the guise "religious freedom". Hate groups are using the first amendment as a means to further spread their hate. Religious zealots are using the first amendment to openly discriminate against gay people saying that by doing so is against their religious freedom. Recently the religious freedom stance has been taken to discriminate against gay people for housing.

    The second amendment is a hot topic issue with all the school shootings that have happened in the past few years. Those that support the second amendment translating into the right of an individual citizen to own any gun they want to are in the minority. Most people support the second amendment but want tougher laws to prevent people who should not have a gun to get their hands on one. In my opinion, the second amendment needs to be completely overhauled and spelled out clearly what the average American citizen should be allowed to have and how many of them.

    I should note that while I support a person's right to say I fully support a person's right to say what they want without persecution from the government. That is what makes this country, unlike North Korea, a great place to live in. What I don't agree with is these religious zealots using the first amendment to justify their hatred. The first amendment is more than being able to speak your mind openly. The first amendment has been used within the past few years as a means to openly discriminate against groups of people. Gays and Muslims are under attack by Christian fanatics who use their religious freedom granted by the first amendment as a means to deny those groups services including housing. I forget what state it was that just this year ruled that it was within a person's first amendment right to deny gay people housing because the "gay lifestyle" conflicts with their religious convictions.

    The sixth amendment that guarantees the right to a fair and speedy trial I do feel that one's social status does influence how speedy and fair of a trial they get. With pro bono cases the lawyers are supposed to treat their client as if the client was paying him directly. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Many times when the courts appoint the lawyer to the defendant, the lawyer is already swamped with cases and doesn't have enough time to fully devote to their new client.

    The eighth amendment favors the rich who can afford to post the bail. Judges rarely set the bail so high that a rich person can not afford to make it. A poorer person will most likely sit in jail for the duration of their trial and not be able to assist in his own case the way a rich person who is able to afford the bail could. That alone makes the eighth amendment beneficial to a rich person and not a poor person. If a rich person is accused of murder and the judge sets bail for him, he is in a better position to pay it than if a poor person were to be accused of murder and the judge sets bail for him for the exact same amount. Bail is never, well mostly never, set low. Bail is typically tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum and can reach upwards of a million dollars. John Doe who works at the local Wal-Mart is unlikely to be able to afford the same amount of bail set that James Smith who works on Wall Street could.
    So question to you guys, do you think that the first 10 amendments? Do you feel that some/all favor one group/class of people more than another group/class?
    Last edited by Citizen T; 2018-09-18 at 06:35 PM. Reason: Infracted for forbidden topics.

  2. #2
    Hope you have a very lenient teacher, because if you were to look at it again, you'd see you didn't even complete the assignment. Instead of considering all 10 amendments as the assignment seemed to be, half your post is complaining about first amendment in relation to gays, and then short comments on three others. That's 4 out of 10. If I were a teacher, that would be F minus based on the fact that the assignment wasn't even halfway completed.
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    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    So in my Poli Sci - American Government class we are on the part about civil liberties and specifically the first 10 amendments. For our discussion post we had to explain if they treat us all equal in front of the law or if certain amendments were more beneficial to one class or group more. Then we had to explain why we felt that way. This is what I had to say:

    So question to you guys, do you think that the first 10 amendments? Do you feel that some/all favor one group/class of people more than another group/class?
    By law they are applied the same regardless of your identity traits.

    Hate speech is free speech because the only alternative is to ban speech based on subjective feelings. Which is the polar opposite of having a rigorous objective metric
    Last edited by PC2; 2018-09-18 at 08:52 AM.

  4. #4
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    Privileged demographics benefit to a greater degree from virtually any freedom. Which you trivially expose.
    It seems to me like this exploration should be done in class in about 5 minutes. The meat of debating freedoms is in the later analysis, that your assignment doesn't demand: is it desirable to have X freedom even if it inevitably will be exploited in undesirable ways?.

    What age is this for anyway?

  5. #5
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    The right to free speech is a very, very interesting topic and how it's expressed. Free speech has been critical for minorities to be able to voice their opinions and concerns without government oppression. In a country without this privilege, minority groups can be easily shut down before their voice becomes powerful enough to cause a real change. In this scenario it's use is to empower those who would otherwise be powerless. It's their most powerful tool to highlight inequalities and systematic societal oppressions to hopefully bring about change that erases these problems. In short, the use is to empower oneself and those around you.

    On the other hand, those in the majority use this not to empower, but to suppress. They're part of the majority, the ones holding the power, and they don't want this to change. Instead of fighting for their own rights, they're fighting to strip others of their rights. But why is this? Why punch down? It's quite simple really, those in the majority already have everything. There's nothing to fight for. Another reason to want to suppress minorities has to do with group privileges and the consequence of them.

