when 'rights' are 'reasonably restricted',
 

you begin to lose them eventually.

balancing rights and security

Judge: Denver can restrict protests at convention

I know some of you will consider this nothing more than paranoia or some such crap, but this is an 'i told you so' moment.

your valued 'freedom of speech' has now fallen to the tyrants balance of security over rights.

I only have a few thoughts. First off, the thread title is a slippery slope fallacy:
That's simply not true. Most if not all rights have had reasonable restrictions from day one, and today many still remain in place. It *can* lead to a loss, but not necessarily. To make such a statement is a gross oversimplification and massive exaggeration. It's also black and white thinking. Either a right is total and absolute (which is a theoretical state) or there is no right?

Also, I believe we already have a thread about "free speech zones".

You're right--I SHOULD have the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Otherwise we'll slip right down the slope to totalitarianism. :rolleyes:

Only idealists and militia people believe that the rights granted by the Constitution are god-given and must be preserved regardless of cost. That's a crazy position to hold in the real world.

The question here that would actually be interesting to ask is whether it's the case that IN THIS INSTANCE, security concerns are grave enough to curtail freedom of expression in this way. But arguing that no such restriction is legal or constitutional is simply not borne out by precedent or common sense.

no such thing as the 'slippery slope fallacy'. As soon as one allows the government to open the door with a 'reasonable restriction', it only emboldens it to restrict it further. History documents this quite well.

reasonable restrictions did not exist from day one. 'reasonable restrictions', or the 'no right is absolute' concept did not exist until the mid 20th century.

I did a search for that a few days ago, couldn't find it.
-----Added 10/8/2008 at 02 : 49 : 19-----
now THIS is the fallacy. I guess that some people think that americans are too stupid to know how to exercise their rights, so we need to restrict them instead of punishing acts of idiocy. So don't yell fire in a theatre, even if their is a fire. you don't have that right.

moderation is the key. fuck absolute rights. whats next? population control by extermination at the age of 65? It will even save money by eliminating social security....after all, we don't want absolute rights.

benjamin franklin said it best, those that would give up liberty for security deserve neither. I agree, fuck your liberty.

First smoking bans and now this. What's next? Piles of bodies in furnaces?

for some people, that is what it would take to open their eyes, and that may not even do it.

It's an informal fallacy, but it's very much real. Whether you choose to accept it or not is something for you to deal with, but it's real.
I would strongly suggest a more careful look at history. Most rights were relative from the get go. Slander and libel have been illegal under certain circumstances for centuries, and slander and libel would be covered under an absolute right to free speech.

Open their eyes to what?

That some people will rely on outlandish scare tactics to justify their belief that compromise is evil?

Huh, we went out to dinner on Friday night with Spec and Amonkie, and as we were walking home, both The_Wife and I commented how nice it was to eat in the bar area of a restaurant without having the overpowering stench of cigarettes around us. And I loved the fact that I didn't smell like smoke in the morning.

So maybe I am ready to start proceeding down the slipery slope. It certainly greatly improved my quality of life.

Protesting, though, I think is different. It's a First Amendment issue, and I see these sorts of decisions as tough on everyone. There is no good solution since some of the protestors do actually represent a threat, if given the opportunity.

Nah, the public would never stand for that. Too much chance of secondhand smoke.
-----Added 10/8/2008 at 03 : 24 : 44-----
Back before local governments started appeasing the childish masses with private property smoking bans, we had this great place we could always rely on for good food and a smoke-free environment. We called it the kitchen.

Hilarious. Seriously, that's funny.

Again, my quality of life has improved in a measurable way. I got to actually leave the house (1), eat a good meal (2) and NOT smell smoke before, during and after the meal (3). Why do a smoker's right trump mine to not have to smell their exhaust while indoors? Apparently the majority of folks in my city agree with me, as seen by both recent elections and polls.

the fallacy is thinking that lying about someone/something is the same thing as the freedom of speech or protest. It's the same thing as thinking that yelling fire in a theater, when there is no fire, is considered free speech. One has nothing to do with the other and the comparison is total lunacy on your part.

