Anyone who thinks Lenin is any kind of role model is absolutely anti-liberal in exactly that sense. Yes, they protest. They fight for the rights of themselves and those they consider useful idiots or allies. If you think it means they support free speech for people they loath you're definitely wrong. And if you don't support free speech for those people then you're not any kind of liberal.

I'm assuming you are booking your 200 to my 100 instead of your 2k to my 1k.

Done. My 100 dollars to your 200 dollars. Please confirm.

Well, I wouldn't class Commies in one big bag. Commies in the USSR, back in the day CPUSA, and today's multitude of Commie splinter parties are really different beasts. FWIW, AFAIK the Commies I'm personally acquainted with are all Trots. Which my vague understanding of Commie internal dynamics makes them anti-Lenins. But I could be confused about that part.

Anyways, let's see what kinda issues CPUSA style Commies tackled back in the day. Like, amazingly enough, it was a little bit more intense than "de-platforming" back in the cold war...

Regardless of their motivations, I really gotta figure the score regarding free speech here is CPUSA 1, thefire.com 0.

Of course.

Trolly you might want to look into Trots again. Their line of descent is Marx-Engels-Lenin_Trotsky and then whoever their cult leader is, Tony Cliff or whoever.


Yes I said they defended their own rights to free speech.

Confirmed. My 100 to your 200.

The reason I have a vague understanding of Commie internal dynamics is IDK.

That's how it works, isn't it? My union fought the San Diego Free Speech Fight so we could soapbox on the street, and sell our newspapers on the street. Should we be ashamed that we were defending our own rights to free speech?

but that doesnt prove that someones committed to free speech as a principle is my point. the ACLU fights for everyones rights even if they despise them. thats a big difference.

ask your trot friends if "after the revolution" "reactionaries" will be allowed to organize, propagandize and run for office.

lol, wil still making prop bets while on tilt.

See, here's the thing: no1curr. We're talking about a buncha splinter organizations who nominally total a few thousand in the US, but if you count regular activists under 50, probably total into the mid three figures.

To bring this back on topic... FoldnDarks assertion that the remnant CPUSA, and their ilk, are partially responsible for rise of D.Trump I feel is laughable on the face of it. I gotta figure these small powerless splinter parties, who don't even bother to run candidates anymore, mainly organize funerals for their aged membership now-a-days. Imagining they are powerful enough to significantly shape the GOP is simply beyond LOLtastical.

I wasn't trying to be difficult. I just really don't know where Bernie stands on the issues I've been criticising the far left for getting wrong, like free speech and hypocracies with regard to defending religious illiberalism. I suspect he coult be fine, but I don't really know. Many of his most staunch supporters, otoh.... And I suppose I didn't really understand why you thought is was important, since I find trying to put people in boxes difficult and boring.


Sure, everyone supports free speech when they don't have power, the trick is convincing those with the power to preserve it, even for those who dissent. I'm not so sure communism, which focus less on individual rights, and more on collective rights, has a very good track record with regard to free speech. Look at where it's been put into practic. Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam... Nope, not a good record.

This guy at Stanford supports that argument:
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/erober...mputing-china/

Whichever of those guys actually wrote that, he has a BS in computer science. Not much of an authority, and they don't back up their claims with anything substantive.

Obviously Russian and Chinese communism have been enormously suppressive of free speech. I'm just encouraging you to look for better sources, especially on theoretical topics. The authors claim for example that a right to free speech is foundational to democracy but many other democracies lack anything resembling the US first amendment. Free speech is no more inherent to democratic capitalism than it is to communism.

I'm not claiming there's some sort of red scare going on or anything. Not sure where that came from. But there's plenty of evidence of calls for dissenting opinions to be squelched coming from the far left, mostly on behalf of disadvantaged groups. (before you say it, yes, the far right does this all the time too) Thus we have a push for "hate speech" rules on campus and the internet. While that sounds good in theory, it's really just another brick in the wall. Hate speech is not so easily defined, and such rules are very easily abused. There are plenty of arguments against it on moral and ethical grounds.

