SuperNovaStar

Realizing my -ism means exterminating yours. Sorry, not sorry.

That isn't always true! Some toasters have sensors to detect how dark the bread is.

... but most just use timers :(

I think you may be the only commenter who actually read the post.

Ghandi loved Hitler, so how could his fans not?

I understand and sympathize with your point, but unfortunately the law will never be that simple.

To use your example, you walking up to me and saying "hand over your money or I'll kill you" is not justification to respond with lethal force per se. The missing element here is assault - in other words, I have to believe you both are able and intending to do me harm before I can respond with force. If no reasonable person would believe that what you said was actually a threat (like, for instance, if you were a five year old) then I'm still not justified in harming you in self defense.

Suddenly the lines are super blurry and the slopes are super slippery and its absolutely impossible to tell what a threat of violence is.

Yes. They are. And that was your first example, the one meant to be unequivocally black and white.

The problem here is fundamentally an epistemic one. The law is not a thinking, reasoning being. It is merely a system of procedures. The law does not know - it cannot know - the difference between right and wrong. It only knows what the rules are, and those rules may be wrong.

You might think that there is absolutely no reason to advocate for the mass murder of an entire group of people. And under 99.9% of circumstances, I would agree. But if the zombie apocalypse broke out, I might find myself in favor of killing all of the zombies - and legally, there's no reason that wouldn't be genocide.

The law doesn't know whether zombies are people. It doesn't know whether or not we are. Therefore, there must be some way to have discussions about the law that are above (or outside the scope of) the law. That's what politics is, fundamentally: the discussion of the law that's untouchable by the law. Even if we tried to make certain political stances illegal, we wouldn't succeed, because that is one area in which the law is necessarily blind.

So we can't curtail the first amendment.

We can't execute Nazis.

But we could lynch them, as that would be a political act and not a legal one.

I'm not sure the 40k paraphernalia makes it safer. Lots of 40k fans don't seem to realize humans aren't the good guys.

Don't forget John Green!

Hard to be the breaking point when it's already broken. But if it weren't broken already... then I think it actually might.

What we could do is make "journalist" a protected profession. So just like you can't call yourself a fiduciary unless you hold to a certain set of ethical guidelines, you wouldn't be able to call yourself a journalist unless you agree not to lie (among other things). So if you forgo the title of journalist, you can say whatever you want (obviously the other laws still apply, so you still can't slander or libel, and if spreading misinformation causes harm you can still be liable). But if you are calling yourself a journalist, you voluntarily assume a higher standard for what you are allowed to say.

I think that would avoid any first amendment issues. But I'm not a lawyer, so please don't take my word for it 🤣

Everyone dies eventually

Yes, that's technically true, but maybe not in the way you think.

Everyone dies from something. While yes, as you get older it's harder to overcome things that seemed trivial when you were younger, in theory you could continue living indefinitely until something kills you. It's just statistically very unlikely.

That is exactly what was on my mind when I wrote the comment.

While I'm tempted to agree, the big problem here is that if the government can decide that some speech is illegal, they can use that to silence people they don't like.

Obviously the system we've got now in the US isn't working, but we need to tread carefully when giving the government power to decide what is or isn't the "right beliefs".

What about people with terminal, genuinely incurable diseases? I understand not letting people kill themselves just because they want to (since mental illness can compromise your objectivity there) but sometimes it's less about someone deciding if they're going to die, and more about how.