Quote:
Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen
That's a fair argument but Buster has been very clear in his position that freedom of speech is freedom of speech and that our words should not have consequences. He made a small caveat that death threats are off the table, but anything else is fair game.
He's not argued that Phaneuf is a public figure, or really anything about the "defender." Just that the "offender" should be covered by freedom of speech or we lose our liberty.
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I think this is a fair way to characterize my point. I only come here maybe a couple of times a day, and don't post frequently. I'm not inclined to spam the board with a response to each of the 18 people who disagree with me. I'll scan the responses and if there is one or two that are interesting then I will respond. I'm not overly concerned if people think I'm ignoring them. But if a quick scan of a post reveals a dis-interesting or specious point (or engages a straw man fallacy for instance), then I will probably just skip over it. If I have done that to some users more than once it's not deliberate, and I wouldn't notice their username probably anyway. More importantly, a lack of response on my part doesn't indicate that I have capitulated on some point. You've probably just made a post I don't think is worth me hitting reply and typing.
My point is an ideological one, and so a disagreement on how the law is interpreted is less important to me than whether the action is right or wrong. Modern democracies constantly re-adjust their laws. It's taken us nearly a hundred years to figure out that we shouldn't be throwing people in jail en-masse for possession of a plant, or that we should permit gay people to marry.