Violence vs. Free Speech

You don't have to open up your mind to be tolerant. It's accepting people saying and doing things you don't like.

Accepting people you don't like might mean two things.

1) you open up your mind, understand that people can live together even if they don't all think the same, allow yourself to listen to others and to understand why they do different from you, generate a meaningful thought and action about pacific life and the future of a single society.

2) you don't open up your mind, continue to hate peole thinking different from you, wish they were gone, don't help them and secretly or overtly hope that they will fail miserably and get out of their way, never speaking with them and building up a society working by strength of numbers, mocking the losers when you win and crying injustice when you lose.

Just ONE of those things might mean "tolerance", so your definition is quite imprecise. Only in the first case you can be "tolerant", unless by "tolerant" you mean the strict and simple behaviour, as if we were speaking chemistry and drugs. But that would be an imprecise use of the word.

However, in the first case of the two I've shown, you might be tolerant if you are sane, open if you have never though too much about things, progressive left if you are insane.

In the second case you might be secessionist if you are sane, strong conservative if you never thought too much about things, right-wing fascist if you are insane.

Anyway, tolerance in the modern sense means to think, and you must use your mind. Extremist tolerants are people who think way too much and have lost contact with reality. However, if your mind stay closed it means you are fundamentally scared of people who are different from you, because you feel weak.
 
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Ah, so progressives are tolerant and conservatives aren't? That's interesting, considering the left's continued attempts to shut down free speech.

That's not what I said, that's what you would like me to have said.

Your mental detour is very interesting to read when I explicitly wrote that progressive left (in the US sense) is insane...

EDIT

I say this in a very direct way basically because I see some people going out of their way up to misinterpretation to try and prove someone else wrong. That's not the way to build a constructive exchange, which is what the great majority of the other users do, even when they disagree.
 
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To me tolerance is simply not interfering in others affairs as long as they are not causing others harm.
As an example, someone thinking they are gender fluid, is fine. Someone saying that I *must* use specific pronouns for them and trying to codify them into laws, is a problem.
 
Accepting people you don't like might mean two things.

1) you open up your mind, understand that people can live together even if they don't all think the same, allow yourself to listen to others and to understand why they do different from you, generate a meaningful thought and action about pacific life and the future of a single society.

2) you don't open up your mind, continue to hate peole thinking different from you, wish they were gone, don't help them and secretly or overtly hope that they will fail miserably and get out of their way, never speaking with them and building up a society working by strength of numbers, mocking the losers when you win and crying injustice when you lose.

Just ONE of those things might mean "tolerance", so your definition is quite imprecise. Only in the first case you can be "tolerant", unless by "tolerant" you mean the strict and simple behaviour, as if we were speaking chemistry and drugs. But that would be an imprecise use of the word.

However, in the first case of the two I've shown, you might be tolerant if you are sane, open if you have never though too much about things, progressive left if you are insane.

In the second case you might be secessionist if you are sane, strong conservative if you never thought too much about things, right-wing fascist if you are insane.

Anyway, tolerance in the modern sense means to think, and you must use your mind. Extremist tolerants are people who think way too much and have lost contact with reality. However, if your mind stay closed it means you are fundamentally scared of people who are different from you, because you feel weak.

Cenk Uygur fits your second definition, and I have no desire to silence him. Bad ideas must exist to justify good ideas. There is no preexisting canon of "good" ideas, all of them must be debated and justified.
 
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That's not what I said, that's what you would like me to have said.

Your mental detour is very interesting to read when I explicitly wrote that progressive left (in the US sense) is insane...

EDIT

I say this in a very direct way basically because I see some people going out of their way up to misinterpretation to try and prove someone else wrong. That's not the way to build a constructive exchange, which is what the great majority of the other users do, even when they disagree.
Then I misunderstood your post (and still do), in which case I apologize.
 
Whether or not NBC's story was accurate, the President's response is beyond inappropriate, and a direct threat to freedom of the press.

EDIT: Link may not work due to paywall. Full story quoted below, except Trump's tweets. I'm not on twitter, so I don't know how to source them, so you'll just have to trust me (and check them yourself) for accuracy, but here is the body of the tweets that the below story is about.

POTUS said:
Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a "tenfold" increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!

POTUS said:
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/...column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

New York Times said:
Trump Threatens NBC Over Nuclear Weapons Report

By PETER BAKER and CECILIA KANGOCT. 11, 2017

WASHINGTON ? President Trump threatened on Wednesday to use the federal government?s power to license television airwaves to target NBC in response to a report by the network?s news division that he contemplated a dramatic increase in the nation?s nuclear arsenal.

In a story aired and posted online Wednesday morning, NBC reported that Mr. Trump said during a meeting last summer that he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the nation?s nuclear weapons stockpile, stunning some members of his national security team. It was after this meeting that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson reportedly said Mr. Trump was a ?moron.?

Mr. Trump objected to the report in two messages on Twitter later Wednesday and threatened to use the authority of the federal government to retaliate.

He repeated his complaint later in the day when reporters arrived to cover his meeting with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau. ?It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,? Mr. Trump said.

The comments immediately drew criticism that the president was using his office to undermine First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. And, in fact, the networks themselves ? and their news departments ? do not hold federal licenses, though individual affiliates do.

?Broadcast licenses are a public trust,? said Tom Wheeler, who until January was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by President Barack Obama. ?They?re not a political toy, which is what he?s trying to do here.?

In suggesting that a broadcast network?s license be targeted because of its coverage, Mr. Trump once again evoked the Watergate era when President Richard M. Nixon told advisers to make it difficult for The Washington Post to renew the F.C.C. license for a Florida television station it owned. A businessman with ties to Mr. Nixon filed paperwork to challenge The Post?s ownership of the station. The Justice Department under Mr. Nixon also filed antitrust charges against the three major television networks.