    There are a lot of discussions about privilege, especially white privilege as this discussion often takes place in the western world, but here I'm just going to use the generic term, majority privilege. Every group has their set of privileges, and being in that group automatically grants you all of them. Those completely outside has none, and those partially within the group has those corresponding to the parts they share with that group. Those within the group, or partially within, will always be favored over those outside. All of us are members of a whole slew of groups, completely or partially, ranging from as small as fandoms to towns, states, countries, continents and so forth. The reason this is important is because the broader the group becomes, the more sub-groups you encompass and in this collection of sub-groups there will be one in majority. If we don't acknowledge that these exist and simply act upon them, the groups outside of the majority will struggle, and the more you are outside of it, the harder that struggle will be. And the thing is, if you're in this majority and only move within groups that fully or closely match this majority, you will never experience that struggle. It's very easy to dismiss something that you have no experience with since it has no effect on you at a personal level. To understand the privileges that the minority groups are facing, you have to actively contemplate on which privileges you are given as a part of the majority. And this can be hard, most of them are invisible to us as we've never had a reason to think about them. Until the majority group definitions are so broad that they become all encompassing, the majority group has the highest responsibility to understand and counteract these privileges to give everyone a fair chance.

    This brings me back to my previous question about why you would want to punch down and strip others of their rights. By classifying some traits as practically forbidden, you no longer have to ignore those privileges that you grant others that share your groups traits. Suddenly life becomes a lot easier and simpler. Free speech is currently being used to attempt to deny whole swathes of groups access to this majority group. It's not used to fight for your ability to live in the majority society, it's to not have to bother with the fact that your life is a hell of a lot easier because you belong in that majority.
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by PrimaryColor View Post
    Hate speech is free speech because the only alternative is to ban speech based on subjective feelings. Which is the polar opposite of having a rigorous objective metric
    Only that's already the case, and has been the entire time the US has had a First Amendment. That's precisely what obscenity laws do.
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    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mormolyce View Post
    Only that's already the case, and has been the entire time the US has had a First Amendment. That's precisely what obscenity laws do.
    Which is precisely why obscenity laws need to be scrutinized. For example some modest people take moral offense to pornography. Doesn't mean it should be legal grounds for censoring porn.

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    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Linadra View Post
    Hope you have a very lenient teacher, because if you were to look at it again, you'd see you didn't even complete the assignment. Instead of considering all 10 amendments as the assignment seemed to be, half your post is complaining about first amendment in relation to gays, and then short comments on three others. That's 4 out of 10. If I were a teacher, that would be F minus based on the fact that the assignment wasn't even halfway completed.
    The exact assignment was "Although we say that our civil liberties make all of us equal as Americans and in front of the law, do you think certain amendments are more beneficial to one class (groups) or others more? For instance, the 8th Amendment recognized our right to not have an excessive bail, but do you think it's more favorable to others who could afford it? Which Amendment seems to favor one group more than others?" It didn't state to dissect & discuss each one of the first 10 amendments. It asked which amendments we felt favored one group more than others if any. This was a discussion post assignment not an essay answer type assignment.

    Quote Originally Posted by PrimaryColor View Post
    By law they are applied the same regardless of your identity traits.

    Hate speech is free speech because the only alternative is to ban speech based on subjective feelings. Which is the polar opposite of having a rigorous objective metric
    Yes the law applies to everyone the same regardless of identity. The problem is when certain groups of individuals use something like the first amendment to openly discriminate against one group of citizens like the Christian alt-right has been doing in the past few years. There are states in the US that just within the last year have passed laws allowing adoption agencies to openly discriminate against gay couples who want to adopt based solely on "religious freedom" of not agreeing with the "gay lifestyle" or "being gay is against their religion". Just this year there were 2 states that ruled gays can be denied housing due to "religious freedom" by the person selling/renting it. The cake ruling was just the start of this downward slope the country is heading to all in the name of "religious freedom" from the first amendment.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    Yes the law applies to everyone the same regardless of identity. The problem is when certain groups of individuals use something like the first amendment to openly discriminate against one group of citizens like the Christian alt-right has been doing in the past few years. There are states in the US that just within the last year have passed laws allowing adoption agencies to openly discriminate against gay couples who want to adopt based solely on "religious freedom" of not agreeing with the "gay lifestyle" or "being gay is against their religion". Just this year there were 2 states that ruled gays can be denied housing due to "religious freedom" by the person selling/renting it. The cake ruling was just the start of this downward slope the country is heading to all in the name of "religious freedom" from the first amendment.
    I'm talking about language based speech. Housing, adoption, and cake baking may be effected by the 1A, but those are just pet issue compared to the freedom to convey speech that may be offensive.

    Speech without the potential for challenging and offending someone's current worldview is not free speech at all.
    Last edited by PC2; 2018-09-18 at 10:16 AM.

  10. #10
    Just ban ALL speech. Peace and quiet achieved.

