leibowde84
Veteran Member
I stand corrected. Hats off.
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Is Being Offended by Something Grounds to Claim Being Harmed by it?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
I'll try and extrapolate my original post a little.
Extreme bullying can involve words. And it can lead directly to self-harm. I don't want to live in a world where my daughter (as an example) could be subjected to extreme verbal bullying without consequence to the bully. I also don't want to live in a world where telling my daughter she is silly results in the speaker getting slapped with a fine.
Most of the things people get offended over strike me as ridiculous. There is a line somewhere, though, and with the way the OP was written, that meant I voted Yes. To be clear, though, I think in the majority of cases, people need to get over themselves, and toughen up.
In the situation of bullying, I vote yes too. Bullying can cause real harm.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
I meant it in that ignoring can sometimes relieve the occasional headaches that come with online interactions.
Do people really get real headaches?
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Maybe - I wasn't speaking or meant to be taken literally.
Both Negligent and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress are torts. Jerry Falwell famously sued Hustler magazine for IIED because of a cartoon depicting him having sex with his mother in an outhouse. Another well known case is the father of a veteran killed in th one of the recent wars in the Middle East; he sued the pastor (et al.) of Westboro Baptist Church because of their picketing at (or near) the funeral, holding up signs saying that his son was going to hell, and other such nasty lunacy.
The complainants lost in both of these cases, for different reasons. I think most often juries just don’t find the alleged act(s) outrageous enough to meet the standard for the claim of infliction of emotional distress. I think the complainant against Westboro would have won his case but for the fact that the picketers strictly obeyed the law and I think the father didn’t see them at the funeral (but maybe on TV afterwards?).
The complainants lost in both of these cases, for different reasons. I think most often juries just don’t find the alleged act(s) outrageous enough to meet the standard for the claim of infliction of emotional distress. I think the complainant against Westboro would have won his case but for the fact that the picketers strictly obeyed the law and I think the father didn’t see them at the funeral (but maybe on TV afterwards?).
Its easy for some to post obvious Insults from the safety and anonymity of their computer.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
It's not just the offensiveness, it's the squirrel-turd nutty craziness that sometimes comes with it.
Liberalism is faced with the "paradox of tolerance". You can only tolerate people that accepts tolerance. If you tolerate people who are intolerant, they will almost certainly start to take away your freedoms. If you have a thousand people, and one of them is a bigot- that one bigot does not pose a threat to anyone else's freedoms. If you have a thousand people and perhaps two hundred of them are bigots, and they are drowning out all other forms of speech and intimiating the middle ground with sheer ferosity of their hatreds, then free speech has already been denied in actuality, but not in law. They are still a minority, but they can deny everyone else's freedoms by sheer force of abuse. "harm" is a theoretical concept of individual freedom, but political reality is that people uses their freedoms as groups, and there is now a vocal minority that dominates public debate.
I find it increasingly hard not to think we have reached a tipping point, where people are using "freedom" to defend virtually every concieveable form of abuse. The wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the Paris attacks has made me wonder if, by sheer irrationality, the Republican Party could win the 2016 Presidential Election. Worse, if we keep this up, it is possible it could be Donald Trump. Even after eight years of Obama, America is still essentially on it's knees. Four years of Trump, and the two hundred year constitutional experiment in American Democracy is dead. I cannot concieve of a situation where I would either want or would let America fall into the hands of Fascists because they said "freedom" as if it were a magical incantation so they can continue to blame minorities and start a public database of Muslims in the US, a precedent that goes directly back to the holocaust.
I want to believe that the constitution of the United States is stronger than that, but freedom is not just a piece of paper. It is a culture. That culture has been steadily undermined by decades of social conservatives and religious indoctoration, intelligent design, patriotic propaganda and wartime hysteria, anti-immigrant and anti-muslim rhetoric, New world order conspiracy theories, 9/11 truthers and climate change denial. Can we really justify tuning into Fox New on the grounds of "freedom of the press" and the political culture is creates?
The line between freedom and tryanny is a thin one. America has been so preoccupied with the fear of a tryanny from the Left with Socialised Medicine and Death Panels, that it is now sleepwalking into a tryanny of the Right. They've already had Bush and the infastructure of secrets camps and mass surviallance is still in place. Obama hasn't really had a chance to do anything, assuming he even could with a Republican Congress. despite protestations of "change you can believe in" he has never been more than a pragmatist. he may be a nice guy, but the system of government he's nominally in charge of isn't.
At this point, America doesn't need a one-party state to round-up Muslims and illegal immigrants onto the back of a cattle train destined for Fema Camps. We are already comfortable with blacks is Jail. Maybe it's just part of the war on drugs and Islam is a Class A substance. These are Post-Modern times, so If Congress can say Pizza is a vegtable and climate change isn't real, what is to stop them? Maybe it's too senstive to release to the Public and should happen in a private session of a congressional committee. All the Republican Party need to do is show how much they love the constitution by calling camps "free speech zones" and the media will fulfil their patriotic duty by not endangering "national security" and not disclose state secrets as to where the bodies are buried. America is a Christian nation afterall, and the government has to protect American values. it's our first amendment right to have "freedom of religion" and not to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Free Speech protects our right to burn the Qu'ran. And our second amendment right to organise a well-regulated militia to round up and shoot these rabid dogs. Let the KKK lead the charge! The Democratic Party would support it because it is in the best interests of "Syrian Refugees" not to contaminate the population with diseases and Islam. And together they will stand up in public and say "liberty or death" and wish it on their imagined "enemies foreign and domestic" to the sound of screaming and heavy automatic gunfire. The Cops will get a chance to test out their new heavy armoured assault vehicles on the protesters fresh from PTSD in Iraq. But don't worry, hollywood is releasing a new TV series to portray ethnic sterotyopes in the war on terror which will convince the public and congress that torture is an effective means of obtaining information because thats how we made policy decisions now. It's not cruel and unusual punishment when I saw it on "24". Did I mention Donald Trump could have the Nuclear Launch Codes by 2016?
God Bless America.
God Bless America.
I'm a smart guy, but I'm running out of reasons to say I want to defend freedom and democracy. The words keep getting more and more hollow each time I say them. we're on the road to Fascism but because of how "free" the press are to lie to me, it might have already happened and I didn't know about it.So here we are, exercsing our free speech under the watchful gaze of the NSA. I hope they are getting my room ready for my extended vacation in Guantanamo bay.
Just how much longer can we go on pretending fascism is free speech?
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
I find that being offended is generally something people do, and not something that happens to them. In other words, it's up to people whether any given statement or action offends them, so if there is harm done, it's of their own doing.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Yes, and a sense of humour also comes in handy.
Self-righteous indignation is serious business. There's no room for humor when there's people out there being offended.