Reblogged:Whoever 'Won,' America Lost

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Editor's Note: Posting may be irregular due to impacts from Hurricane Francine, which will affect our area after making landfall this afternoon or evening. Thank you for your patience.

***

"Harris 'won' the debate, and is clearly lesser evil than Trump. But still sad these are options before us. Out of 330 million people, we should be able to do better. The thought of it almost makes want to eat a cat..." -- Ilya Somin

***

The Washington Examiner laid out what each candidate would need to do yesterday evening to win the presidential "debate:"

If Harris is going to turn the momentum of this race in her favor, she will need to do more than dole out pablum about a "new way forward." She must explain what her positions are, how they are different from Biden's, and why they are different from those of the far more left-wing Harris who ran against Biden in 2020.

...

For Trump, the plan should be simple, but that does not mean it will be easy for him to execute. All he has to do is remind voters that Harris is part of the Biden administration, which has been in government since 2021, that the Biden administration is unpopular for a reason, and that, if anything, Harris is further to the left of Biden on every issue.

These are all easily established facts, but Trump will be sorely tempted to denigrate Harris personally... [bold added]

This is not bad, but the bar was actually even lower for Trump. To paraphrase Yaron Brook, All Trump had to do was convince voters he's sane.

Close, Examiner, but no cigar.

The Examiner did nail another important bit of context:

... Tuesday's clash will be more significant than other presidential debates because Harris is intentionally unknown to most of the country. Whether they love or hate him, people know who Trump is and how he will govern. The same cannot be said of Harris. In the most recent New York Times poll showing Trump beating Harris 48% to 47%, 90% of voters said they "pretty much already know" what they need to know about Trump, but almost 30% of voters said they felt the need to "learn more" about Harris.

This is as close as a paper is going to get to a joke I recently saw on X/Twitter: I can't vote for Trump because I know what I'd get, and I can't vote for Harris because I don't know what I'd get.

I didn't watch the debate and probably wouldn't have, even if we didn't have a hurricane bearing down on our area, but if the video embedded below is any indication, Trump failed to pass the sanity/isn't a nut test.

Allegations of cat-eating may be red meat to the Trump base, but they will put off anyone with any sense.

Setting aside his unfitness for office, Trump's biggest problem is that, by choosing to pitch himself seemingly exclusively to kooks, he is repelling the sane undecideds he needs to win, and who will not necessarily know or care how far to the left Harris is. Her laughing when Trump babbles about pets being eaten is a direct parallel to his standing off to the side while a senile Biden blathered during that "debate."

No. I'm not going to waste my time on that silly new anti-immigrant trope. You can go here for that. (There is no time stamp or transcript as of this writing, but if I recall correctly, that discussion is early.)

-- CAV

Link to Original

[necrovore]

This article was published a few days before the debate:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cant-take-it-anymore-residents-springfield-ohio-beg-help-after-20000-haitians-overwhelm

[necrovore]

Correction: apparently it was dated Tuesday, so it was a few hours before the debate.

Still, this is the sort of thing the Democrats will censor off of Facebook and YouTube, and then they will claim on NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN that it never happened, and that anyone who believes it is crazy.

[tadmjones]

So no cats maybe, but who owns the geese the foreign foragers are gathering and how is it 20k Haitians end up in one town at the same time? Anti-immigration trope ,lol.

You'd think an O'ist reply would be along the lines of "What?! the feds can alleviate 50K in taxes to new small businesses? We need a definition of new ! and Small!! and why are they paying 50k in the first place, if 'it can be done', why wait?! Why start the collections in the first place!?"

[StrictlyLogical]

How can the residents be "overwhelmed", aren't the game wardens and police the ones overwhelmed?  I assume the town is civilized and lives according to the laws of the land, enforcing, and handing out fines as required.

Edited September 11 by StrictlyLogical

[DavidOdden]

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

How can the residents be "overwhelmed", aren't the game wardens and police the ones overwhelmed?  I assume the town is civilized and lives according to the laws of the land, enforcing, and handing out fines as required.