Of course "rights" can be "reasonably restricted". It's been done for as long as we've had "rights". Slander and libel laws prevent people from saying anything they want about others. That is a reasonable restriction. The aforementioned "fire in a theatre" is another one, as it is mischief. Nothing new here, move along folks.

could you not choose to partake of dinner in a private restaraunt that declares itself smoke free? Is it not an infringement on the property owners rights to make a personal action illegal to satisfy the wants of another group of people?
-----Added 10/8/2008 at 03 : 36 : 43-----
not only no, but hell no. you are wrong. slander and libel laws prevent one from uttering falsehoods about others.

it's very saddening, some of you, who are completely willing to surrender rights for 'security'. you all deserve to lose it all.

This is nothing new, the precedence for this sort of thing was set by our current President and I didn't hear the right wingers clamor when they were doing it to the loony liberals. I guess what goes around comes around.

I'll add to dk's response that I'm perfectly fine with your rights trumping the smoker's rights when your property or the property of a like-minded individual is involved. You frame the issue incorrectly, insofar as you're arguing with a position I don't hold.

Reality TV and Carlos Mencia are really popular, too.

i don't regard this as a well-framed thread.
i entirely oppose these idiotic "free-speech zones" and the shallow rationales given for restricting the right to protest.
but i do not buy the absolutist line on this, and in particular want nothing to do with any potential linkage between this and guns. i have the feeling it's coming, and so there we are.


but thought i'd say something to comrade jazz:

i'm fine with cigarette bans in restos. i think most folk are.
i'm less fine with them in bars--but at the same time, i smoke less when i go out now, which is an unqualified good so far as i am concerned. but i still am ambivalent about the bans.

i was really really not fine with chicago's decision to implement the smoking ban at midnight on new year's eve, at which point it was around 15 below zero outside.

if i could choose, there'd be a diversity of spaces--some where smoking is fine, others where it isn't.
for all the reasons you adduce, too, in support of smoking bans.
if there were clubs where one could smoke, and you didn't like it, you wouldn't have to go. it's not as though your "right" for potential consumer choices overrides everything that might appeal to others.

btw none of this is terribly important in the summer, but in winter, it is. trust me on this.

At least as far as slander and libel go, it just looks like you two are using different words to describe the same belief. You both believe that slander and libel aren't covered by freedom of speech. Highthief, because he doesn't consider the right to be absolute, and you, because you don't call slander and libel free speech. I'm not seeing a difference in your positions thus far. If you then disagree upon the decision in the OP, the important disagreement will be over where to draw the line and why, and not how to describe the line-drawing.

I mean, I could easily adopt highthief's "rights can be restricted" position and then still agree with you on every individual question of rights infringement, couldn't I? Or am I missing something?

Absolute free speech is just that: absolute. That covers anything said, written, or otherwise communicated. Either that is not in dispute, or you have no argument because you're changing the rules of reality to fit your unsupportable positions. If there is absolute free speech, you can lie, cheat and do anything else which is any form of communication, and you can do so without limitation.

If you'd like, I can give you examples of absolutist interpretations of other amendments. I can even start with your favorite, #2.

BTW, you should be careful throwing around the word fallacy when you don't understand what it is:

You're - well, off the wall. "Reasonable restrictions" are what you started with, so people bring up reasonable restrictions but now you don't want to talk about those reasonable restrictions but rather other restrictions (whether reasonable or not) simply to suit your own ends.

If the First Amendment was absolute:
If the Second Amendment was absolute:
If the Third Amendment were absolte:
I'll keep going if you like.

Those are pretty good, will. :)

:thumbsup: Thanks, but I'm convinced that they won't be taken for their meaning and have the underlying point ignored.

Does Ron Paul know about these?

I ride my bike past the Target Center every day on my way home from work, maybe when he's in town this September I'll type up a list of these with "Ron Paul for president" as a heading and hand them out like I'm down with the cause and see if anyone figures me out.

Actually, Ron Paul is a moderate among hard-core libertarians.

this is example is sheer stupidity. Do you not realize that this infringes on the rights of the victim? The freedom of religion does not excuse murder and you know this. A completely ridiculous example.


another idiotic example. The second amendment does not allow one to commit crimes of violence nor would the perpetrator been allowed to keep his weapon because he was in custody. Another completely ridiculous example


has absolutely nothing to do with the 3rd Amendment. You are reaching incredible heights of moronic examples in your attempt to counter my very credible arguments.


