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from the going-to-need-lots-of-volunteers-to-build-the-block-list dept.
Rhode Island is the latest US state to discuss mandatory censorship of web content, at first targeting pornography:
Rhode Island Democratic state Senators Frank Ciccone (@senatorciccone) and Hanna Gallo (@hannagallo27) have proposed grandstanding, unworkable legislation, "Relating to Public Utilities and Carriers—Internet Digital Blocking" which would mandate the state's ISPs to identify all the pornography on the [I]nternet, and then block it for all Rhode Islanders, unless those Rhode Islanders specifically requested their porn to be unblocked and paid $20 for the privilege.
These proposals fly in the face of the observation that automated pornography filters don't work and that even the manual ones are neither practical, reliable, nor scalable.
Source : Rhode Island proposes blocking all online porn and charging $20 to unblock it. Boing Boing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday March 09 2018, @03:23PM (52 children)
This country has *never* been "land of the free", it's just jingoist BS someone made up. Alcoholic drinks were illegal not that long ago as you point out. Around that time, black Americans were third-class citizens and generally couldn't vote, and were routinely murdered with no due process. Shortly before that, women weren't allowed to vote, and it wasn't until the last 50 years that women were allowed to hold most jobs other than teacher, nurse, or secretary. Back in the 1800s, Native Americans were rounded up and forcibly deported, causing the deaths of thousands. And for quite a while, different States actually had official state-sanctioned religions. Even "freedom of speech" has been BS here for much of the country's history: it wasn't until the 20th century that that Amendment (and the others in the Bill of Rights) was re-interpreted to mean that no level of government in the country could suppress your speech. Before that, it was perfectly legal for states or localities to do so, just not the Federal government.
There's arguably far more freedom, in general, in this country than at any time in the past. In older days, you only had more freedom if you were white, male, rich enough to own land, and belonged to the correct Christian sect.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @03:40PM (6 children)
Democratic voting is all about one group taking stuff from another group.
I'll note that not long after women got the vote, beer was outlawed.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:26PM (3 children)
See how you're not just routinely downmodded these days? Thanks for not spamming ad much / anymore.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:37PM (2 children)
Not the other way around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:22PM (1 child)
> The "Spam" follows the downmodding.
'Cause throwing a tantrum when the society points out you're being rude is a completely normal thing that non-crazy people do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:39PM
That's the deal.
(Score: 4, Funny) by rcamera on Friday March 09 2018, @05:03PM (1 child)
i wonder if those two concepts are somehow tied together [cuny.edu]... that single image has caused countless millions to become alcoholics.
/* no comment */
(Score: 3, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday March 09 2018, @08:10PM
The first part of Ken Burns' Prohibition [wikipedia.org], “A Nation of Drunkards,” covers how the temperance and women's suffrage movements were related.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:52PM (6 children)
Grishna,
If you maintain an absolutist standard, then there has never been nor will there EVER be a free country in the entire world.
This doesn't seem to a useful standard. Better is one that recognizes that freedom is an ideal that we strive towards so that we can make progress towards attaining that ideal. If judged by that standard, the U.S. has done quite well. Notice all those negatives things that you listed, the U.S. NO LONGER DOES. Think about it from that point of view: we are getting better over time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:57PM (2 children)
I will also add that you can't apply TODAY'S moral standards to centuries past and expect everyone to have held them. That's asking too much. If you go by that standard, then people who were held as moral EVEN 10 YEARS AGO would now be considered oppressive ogres because, as one example, they didn't recognize gay marriage as a universal human right. Standards change and you have to judge people somewhat by the standards of the time. We live IN history, not OUTSIDE it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:04PM (1 child)
So, your premise is wrong.
This is usually the problem with arguments about things like "rights". The premises are wrong.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday March 09 2018, @10:34PM
Contracts are very underrated. Folks can have beautiful lives without ever looking at porn -- look at @VP [twitter.com] Pence, he doesn't even know what porn is. But life is a series of contracts. Without contracts, you can't be much. Maybe a homeless bum. If you don't have contracts, you don't have a SOCIETY. If our government ever says consenting adults or corporations can't make a contract, very sad day!
I'm a very traditional guy. But if two people dig each other, they dig each other.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:33PM
Expecting that the government respect basic liberties is not an "absolutist standard"; it's the desire of any non-authoritarian. You must have very low standards indeed.
Correct.