Springfield may be technically “civilized”, living according to the law of the land, but the law itself is contradictory. The contradiction arises from a change in the concept of “rights”, from the original “right to act”, to a “right to have”, according to which various benefits have become “rights” on a par with the right to own property. In aid of clarity, I will distinguish between mandated public entitlements (benefits) versus proper rights. A simple economic equation is that entitlements come at a substantial cost, payable only by violation of rights. Citizens seem to be willing to silently shoulder this burden, as long as it is not noticeable, where the government manages the contradiction so that people do not notice the degradation of the proper function of government or increases in taxes. The local government cannot increase property taxes ad libitum which is why people tend to have some awareness of tax increases. Springfield is not some upper-class woke suburb, it’s headed the direction of Cairo IL.

The federal Family Reunification Parole program partially recognizes a right (one denied by some Objectivists) to pursue one’s self-interest free from force, a right that is arbitrarily denied under federal law in the case of people who are not US citizens. When I say “partially”, I mean that a select set of people have been allowed to exercise the right to enter the US, but otherwise they are denied fundamental rights. Most notable is the right to trade ones labor for things of value – to hold a job. Those admitted under humanitarian parole do not have the right to hold a job though they can conditionally request permission to work, which leads to substantial bureaucratic delays (for example, asylum-seekers cannot even apply until they have been waiting for 150 days). The universal social safety net has created a new means of survival, one not proper to man’s existence: “Ask and you shall receive – we will sacrifice others for your sake”.

Three factors result in the sudden increase in Haitian immigrants in that part of Ohio. First, there is the perennial “stay with uncle Bob” factor, that immigrants prefer to move to a place where they have some social connection which is why Starbuck MN has so many people of Norwegian ancestry, and why Minnesota and Ohio have the nation’s highest Somali populations. “Stay with uncle Bob” contemporarily becomes a near legal requirement, because the sponsoring relative must guarantee the financial support of the beneficiary, and housing is the biggest expense for immigrants. You can rest assured that the implications of that guarantee are systematically ignored. Second, Haiti has been in a perpetual state of dictatorship and collapse for all of modern history, to the point that there is literally no government in Haiti for a year (or more). This is what explains the immediate substantial influx.

It is trivial to generate social media sensations, the number of false / wildly-exaggerated wing-nut claims about horrifying behavior on Nextdoor is legendary. Most people do not understand the concept of rights, so they will explode emotionally over something unfamiliar, like “people not speaking English” as though that is equivalent to trespass which is an actual violation of rights. Whether or not local governments are “inundanted” with improper police calls is a question of fact, so far there is no evidence of actual overwhelming. There is, on the other hand, substantial evidence that this situation is being used by governments to justify expansion of government power, where the state pumps relief (money and police) into Springfield, but that then becomes a platform for demands for more federal “assistance”.

[tadmjones]

So substantial evidence of the federal government using the Cloward-Piven strategy.

[DavidOdden]

That’s an old political science meme, I have no idea what the real boundaries of it are. But as I understand it, the federal government doesn’t “use” it, the government is the target of the strategy, the ones who use it are the protesters. However, politicians certainly play a role in manufacturing these crises. There is no evidence of a conspiracy by lawmakers to write contradictory laws in order to bring about social change – that’s sci-fi thinking along the lines of the Foundation trilogy. Still, irrational law creation and the urge to have your cake, eat it, and acquire universal cake for free, by its nature is a contradiction so of course following entitlement-driven law-making, Atlas Shrugged style chaos is inevitable.

 

[DavidOdden]

For example, certain politicians (elected and self-appointed) have manufactured an "immigration crisis", we also have or have had a manufactured "gas crisis", "housing crisis", "healthcare crisis", "employment crisis" and "weather crisis". The promise of crisis management is what sustains politicians.

[necrovore]

7 hours ago, tadmjones said:

So substantial evidence of the federal government using the Cloward-Piven strategy.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chaos-unfolding-across-america-could-be-cloward-piven-strategy-collapse-nation

[Boydstun]

For anyone who could not resist watching the debate of 9/10/24 –

Edited September 12 by Boydstun

[whYNOT]

So it has a name. Cloward-Piven. The insidious movement by a relatively minor element to take control over America, signs of which I have been noticing for ten years, on the outside.

It's now time to get over the personalities, "style" and foibles and even stated "policies", of the next possible leader and to return to fundamentals and get priorities straight.

What do they represent?

Simply, I see two terms of a Democrat in office producing a Socialist White House. While not yet a dominant 'socialist USA', for there will be stern resistance.

