Comment by bpodgursky
4 days ago
We should and should cut out sources of foreign funding and support, and prosecute and publicize genuine foreign agents, while allowing people to exercise their political rights.
4 days ago
We should and should cut out sources of foreign funding and support, and prosecute and publicize genuine foreign agents, while allowing people to exercise their political rights.
Why? Do you believe free speech is a right only Americans should have? Or do you believe that people shouldn’t be free to evaluate competing points of view and decide for themselves?
This seems like a variant of anti-self defense logic. ‘The other guy has a right to beat you in the face with a bat, as much as you have a right to take it’.
Hint: bussing in out of towners to astro-turf ‘town discussions’ is also seen as shitty.
A quick way to test this kind of thing is, if the roles were reversed, would they still be okay with it?
I guarantee you that China and Russia would absolutely not be okay with the US doing the same thing in their territory.
I have no doubt that Russia and China are not "okay" with it. It's also irrelevant: they are not fully functioning democracies (and China isn't a democracy at all). I would fully expect an authoritarian regime to want to control the narrative and restrict freedom of speech--and, in fact, both do. I don't think we want this country to become like those; we shouldn't hold them up as models.
Despite the fact that they don't approve of our speaking to their people, we do it anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
The U.S. is a democracy. We hold freedom of speech as sacrosanct. We let people make up their own minds as to how to evaluate competing viewpoints. I see no reason why the viewpoints of other countries--even those very different from ours--shouldn't be considered.
I have no problem with labeling speech's origin so that people can take it into account, but that's not the same as censoring it.
16 replies →
Answer the questions.
9 replies →
I believe I live in the real world, where we have to figure out how to integrate abstract principles in a manner that allows our survival as a civilization.
Reciprocity is a pretty straightforward strategy — we can allow uninhibited competing points of view from countries that themselves allow unlimited speech internally.
Our survival as a civilization? I cannot follow at all what you are talking about. What threat?
I read the article as claiming that the Administration is implying it will harass or prosecute people for speaking or protesting against AI/data centers by deeming this to be "in support of China". I hope everyone agrees that would be a truly absurd breach of the first amendment, if it happened.
Letting the executive branch decide on a whim that certain speech is illegal because it would "further the goals of enemy X" would surely be a civilizational threat to America (if it actually happened), but that doesn't seem to be what you mean?
All the specific people mentioned in the article seem to be American [except arguably the three businessmen arguing for data centers--O'leary, Musk, Sacks], so I can't tell what the other guy is talking about either? Non-Americans do not generally have American speech protections unless in America legally (and then with some caveats). That's not America's decision!
> that allows our survival as a civilization.
What does "survival as a civilization" mean to you, exactly, and how might speech from other countries threaten this?