Those specific ones, anyway. Now, the US government engages in unconstitutional (not declared by Congress) and unjust (not in self-defense or even sensible defense of allies) wars overseas, conducts unconstitutional democracy-crippling mass surveillance on the populace in several different ways, ruthlessly attacks whistleblowers and journalists who challenge it, violates the first amendment in various ways, unconstitutionally steals people's money on a routine basis and calls it "asset forfeiture", creates draconian copyright laws, hires thugs to violate the rights of anyone who tries to get on a plane, imprisons people who put certain substances into their bodies, etc. Many of those were also problems in the past, and they're not any better now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @01:01PM (1 child)
Of course not. Country implies government, government implies unfree. Dissolve the borders and the system of rule by authority, and what's left is free. Sadly, domination is instinct, and domination is oppression.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @04:44PM
Wrong. What immediately happens without fail is that the thugs see your lack of government and steal your stuff, beat, or kill you.
To fight this, you are forced to organize and form paid defense forces. How to pay for this? Local taxes. Look at Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan or any of a number of places for what happens when there is no government control. Government of some sort must arise in the vacuum.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @05:03PM (36 children)
And we're done. The US was pretty good back then, and it got better. But since it isn't perfect, it isn't "land of the free". Well, your argument isn't perfect either.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:07PM (22 children)
The trajectory of the U.S. is correct, but that doesn't mean the underlying system is correct—you can be right, but for the wrong reasons.
You have an increasingly free society built around an organization that can outlaw (and indeed has outlawed) beer for an entire continent. That's not something to scoff at; that's a serious problem worth deliberation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @05:17PM (10 children)
No, it didn't. That took a constitutional amendment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:25PM (7 children)
Nobody said that the Federal Congress can outlaw beer for an entire continent; rather, somebody said an organization can outlaw beer for an entire continent. The Federal Congress, along with the State governments, etc., constitute an organization.
That's why people can simply say "the government", whether it be a State issue or a Federal issue, or a municipal issue.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @05:40PM (6 children)
They constituted 58 such organizations (50 states, 5 US territories, Washington DC, and two branches of Congress). Don't confuse group with organization.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:47PM (5 children)
I'm baffled why you think you have a point.
Are you saying that outlawing beer (which did happen) is completely consistent with a system intended to foster a free society, where individual rights are protected, especially the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Genuinely, I don't know what you're trying to say, or how it is that you think you've countered the point in question.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @05:52PM (4 children)
It was done by constitutional amendment not by an organization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:55PM (3 children)
As far as I can tell, you've just now made a senseless remark.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
Finally, a constitutional amendment is not merely a law. It is a restructuring of the laws of the US at a fundamental level. For example, any law which runs counter to an amendment is void. So it wasn't just outlawing beer, but restructuring the federal government so that it could outlaw beer and enforce that regulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
There's still Mexico and Canada: Redherring.
A group or collection is not an organization: Worse than No True Scotsman; the argument remains unchanged.
No mere law: Straw man. Redherring. No True Scotsman.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @10:00PM
The point is that you said "entire continent", but the US is less than half the North American continent by land area and a little under 60% by population. It is far from an entire continent.
Except that it becomes a more correct argument. Words have meaning and such large errors in your argument will detract from its persuasiveness. You do want better arguments, right?
Nuance matters. A legislative body didn't just outlaw beer. It took a supermajority of many such legislative bodies, all of them subject to public election, to do so. That indicates to us a lot more than just a number of "governments" of an "organization" outlawed beer, but that it was a substantial popular movement as well.
And at that point, mass democracy of any sort is susceptible to large scale popular movements destroying freedom. It's not that the US is not free, but that the public has made poor choices, such as outlawing beer, not protesting the internment camps of Japanese Americans, or allowing slavery to continue. Let us also keep in mind that these evils eventually were all revoked. So while the US of the past may not have been as aggressive as we would like with respect to such acts of tyranny, freedom did prevail.
This nuance is very important because the claim was made that US society was not free. But what free society couldn't choose collectively to make bad choices and harm the freedom of its citizens? In other words, how can you distinguish between a free society that occasionally makes bad, undemocratic choices and the US?
Recall that several of the founders emphasized that free societies were not automatic, but required constant maintenance in order to remain free (for example, Thomas Jefferson - "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."). In other words, they didn't expect perfection from the US, but a frequent and inevitable dipping of the toes into various sorts of tyranny against which they asked future US citizens to be vigilant.
TL;DR: There were several glaring errors with what was said which when corrected, will make the argument stronger. Those aren't "red herring" because such errors detract from the persuasiveness of the argument. Yes, it doesn't matter whether the US is a continent or not, but merely correcting that makes a silly problem go away.