"Clearly, lesser evil than Trump": this zero-to-hero candidate, the attractively giggling Kamala, having been obviously primed, rehearsed and groomed for live appearances , if successful, would be under firm control of her far-Left puppet-masters, I have no doubt. The power of the media has elevated her in the matter of weeks and would go on playing soft ball with her afterwards.

( I admit my single lasting impression of Harris, happily enthusing in interview about the BLM riots (sorry, "protests") - and that they must continue throughout those elections. This, an AG, on the side of law and order, stoking up disorder or violence for the political dividends?)

The luxury of a moral, political choice has all but disappeared, turned into "emergency ethics".

Edited September 12 by whYNOT

[Boydstun]

Hillary Clinton defeated Mr. Trump in three debates in 2016. Nevertheless, she lost the election (probably due to the glitch with the FBI only nine days before the so called election day, which now is really just the last day for casting your vote). Judging the debaters as debaters, I thought immediately and still do that Harris won this debate with Trump. I would give her an A. But I would give Trump a B. He still has reliable function of working memory (unlike President Biden). Sometimes he comes off as being impaired in that ability because he answers a question by soon going associative and talking in what has come to be called his word salad. I'm one who can follow that salad pretty well and see its pertinence to the question asked. He exhibited the mental ability to raise objections to the present administration (whether based on facts or on big lies); to get to the positions on issues he wants to be THE issues no matter what question had been asked; and to distract from and evade unpleasant questions (such as whether Ukraine should remain an independent country), which is a skill needed by any politician. (All politicians and many salespersons lie. Mr. Trump is simply our American champion of lies, topping a long line.)

In this debate, Vice-President Harris was stellar. She and her coaches figured out how to turn the former President's personal fixations into him running off proclaiming his greatness and releasing some of his personal lame-brain opinions. She would give most of her time to repeating her campaign policy points (whether or not it was really answering the question posed by the moderators), but then she would end with a bait for Trump's personality vulnerabilities, he would take the bait every time, and popcorn was enjoyed across the land.

I liked the graciousness of ABC in addressing the former President as President Trump, which has been our tradition in addressing former holders of high office. While I liked that for public tone, I'm not that gracious after Mr. Trump's desperation-stunts against our constitutional republic after he lost the 2020 election. When he dies, I hope his body will not lie in state under the rotunda.

Edited September 12 by Boydstun

[tadmjones]

Stephen you will say the grading is on a scale of sorts , no ? The moderators did not provide a 'fair' playing field. The fact checking and editorializing on his answers and statements coupled with a lack of the same treatment shown to Harris certainly didn't assuage the baiting.

They allowed her the the 'fine people hoax' and the 'bloodbath hoax' , comments not on the same scale as Trumpian hyperbole.

Trump had to fact-check Muir in his statement of crime rates, not very moderator-like behavior.

Edited September 12 by tadmjones

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

. . .

Simply, I see two terms of a Democrat in office producing a Socialist White House. While not yet a dominant 'socialist USA', for there will be stern resistance.

. . .

Barry Goldwater said Medicare would be socialism. He actually knew better. He was educated enough to know that a welfare state and regulation of business is something else, however deleterious, but not socialism. American Democratic Socialism has always been government ownership of all the land (you still retain your home or small business) and government ownership of all utilities, such as electrical power, and railroads. Left socialism is not the system we have had across the last century and to now, and it will not be the US system in the next four years. During the presidential campaign of 2008, some opponents of Obama warned he was a socialist, and some of his supporters hoped he was. Truth be told, he was a Democrat and a politician. During the financial collapse at that time, nationalization of the banks was not even on the table at the Obama White House.

One needs to argue specific plans and policies and not settle for grand fiery labels.

I'll be voting against the Repubican candidate for President for the decisive reason not news to participants at this site. The Republican Party did not need to let themselves be taken over by the so-called Moral Majority back in the day. And they could have chosen a better candidate easily in the Primaries than this one who is defective in ways beyond all the cultural reactionary stuff.

Edited September 12 by Boydstun

[necrovore]

A vote for Harris will mean increasing censorship, increasing regulation, and decreasing scope for individual rights. And that's just for starters.