Please do, as I'm finding them amusing.

seems to me that fool them all sums up the problem with this exercise pretty well in no. 19.
what is at issue here really is whether you (whomever) happen to approve or not approve of a particular regulation. nothing else. so the "logical" answer to any and all criticisms is either "i like it" in which case there's no problem, or "i don't" in which case there's a limitation.

that means there's no basis for a discussion here at all.

dk, your stubborn phrasing is getting in your way. If you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, then there is a restriction on the first amendment. A GOOD restriction. If you can't use your firearm on another person without provocation, then there is a restriction on the second amendment. A GOOD restriction. That is NOT to say that the OP describes a reasonable restriction. That is NOT to say that handgun bans are a reasonable restriction. It is to say that even you believe in restrictions on rights. You'd just draw the line sooner than others here.

There are, of course, reasonable limits to your rights. However, I don't think this case is one. And it's pretty obvious to me that the real reason is *not* security. It is to restrict unwanted speech. If someone did want to cause harm at one of these things, they would be stupid to draw attention to themselves by waving a sign around.

On the other hand, the DNC should be allowed to have some reasonable methods in place to make sure, for instance, that delegates and attendees can enter and exit safely and efficiently. If this scheme is anything like the other recent ones, the 'protesters' will be kept well out of sight of the actual convention.

And just after I posted this, DK responded and didn't pay any attention to the underlying points, and even was outright wrong in his responses:
You throw around words like stupid and ridiculous not understanding their proper use. I find that ironic. The rights of the victim are not made clear in the BOR and as such are overridden assuming that the rights in the BOR are absolute.
The second amendment, taken absolutely, states that the government cannot take a weapon from a citizen.
If you'd like to support your claim that the hypothetical case I presented has absolutely nothing to do with the Third Amendment, you are free to do so. All I see is a conclusion without any support.

I'll let you know when you make a credible argument.
I'm sure you would if you understood them.
-----Added 10/8/2008 at 06 : 49 : 58-----
There never was. Still, it's Sunday afternoon and my West Wing Season 2 DVD isn't keeping my full attention.

I think that it could be argued that any libertarian with a functional sense of empathy is automatically a moderate. He did vote against banning lead in children's toys, though, so maybe not.

It comes down to this: "absolute" is ABSOLUTE, whereas "reasonable" is open to debate.

If you're going to have absolute rights (which the Constitution explicitly doesn't grant--you're confusing it with the Declaration of Independence, which was a political declaration, not a law-making document) then my right to swing my fist DOESN'T end at your nose. I have an absolute right to swing my fist all the way through your head.

Since that's obviously a) not the law of the land, and b) ridiculous, you have to concede that there's no such thing as absolute (as in ABSOLUTE) rights.

Now: should the definition of "reasonable" fall more on the side of the person exercising rights? Or more on the side of society being protected from the repercussions of such exercise? THAT'S something we could debate. But the OP as framed is nonsense.

i wonder how you'd react to something like this, dk:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/wo...html?ref=world

since (a) it originates with a neo-fascist/far right government
and (b) is directed against "illegal immigrants" and other such phantom "causes" of perturbation in the otherwise perfect body of the nation of Upright Citizens
by sanctioning stuff like (c) spontaneous expressions of "populist" sentiment directed against these Outsiders like beating them up and burning where they live and all that kind of stuff that having no Evil Central Law can lead to, under the correct political conditions of course.

naturally, this is not about depriving the Otherwise Perfect Body of Citizens of any "basic rights" now is it?

i suspect that your support of this is a direct function of the extent to which you buy the line about the "illegal immigrant" as Problem, yes?

Unless you're name is dksuddeth, in which case "reasonable" is "stupid, moronic, idiotic, and ridiculous". Oh, and you deserve to be lorded over by dictators if you disagree.

:shakehead:

I deserve to be lorded over by dictators, but only if they're nice.

And as long as they're ladies. I love the ladies.

If rights shouldn't be reasonably restricted does this mean that individuals should be allowed to carry nukes? That would be totally awesome.

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