Here's what the ACLU has to say about the current trend to punish hate speech on campus:

https://www.aclu.org/hate-speech-campus

Free speech is inherent to liberalism, and thus, liberal democracy depends on it. If you want sources for this, I suggest you begin with Locke and Mills.

Totally unlimited free speech isn't. Mill and Locke don't get to decide btw. We admire great thinkers from the past but we don't unthinkingly obey them. Things change and they are long dead.

But you are correct that a high degree of free speech is inherently part of a liberal democracy whereas it isn't to communism.

I suggest you read the source you cited since it claims that free speech is a fundamental right under democracy. I agree that if they had omitted the word democracy, and only said that it was a more fundamental right in the political philosophy of Locke, then they would be correct. But I was disagreeing with what they actually wrote, not what you said.

I also suggest you try to be less obnoxiously condescending.

Right not unlimited, but it is of the utmost importance to preserve it as best as humanly possible. I'm going to convince you on hate speech or you're going to convince me. I'll start a thread on the philosophy of free speech soon. As Wookie suggested, it will be in SMP, not P.

Sorry, that wasn't the intent. I was going for cheerful condescension. I will defend to the death the need for free speech in a liberal democracy, the only type of democracy worth preserving.

I doubt either will convince the other.

My philosophical view is probably different to my political view anyway. The later has to deal with the real world as it happens to be now - important politics but very dull and uninteresting philosophically.

While free speech is obviously a big issue on the internet, which is why I assume those computer scientists wrote that paper, I understand your dissatisfaction with the source. I also understand you're probably not really disagreeing with me on communism, and I likewise don't even really disagree with those (like probably Shamey) who would defend communism on purely theoretical grounds. But it does look like there is something about focusing concern for the collective over the individual that causes civil rights like free speech to fall by the wayside in practice. It's tough enough to preserve in our own system, so it should be no surprise at all it tends to get lost in such environments under the guise of the most well-intended reasons. Here is another, better sourced, paper that makes similar arguments regarding communism, totalitarianism and free speech.

https://stanfordfreedomproject.com/w...-a-population/

Now you're talking about political ethics and I still think it's a discussion that would be very interesting. You and most of Europe have taken a different track than the US on some of these ethical issues, like barring hate speech. I think it is making and will continue to make your problems worse as Europe continues to homogenize both ethnically and culturally, but that could of course be dead wrong.

I think these are very interesting topics but they are seriously current hot topic politics not philosophy.

If wookie doesn't want it in P for some reason then PU is fine now.

Yeah, and through a painful ~250 post process, we found out that you use the term "far left" synonymous with "CPUSA and their ilk". So, substituting that in, we get your assertion here...

There's plenty of evidence of calls for dissenting opinions to be squelched coming from the CPUSA and their ilk.

To which I got two responses...

1) citation_needed.gif. Show a linkee from the CPUSA, or their ilk, calling for dissenting opinions to be squelched. Here's the CPUSA website: http://www.cpusa.org/. Here's the ISO website, which is definitely of their ilk: http://www.internationalsocialist.org/

2) I'm still going to LOL@u for believing these tiny US based political parties, and their ilk, have such far ranging influence and power to shape the GOP... as you have asserted numerous times.

This is a better argument than the one the authors of that web page made. As far as the conversation you are having with shame trolly, I don't think the point he was originally (and still is?) trying to make has anything to do with defending communism per se, but it seems like it's getting way out in the weeds anyway. Not that I'm helping :P

But you're the only one saying those on the far left must be communists. I'm just saying they are illiberal.

I don't think this is actually correct. Foldn's definition of "far left" is something about liberal college students demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings and all of that. Or, as he said "many of the students on campuses who advocate no-platforming and call for speech codes, as well as many of the people you will encounter on the internet who also call for such measures and seem to have a bit of a problem with free speech..."

You brought up communists and he agreed that the communist parties in Russia and China were illiberal, but it's pretty obvious he doesn't take "far left" to mean CPUSA. I thought you had some point to make trying to get him to define his terms a bit but the safe spaces thread makes it pretty clear who he means, even if his conception of that particular group is off base.