The Left feels entitled to their own "facts," and they are willing to impose their "facts" by force. They are unwilling to compromise. They are willing to smash the existing system to make room for their new one. They will continue to use censorship to conceal any evidence that they are wrong (or evil). Anybody who disagrees with them will be treated the way the medieval Church treated heretics. The burden of proof will always be on the heretic. (By contrast, the fundamentalists on the Right are a shrinking minority, who still find it necessary to compromise in order to get elected. The Right as a whole is still influenced by Locke; I think the spirit of Locke, unidentified, is what the conservatives are trying to conserve.)

I think the Left is unlikely to leave abortion to a woman's individual choice, since they oppose individual choice in regard to literally everything else, except when such choices can be forced on others at the expense of the recognition of reality. They'll figure out a way to make abortion their choice, not the woman's; they'll probably oppose abortion when it's sensible and only support it when it's absurd.

The Left will alter the Constitution or interpret it out of existence, so that they can stay in power with no accountability.

Once they are firmly in power, there will be no legal obstacles to totalitarianism.

Or you can vote for Trump.

[whYNOT]

5 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Barry Goldwater said Medicare would be socialism. He actually knew better. He was educated enough to know that a welfare state and regulation of business is something else, however deleterious, but not socialism. American Democratic Socialism has always been government ownership...

The present Democratic Party has had a radical shift. "Socialism" now, is "the real thing", well beyond a pale semblance of yesterday's 'soft socialism'.  (I know some Americans and roughly kept up with events over there). The Party is not in the slightest comparable with what it was; as some friends deserting the party say, "unrecognizable", with the JFK, or for that matter, Goldwater, era. Also my firm position has been that any "issues" (like abortion rights), are and ought to be subsumed under uncompromised individual rights. Promoting other "rights" in isolation is detrimental to that objective - ultimately to the pro rata "rights", also.  The Republican support ~could~ one day fully accept individual rights, the hard Left will never.   

Edited September 13 by whYNOT

[Boydstun]

 

Nice clearing of smoke with facts (Harris-Trump debate claims)

Apart from this election, more generally, USAFacts looks like a promising place for getting into data from reliable sources.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Special insights on America from Ronnie Chang at 4:38.

[StrictlyLogical]

Our complex world is far larger than most people's ability to personally access geographically, and requires that we rely on communications, media, publications, etc. to perceive reality thereby or to receive claims by other people about that reality.

We live in an age where increasingly, media can be faked or simulated, photoshopped, AI generated etc.  We also live in an age in which civility and common decency for some has eroded such that brazen dishonesty and bias is rampant.  Of course everyone says they are unbiased or at least, telling the truth.

"Consensus", we here all know, is not a measure of reality by any stretch.  100 popular lies to evade reality are no more truthful, by virtue of how many or popular they are.  

The only thing in any society protecting whatever freedom they have from those who aim to reduce it, for any reason, is ABSOLUTE Freedom of Expression (within the proper definition of what that constitutes).

ANYONE advocating anything other than this should be regarded with the highest of suspicions.

 

........

A factchecker claims nonbias and truthfulness... such is profered as ... fact.  How does one "check" such a claim?  What organization or person is devoid of any possible bias, motivation, indeed personal experience?  Even were the entity to personally believe in their objectivity... those kinds of people are even more risky to trust because they do not see thier own biases, their own emotional hangups, their own skewed bias confirming thinking, and the more intellectual, often the more self-unaware...

I do not know of a model for any "central" single organizational fact checker, curator, claim debunker, etc. which has the kinds of checks and balances, that could satisfy me given all the concerns above.  The only "system" I could think of would need at minimum to allow completely disparate views and all of them, each allowed to present evidence (not merely links to other "opinions"), without moderation (which itself could introduce favoritism).  In fact even popularity (upvoting answers) could be a false-positive bias for truth... choosing or ranking any answer or any answerer are fraught with the same problem.


“Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?” -Groucho Marx

and we are living in a world where this has never been more relevant.

 

In the end I suspect there cannot be any solution better worthy of trust, and at the same time requiring diligent independent scrutiny, than everything which can be said and heard in a totally free market of ideas.

Edited September 13 by StrictlyLogical

[DavidOdden]

1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

The only thing in any society protecting whatever freedom they have from those who aim to reduce it, for any reason, is ABSOLUTE Freedom of Expression (within the proper definition of what that constitutes).

ANYONE advocating anything other than this should be regarded with the highest of suspicions.