    And ban kids from my goddamn lawn, too!
    If ever I give inaccurate information, I will apologize when corrected and adjust my views. It will be a cold day in hell before I stick to a falsehood out of misguided principles. If ever I insult you though, trust it to be an accurate insult, which I will not apologize for nor adjust my view of you.

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    I am Murloc! gaymer77's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PrimaryColor View Post
    I'm talking about language based speech. Housing, adoption, and cake baking may be effected by the 1A, but those are just pet issue compared to the freedom to convey speech that may be offensive.

    Speech without the potential for challenging and potential offending someone's current worldview is not free speech at all.
    And there's nothing wrong with legally being able to spew hate speech. I fully support the alt-right white supremacist who wants to tell everyone how much he hates the blacks & how blacks were...well I'll choose not to say what they say because I don't want to get banned on here for repeating it. I'm happy I live in a country where I don't live in fear that something I say will land me in jail because the government doesn't approve of it. On the other side of the coin, I feel that if you incite people to act on your hate speech by harming other people that you should be held accountable for what you said legally. What I don't support is people using the first amendment to discriminate against people based on religious beliefs they hold that doesn't agree with the person in question.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    So question to you guys, do you think that the first 10 amendments? Do you feel that some/all favor one group/class of people more than another group/class?
    Is this high school level or college level?
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    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    And there's nothing wrong with legally being able to spew hate speech. I fully support the alt-right white supremacist who wants to tell everyone how much he hates the blacks & how blacks were...well I'll choose not to say what they say because I don't want to get banned on here for repeating it. I'm happy I live in a country where I don't live in fear that something I say will land me in jail because the government doesn't approve of it. On the other side of the coin, I feel that if you incite people to act on your hate speech by harming other people that you should be held accountable for what you said legally. What I don't support is people using the first amendment to discriminate against people based on religious beliefs they hold that doesn't agree with the person in question.
    Inciting others to harm someone else already is illegal. The way the law works is based on the criteria of provable intent to harm or damage. So if you saw someone do that simply record the evidence and report them to law enforcement.
    Last edited by PC2; 2018-09-18 at 10:28 AM.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by PrimaryColor View Post
    Inciting others to harm someone else already is illegal.
    Hate speech always involves incitement.

    The reason US hate speech laws are so much looser than other countries is that they require that the incitement be imminent, ie there is a much stronger legal test to prove the hate speech really incited actual violence.
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    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mormolyce View Post
    Hate speech always involves incitement.

    The reason US hate speech laws are so much looser than other countries is that they require that the incitement be imminent, ie there is a much stronger legal test to prove the hate speech really incited actual violence.
    We don't have hate speech laws in the US even in looser forms. They have been explicitly turned down by SCOTUS. Hate speech in the US has nothing to do with incitememt charges.

  16. #16
    In theory, they are supposed to be applied equally, thanks to the 14th Amendment. In practice, there is statistical data that shows they are not. This is especially true in regards to the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments. It's not based on the language of laws, but merely the enforcement and application of those laws.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by PrimaryColor View Post
    We don't have hate speech laws in the US even in looser forms. They have been explicitly turned down by SCOTUS. Hate speech in the US has nothing to do with incitememt charges.
    Hate speech everywhere is related to incitement.

    As I said, the US simply has a very strict legal test for that incitement - it has to be directed at an individual, be "provocative" and "without societal value" (note complete subjectivity there). You refer to this as the "fighting words" exception to freedom of speech. Comical, isn't it?
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  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by PrimaryColor View Post
    We don't have hate speech laws in the US even in looser forms. They have been explicitly turned down by SCOTUS. Hate speech in the US has nothing to do with incitememt charges.
    By that token, Europe doesn't have hate speech laws either.

    See, you're trying to throw in a media buzzword into a legal arena. That usually ends up in misunderstandings and endless discussions about what words mean.
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  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by gaymer77 View Post
    The exact assignment was "Although we say that our civil liberties make all of us equal as Americans and in front of the law, do you think certain amendments are more beneficial to one class (groups) or others more? For instance, the 8th Amendment recognized our right to not have an excessive bail, but do you think it's more favorable to others who could afford it? Which Amendment seems to favor one group more than others?" It didn't state to dissect & discuss each one of the first 10 amendments. It asked which amendments we felt favored one group more than others if any. This was a discussion post assignment not an essay answer type assignment.
    If it's not one that gets rated or considered, then nevermind what I said.

    Speaking of the amendments, 8th one is funny for sure. It's not even enforced, and is exactly why bail bond agent business is booming; because bails are set beyond the means of people all over the country.
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    True, I was just bored and tired but you are correct.

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  20. #20
    Void Lord Felya's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Slant View Post
    Is this high school level or college level?
    Neither... not calling it the Bill of Rights, but a “10 commandments” is strange.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit...Bill_of_Rights

    It might be shoehorning religion and not ignorance, but I’m no mind reader.
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