Instead, the real problem is that you are simply in error about what a free society is. It is most certainly not a society where everyone is perfectly free. That society can't exist. Any real world free society will have flaws - injustices and occasional tyrannies in it, created from within or imposed from without. The determining factor of whether the society is free is whether in the long run these are successfully fought off or allowed to prosper.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday March 09 2018, @07:09PM (1 child)
You have recently been posting reasonable, informative comments. What have you done with the real khallow?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 09 2018, @08:57PM
And whatever it was you did, THANK YOU.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by https on Friday March 09 2018, @05:24PM (7 children)
You have an amazingly incorrect definition of "continent" - once you realize the scope of your error, you might then wonder what else in your reasoning processes you're getting wrong.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:27PM
If that's all you've got, then I have even more confidence in my position.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday March 09 2018, @06:40PM (4 children)
He or she shows their true nature: to the AC, Latinos (Mexicans) don't count.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @06:51PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday March 09 2018, @07:22PM (2 children)
As far as I can tell, Canada has had prohibition across the nation, between 1918 to 1920, leaving Mexico as the only North American country that has never had national prohibition.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @09:46PM (1 child)
Here's a list of all the countries in North Americahttps://www.countries-ofthe-world.com/countries-of-north-america.html/ [countries-ofthe-world.com]:
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Canada
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominica
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Grenada
Guatemala
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Trinidad and Tobago
United States of America (USA)
I think you need to extend your research a bit to see if any of the others listed have had prohibition during their existence as a country.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday March 09 2018, @11:11PM
I don't need to extend my research. The fact that there is one country that has never had nation-wide prohibition shows the lie that was posted before.
Also, excluding Canada and the USA, I think that all of those countries are predominantly non-white population. Mostly Latino, some Afro-Carribean.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @02:19AM
So, you are saying he is incontinent
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday March 09 2018, @06:38PM (2 children)
When was there a national ban on alcohol in Mexico?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @07:45PM (1 child)
See here. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday March 09 2018, @08:16PM
You really are an idiot, aren't you.
You claim that there was prohibition across an entire continent, but this claim is simply false because Mexico has never had national prohibition.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:26PM (9 children)
You think that egregious violations of people's basic liberties - slavery, the oppression of women, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow laws, etc. - is merely 'not perfect'? They are far, far worse than 'not perfect'.
Even now, we're conducting democracy-destroying unconstitutional mass surveillance on the populace, among other massive violations of people's liberties; that necessarily means we're not "the land of the free", as no place that is truly free would do such a thing. Maybe this is where people can break out the 'Not As Bad As' fallacy and point out that those countries over there are even worse.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:30PM
As pointed out here [soylentnews.org], democracy is not inherently promotional of freedom.
I would suggest that democracy should be replaced with capitalism (that is, voluntary trade; that is, law by contracts negotiated in advance of interaction).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @05:41PM (7 children)
So what? Those violations no longer exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @06:00PM (2 children)
So what? The presence of such things automatically mean the US was not "pretty good" in the past. Even now, the US is far from merely 'not perfect' given the countless ways in which it is violating people's freedoms. I guess you just don't value liberty as much as I do.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @06:43PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @07:28PM
Your reply is completely nonsensical. I do see liberty, which is why I vehemently object to violations of it, such as mass surveillance. Your standards are simply very low.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @06:04PM (3 children)
There's no reason why they couldn't be re-instituted or even enshrined; the system still allows for such a thing.
The trajectory is correct, but not because the system is sound.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @10:42PM (2 children)
That's the problem with a free society. We're free to make bad choices and sometimes we do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
That has nothing to do with protecting the rights of the individual, especially the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Soviet Union had plenty of mechanisms for people to participate in the shaping of society; was the Soviet Union just a free society that made a few bad choices?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 10 2018, @07:24PM
And nobody said it did. We can make collectively bad choices just like we can make individually bad choices.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Friday March 09 2018, @05:36PM (2 children)
Didn't you hear? Perfect is the enemy of good.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 09 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
I sure did. Now make a guess why I wrote what I wrote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @02:12AM
Because you're an argumentative cockknocker?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:20PM
With regards to the first amendment, the US still has free speech zones, FCC censorship, draconian copyright laws, obscenity laws, anti-public nudity laws (which run afoul of free expression), NDLs, laws against whistleblowers, and other such things. We're still not fully respecting the first amendment.