I am highly suspicious of your restriction “within the proper definition of what that constitutes”. I fear it means that freedom of expression could, in your unspoken view or in someone else's interpretation of it, be defined to not constitute the right to tell lies, to mislead, to not tell the whole truth. Well so be it, when some expression goes beyond the bounds of what is proper, perhaps it is “proper” to prohibit that expression. To arrest Trump for falsely denying the impact of his intended tariffs, for falsely stating that everyone wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that he lost the previous election due to fraud, that Harris will confiscate guns, and so on. Probably not in my lifetime, but soon.

You yourself might be in danger of arrest for your claim that “Our complex world is far larger than most people's ability to personally access geographically, and requires that we rely on communications, media, publications, etc. to perceive reality thereby or to receive claims by other people about that reality”. This isn’t a specific claim that is objectively true or false, it is a classic meme intended to generate fear and justify suppression. Compared to 20, 50, 100 and 500 years ago, we now have a phenomenally expanded ability to personally and physically access any part of the globe, as well as to indirectly access information from any part of the globe. Your statement is plainly false, and under the new regime, may be held to be illegal and a threat to society. We all agree that threats are a violation of individual rights, threats are the initiation of force.

While the position that you expressed is a lie by omission, there is a latent germ of truth that needs to be brought out: that every person is responsible for objectively evaluating what is true and what is false, and what constitutes adequate proof – or grounds for distrust. So, how does one check a claim? Start with the standard Objectivist initial assumption, that all claims are to be ignored unless they are supported by credible evidence. Then you check that evidence. But even before you go digging in newspaper archives, you should look at whether there is even a verifiable claim. The position that millions of people are pouring into the US from prisons, jails and insane asylums, taking jobs from African Americans, and Hispanics and unions isn’t even a claim. The “taking jobs from” part is based on the false national socialist position that certain people have a special property right to a job and that an employer hiring from outside of that select group is enabling theft of property. Immigrants are not taking jobs, they are accepting jobs, it is the employer who is “giving”. The national socialist lie that this claim is based on is that a job is a property right of an employee, the conceptually verifiable fact is that the employer has the right – of action – to hire whoever he wants, and the employee has the right – of action  – to work for whoever he wants. If two parties agree to an employment relationship, it is right and proper that a contract be formed where the employer gets some labor and the employee gets some money.

How many immigrants of any kind “are pouring in” to the US? That part of the claim is likewise meaningless for lack of a time frame. Today exactly at 9:00 AM PDT? Between 9:00 and 10:00AM? This month, this year, in the history of the US? The claim is so vague as to be unfalsifiable, but also unverifiable. It is not a claim even worthy of fact checking.

Fact-checkers are like Yelp reviewers. The consumer has to learn to look for specific evidence. Here is a specific claim that was checked in the above link:

Trump again falsely claimed that fraud was responsible for his loss in the 2020 election, and wrongly claimed that none of his lawsuits making that allegation had been decided on the merits.

No evidence was offered that the fraud claim is false (no evidence was offered that the claim is true, this is an arbitrary claim not even worthy of consideration). The fact checkers also say that it is false that none of Trump’s lawsuits were decided on the merits. Now that is a fairly concrete claim which a decent fact-checker could verify and report on. It’s not entirely trivial since you have to track down his lawsuits and find the ones that were decided on the merits, but there is no ambiguity in reading such opinions. In legal reportage, this is a very suspicious lacuna, it suggests to me that the fact checker couldn’t be bothered to do the research and took the “prove me wrong!” stance whereby arbitrary claim gain credence as “fact”.

So I agree that there cannot be any solution better worthy of trust, and at the same time requiring diligent independent scrutiny, than everything which can be said and heard in a totally free market of ideas. A totally free market of ideas, not a contingently free market of ideas subject to legal scrutiny about a “proper definition of what that constitutes”. Every man must develop his own standards for bullshit-detection with a built in hyperbole meter. There is, however, one problem that might warrant further discussion: Section 230.

[StrictlyLogical]

1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

I am highly suspicious of your restriction “within the proper definition of what that constitutes”. I fear it means that freedom of expression could, in your unspoken view or in someone else's interpretation of it, be defined to not constitute the right to tell lies, to mislead, to not tell the whole truth. Well so be it, when some expression goes beyond the bounds of what is proper, perhaps it is “proper” to prohibit that expression. To arrest Trump for falsely denying the impact of his intended tariffs, for falsely stating that everyone wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that he lost the previous election due to fraud, that Harris will confiscate guns, and so on. Probably not in my lifetime, but soon.

