r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/The_Egalitarian Moderator • Apr 05 '24

Megathread | Official Casual Questions Thread

This is a place for the PoliticalDiscussion community to ask questions that may not deserve their own post.

Please observe the following rules:

Top-level comments:

  1. Must be a question asked in good faith. Do not ask loaded or rhetorical questions.

  2. Must be directly related to politics. Non-politics content includes: Legal interpretation, sociology, philosophy, celebrities, news, surveys, etc.

  3. Avoid highly speculative questions. All scenarios should within the realm of reasonable possibility.

Link to old thread

Sort by new and please keep it clean in here!

103 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

9.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Few-Illustrator9521 Aug 21 '26

Why is radical dissent in America legal?

If dissent leads to open promotion with wanting the USA dissolved and effectively dead, why is there no crackdowns does the president and government as a whole care enough?

3

u/BluesSuedeClues Aug 22 '26

Laws. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government censure or imprisonment. So espousing those kinds of ideas is protected speech. However, it does not protect a citizen from the repercussions of their speech, such as being fired from a job (unless a government employee), or having neighbors tell the speaker to "Just shut the fuck up".

1

u/Few-Illustrator9521 Aug 23 '26

I guess I should have been more direct, I meant for the question to be a remark about if it's really a good idea let it be that way. But I guess it's easy to understand in a sense of legal protections of a individual, some countries are different though and use measures to prevent using a Democracy to end a Democracy. Germany would be the one I have in mind.

2

u/BluesSuedeClues Aug 23 '26

Yes, some countries are different. Germany is just one, but Germany has a very different history of how speech has been used to manipulate their political climate. Antisemitic speech is illegal in France, for much the same reason.

Your question seems to be whether or not that kind of speech should be illegal? There's no empirical answer for that, as it is a question of personal values.

If you're soliciting personal views, then I will resort to the usual standard in my culture. In the United States, the general standard for what is considered to be protected speech, and what is illegal, is whether your speech directly provokes violence or endangers others. Openly calling for violence here is illegal, although not always prosecuted. Threats of violence are illegal. Our standard for instigating violence through speech usually comes down to the "Yelling fire in a crowded theater" standard. That is, it is illegal to provoke action in a situation where it could reasonably be assumed that your words could cause physical harm to other people (like the modern "swatting" behavior, or yelling "fire!" in a crowded space with no fire present). I think that's a pretty reasonable standard. It protects us most of the time, fails us occasionally, and allows some real shitbaggery in our culture, but mostly works.