In Mr. Trump?s case, it may just be an idle threat, the sort of bluster that he has regularly used to keep news organizations and other individuals and institutions he perceives to be rivals off balance. Just a day earlier, he went on Twitter to suggest using federal tax law to punish the National Football League as part of his campaign against players who kneel during the national anthem, only to have a spokeswoman later say he was only making a point.

But Mr. Wheeler said it could also be taken as instruction by his supporters who could act on his behalf. ?This sounds to me like another dog whistle for folks to file against the license renewals,? he said. ?Clearly it would be a bridge too far for the Trump F.C.C. to move on their own initiative. But if some conservative groups were to take this as their marching orders, it would be an interesting situation to see what the Trump F.C.C. did.?

Shortly after the tweet, Senator Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote a letter to Ajit Pai, the current F.C.C. chairman, who was designated by Mr. Trump to lead the commission, urging him to protect First Amendment rights. ?I ask for your commitment to resist the president?s request and call on you to publicly refuse to challenge the license of any broadcaster because the president dislikes its coverage,? Mr. Markey wrote.

Mr. Pai did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the president?s tweet, nor did the White House.

The NBC story said that Mr. Trump raised the idea of increasing the nuclear arsenal during a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon. Shown briefing slides illustrating the reduction of nuclear weapons since the 1960s, the president said he wanted a major buildup instead.

National security officials, said to have been surprised by the president?s suggestion, explained that such a move would contravene decades of efforts to curb nuclear weapons and violate several treaties signed by the United States under Republican and Democratic presidents.

The network cited three officials who were in the room but did not identify them. As the meeting broke up, Mr. Tillerson was heard making his ?moron? comment. Mr. Tillerson did not deny using the word when asked by reporters last week, but later sent out a spokeswoman to deny it on his behalf. In an interview posted on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he considered that ?fake news? ? but also said that, if it were true, he could beat Mr. Tillerson in an I.Q. contest.

While its members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the F.C.C. is a separate agency mandated to act independently from the White House. Mr. Trump?s tweet suggested a potential misunderstanding of how television licenses work.

NBC, like ABC, CBS, Fox and CNN, are television networks that do not license spectrum. Therefore, there are no licenses held directly by networks that create programs, which are then pushed out to television stations to run over airwaves and into American homes.

But NBC?s parent company, Comcast, does own television stations that do license airwaves from the F.C.C., as do CBS and ABC?s parent company, Walt Disney. But the networks themselves, and NBC News in particular, do not license airwaves.

The president?s tweets stoked strong pushback from consumer groups that said the threat to NBC was clear.

?This is not just a huge issue from a First Amendment standpoint, it is at best a weird way to go at it and nonetheless very problematic,? said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an advocacy group on communications issues before the F.C.C. ?The message is clear, you don?t have to work hard to see how those words are chilling.?

Alexandra Ellerbeck, the North America program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that authoritarian countries such as Russia, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey license news outlets based on their coverage. ?Donald Trump?s assertion that NBC?s license could be challenged not only puts him in unfavorable company but emboldens other governments to embrace authoritarian tendencies,? she said.

Mr. Trump?s threat was hardly the first time a president has sought to stifle the media. ?Trump is following in one of our more sordid presidential traditions,? said John A. Farrell, author of ?Richard Nixon: The Life.?

He noted that President John F. Kennedy pressured The New York Times to pull its reporter, David Halberstam, out of Vietnam because of his critical reporting on the war, and President Lyndon B. Johnson harassed Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, over the network?s reporting from that war zone.

The Nixon White House ?carried the campaign against the press to considerable length,? Mr. Farrell said, including bugging reporters and infiltrating the press corps with dirty tricksters.

He cited a 1971 discussion, captured on Mr. Nixon?s secret tapes, in which Charles Colson tells the president that the threat of an antitrust suit ?gives us one hell of a club? to hold over the networks. ?Our game here is solely political,? Mr. Nixon replied. ?As far as screwing them is concerned, I am very glad to do it.?
 
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Can we discuss the fact that NBC needs a license?

Just for the record:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
 
NBC does not need a license to exercise freedom of the press. To broadcast a television signal on the other hand, does.
 
No, it is not. Remember, the press was only print media back when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written. The regulations that come with broadcasting radio or video over the air are there to keep the spectrum usable, otherwise there would be stations in the same space and disrupting each other. Besides, with cable TV, and the internet, NBC can simply bypass the broadcasting part altogether.
 
No, it is not. Remember, the press was only print media back when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written. The regulations that come with broadcasting radio or video over the air are there to keep the spectrum usable, otherwise there would be stations in the same space and disrupting each other. Besides, with cable TV, and the internet, NBC can simply bypass the broadcasting part altogether.

Wouldn?t be much of a B C then :p
 
No, it is not. Remember, the press was only print media back when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written.
Using that logic (or lack thereof) print media should only be printed using a printing press. Sorry, bud, the 1A protects even modern forms of the press.
 
Ok, regardless, we all seem to be in agreement that government should not be in the business of regulating the press, correct?

Now, can we get back to the article, please?
 
On topic: Trump is being a child on Twitter. Again.
You don't think this goes beyond just being a child? No leader of a nation should threaten the press.
 
On topic: Trump is being a child on Twitter. Again.

I?m going to side with Jim on this, it?s borderline tyranny. It is also worth noting that he is showing more and more that he is not interested in national values.

What is more worrying is that our checks and balances don?t seem to be doing either checking or balancing
 
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