 

I do not believe in the concept of rights having exceptions.  All rights defined properly are absolute and have no exceptions... the so call exceptions are really simply events, actions, situations, what have you etc. which fall outside of the  actual area of the right.  Its like pointing to a map having an area purportedly showing what is your property ... but then saying this bit is really George's and that bit is really Ken's... in truth the map was drawn up wrong... draw it right and all of it, as indicated, is absolutely and exclusively (and exclusive of Ken's and George's) your property.  Concepts are the same, they can be sophisticated whether nor not they can be referred to with a single word, and just because we do not always have an easy way to express or summarize a concept does not mean the concept itself cannot have a "border" which is sophisticated.

So a right to freedom of expression means you are free to say what you believe, what you think, to joke about what you do not etc., not to commit libel for the purpose of ruining someone's career or life, nor a right to incite a stampede in a theatre by yelling fire when there is none... nor the right to threaten a person to make them believe you actually intend to kill them ... what is absolute is not the right to SAY whatever you want in any circumstance with no repercussion from the state... speech can be fraud, speech can be a kind of assault (serious death threats)... but if we are careful about what we mean, i.e. freedom to express one's opinion... then we have something which is an absolute.  I do not have all the boundaries of this concept "freedom of speech" determined... that is something proper courts and legislatures determine, in accordance with the constitution over many many cases and bills, over the years...

it certainly is less than you can say anything at anytime to anyone, but something more like you can express yourself without fear of government initiating force against you.

Tara Smith says something about this which is much better than how I try to explain it:

 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3166234_code955231.pdf?abstractid=3166234&mirid=1&type=2

Here is ARI referring to the paper:

https://ari.aynrand.org/tara-smith-pinpoints-confusions-in-the-free-speech-debate/

 

I will read the rest of your post later.

Edited September 13 by StrictlyLogical

[Boydstun]

Section 230

From FactCheck:

Quote

 

Debate moderator Muir asked Trump, “Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?”

“No, I don’t acknowledge that at all,” Trump responded, going on to wrongly claim that his election-related lawsuits were rejected on a “technicality.”

“They said we didn’t have standing,” Trump claimed.

But a list of lawsuits alleging fraud in the 2020 election, compiled by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, shows several cases that were decided on the merits — including some brought by the Trump campaign.

And, as we have written, local, state and federal judges have said that Trump’s lawyers provided no evidence of fraud.

For example, Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Robert Baldi in Pennsylvania rejected the Trump campaign’s attempt to toss out absentee ballots in Bucks County, a suburb of Philadelphia. In doing so, Baldi, a Republican, wrote “that there exists no evidence of any fraud, misconduct, or any impropriety with respect to the challenged ballots.” The Trump campaign appealed, but Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer upheld the lower court ruling . . . ."

Trump’s own election security officials at the time also called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

 

@StrictlyLogical – The idea that one can trust no reports, that everything should be regarded as prima facie biased, is a propaganda ploy of late to dodge unpleasing facts (akin to demanding Creationism be taught alongside science in high school biology because truth is best found by debates). Turning the Bureau of Labor Statistics into personnel by Executive appointment, rather than by Civil Service Merit would not improve its data reporting with respect to reality. There are independent critics outside the agency who today chase down and explain any discrepancies between, say, data from Labor Statistics and government announcements of unemployment rates. Contradictions in official reports is one way of assessing their likelihood of reflecting fact and ushering their improvement in data gathering and reporting. The existence of this forum seems to me proof that in this country we still have free press. Though the Constitution said simply that the lawmakers shall not abridge freedom of the press, we did not actually have a free press (free, except today, for pornography in some vicinities) until NYT v. Sullivan (on this history: The Emergence of a Free Press by Leonard Levy). When I was a child, the mass media were newspapers and radio. Thanks to today's communication technology and that court case, it is much easier to publicly dispute in writing party lines of CNN or Facebook than it had been to publicly dispute party lines of newspaper chains and radio networks back in my childhood and Rand's era of writing Atlas. 

[DavidOdden]

1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

So a right to freedom of expression means you are free to say what you believe, what you think, to joke about what you do not etc., not to commit libel for the purpose of ruining someone's career or life, nor a right to incite a stampede in a theatre by yelling fire when there is none... nor the right to threaten a person to make them believe you actually intend to kill them ... what is absolute is not the right to SAY whatever you want in any circumstance with no repercussion from the state... speech can be fraud, speech can be a kind of assault (serious death threats)... but if we are careful about what we mean, i.e. freedom to express one's opinion... then we have something which is an absolute.  I do not have all the boundaries of this concept "freedom of speech" determined... that is something proper courts and legislatures determine, in accordance with the constitution over many many cases and bills, over the years...

Courts and legislatures have, in accordance with the Constitution over many many cases and bills, over the years, determined certain things about freedom of expression. The most dangerous of those determinations regards defamation and its exceptions. It’s not too difficult to hold that many of these determinations are not proper, it is much more challenging to define what is proper and to objectively identify improper restrictions – or their lack. For instance, is the “public person” exception in defamation law proper; is it proper that a publisher has the same liability as an author for publishing lies? Is it proper that a newspaper publisher has less freedom of expression than an internet publisher does? Is it proper that a public school teacher be prohibited from expressing their religious (or non-religious) views at work, or that fundamentalists have no right to erect memorial crosses on public property? What is the proper definition of “fraud” whereby submitting fake certificates of electoral ascertainment to the Archivist constitutes fraud?

The US has a unique, and precarious, commitment to “Free Speech”. This commitment is under constant legislative attack (because most people do not support the First Amendment, they support their own right to express their own opinion), and the only serious firewall has – so far – been SCOTUS. But SCOTUS has not been particularly absolutist in its understanding of freedom of speech. “Commercial speech” remains a persistent exception to the First Amendment. There are substantial restrictions on actions essential to expression – contributions to politicians are at once vital to the ability of an individual to express his viewpoint, and also regulated by law. The contorted path of exceptions and exceptions within exceptions carved out by the courts should give every rational thinker cause to fear the ultimate collapse of the First Amendment as a rock-solid principle of American law. It has now become an annual event to determine what percentage of Americans think that the First Amendment goes too far – a position held by about 50% of Americans. I find that fairly frightening.

[StrictlyLogical]

3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

So I agree that there cannot be any solution better worthy of trust, and at the same time requiring diligent independent scrutiny, than everything which can be said and heard in a totally free market of ideas. A totally free market of ideas, not a contingently free market of ideas subject to legal scrutiny about a “proper definition of what that constitutes”. Every man must develop his own standards for bullshit-detection with a built in hyperbole meter. There is, however, one problem that might warrant further discussion: Section 230.

[StrictlyLogical]

1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

Courts and legislatures have, in accordance with the Constitution over many many cases and bills, over the years, determined certain things about freedom of expression. The most dangerous of those determinations regards defamation and its exceptions. It’s not too difficult to hold that many of these determinations are not proper, it is much more challenging to define what is proper and to objectively identify improper restrictions – or their lack. For instance, is the “public person” exception in defamation law proper; is it proper that a publisher has the same liability as an author for publishing lies? Is it proper that a newspaper publisher has less freedom of expression than an internet publisher does? Is it proper that a public school teacher be prohibited from expressing their religious (or non-religious) views at work, or that fundamentalists have no right to erect memorial crosses on public property? What is the proper definition of “fraud” whereby submitting fake certificates of electoral ascertainment to the Archivist constitutes fraud?

 

The US has a unique, and precarious, commitment to “Free Speech”. This commitment is under constant legislative attack (because most people do not support the First Amendment, they support their own right to express their own opinion), and the only serious firewall has – so far – been SCOTUS. But SCOTUS has not been particularly absolutist in its understanding of freedom of speech. “Commercial speech” remains a persistent exception to the First Amendment. There are substantial restrictions on actions essential to expression – contributions to politicians are at once vital to the ability of an individual to express his viewpoint, and also regulated by law. The contorted path of exceptions and exceptions within exceptions carved out by the courts should give every rational thinker cause to fear the ultimate collapse of the First Amendment as a rock-solid principle of American law. It has now become an annual event to determine what percentage of Americans think that the First Amendment goes too far – a position held by about 50% of Americans. I find that fairly frightening.

 

I agree very frightening... the work of the actual courts and legislatures have not led us towards what we both agree would be correct and due regard for the 1st amendment, in a proper, individual rights protecting nation.