/townhall/ - Townhall

Do you think that Kyle Rittenhouse has any viable defamation claims against those who falsely claimed that he was a white supremacist?

As a general matter, drawing a false conclusion is not defamatory as long as the factual basis is stated and true.  For example, saying "Kyle drank beer with members of the Proud Boys, and therefore he is a white supremacist" is protected speech.  But if the speaker implies the existence of undisclosed facts, the conclusion can be considered defamatory.  For example, if a speaker says "I have read Kyle's private diary, and from that I have concluded that Kyle is a white supremacist", but the speaker lied about reading the alleged diary, then there might be a viable action for defamation.

In the discussion about school curriculum and current efforts by political conservatives to change not just what gets taught but also what books are allowed to be available in school libraries, the question keeps getting raised about "teaching the other side" in a much broader intellectual sense (beyond the whole Democrats versus Republicans angle).

Many people of the political center, left, and right alike have the general understanding that it's good and proper for schools to present an admittedly slanted view of history in which the U.S. armed forces are "the good guys" and oppositional forces such as the Confederates, the Kaiserreich, the Nazis, et al are "the bad guys". U.S. troops are presented in a manner often that describes them in positive terms as courageous individuals sacrificing for the greater good of promoting democracy and liberty. Enemies on the battlefield are often depicted negatively, with emphasis put on war crimes and other such acts. Both Democrats and Republicans have taken this viewpoint.

Critics of the American idealism approach have frequently brought up the case of adversaries such as the Confederacy and asserted that the demonizations aren't justified. Multiple Confederate leaders are said to have displayed significant intellectual talent and physical courage. Slavery is said to have been not as bad as commonly understood. The same applies to World War I and World War II: perhaps revisionist history has a point in saying that American children need to learn more about the positive aspects of those fought by U.S. troops, with those killing American soldiers admittedly having their own understandings of what freedom means.

Do you think that U.S. schools should work to maintain a kind of detached objectivity when discussing conflicts against the Confederates, the Kaiserreich, the Nazis, and others? How important is the perspective of those fighting against Americans? Or is it proper in terms of promoting democracy and liberty among the younger generations to teach a morally idealistic, liberation-minded view of history where "bad guys" and "good guys" exist? Can those taking up arms in defense of the Holocaust or of slavery really be said to have points of view worth delving that much into, risking muddling the ethical waters in instructing the young about right and wrong?

Bucking a trend of bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice going back over a hundred years, in my opinion, a posse of white men who lynched an innocent black man for traveling in the wrong neighborhood and thus being considered a dangerous criminal have been found guilty in Georgia. The deceased's name was Ahmaud Arbery. He died in February 2020. His life mattered.

It's not only a devastating defeat for the American conservative movement that demonized that innocent black man and his defenders just as they've demonized black victim after black victim in the past, in my view, but it's also a victory for both the Arbery family and the Black Lives Matter movement, clearly. I'll happily go beyond that and say that when it comes to the terminal cancer patient that is America, a country stuck in the midst of twenty years of sharp decline with no sign of that stopping, this represents a kind of eye in the hurricane of hatred to me. For once, democracy won. Freedom won. Justice won. Liberty won. The underdog with the world stacked against him whipped the odds in true Hollywood miracle fashion. That's my take.

A detailed article going through the entire case is here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wanda-cooper-jones-ahmaud-arbery-murder-justice-48-hours/

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my take? Do you disagree? Do you sympathize with the defense being mounted that the killers were only acting in self-defense and that they've been railroaded in some fashion? Perhaps the men found guilty deserve light sentences? Or long ones? And what does this mean for future cases in the endless, waterfall-like flow of American situations in which white men claim to have killed minorities in self-defense?

I feel that this is a victory for the presumption of innocence and self-defense rights!  Do you agree?  [Edited in response to >>10217]

Edited to add (in response to >>10217): In this thread, please feel free to discuss:
(1) The Rittenhouse trial
(2) The presumption of innocence -- is it better than 100 guilty people walk free than 1 innocent be sentenced to death or life in prison?
(3) The right of self-defense, including what counts as provocation.
(4) Bicubic and bilinear scaling of images used as evidence in criminal trials.
(5) Any other related topics.

Should religiously devout Christians who for faith-based reasons oppose vaccines as well as wearing masks and social distancing be able to defy laws against their behavior?

The Supreme Court recently decided against a group of legal challengers in Maine's health care system ( https://www.vox.com/2021/10/29/22753429/supreme-court-vaccine-mandate-maine-does-mills-religious-right-exemption-liberty-constitution ) when it came to a vaccine mandate, but was that right?

Why do people of the political center and the political right oppose mask-wearing and vaccination?

One can maybe understand why a lot of particular political views are held even if somebody doesn't hold them... this happens enough to be called something like 'The Ideological Turning Test' and studied scientifically. I try myself to put myself into the shoes of others constantly. I'm not particularly great at it, but I try.

Yet I'm sincerely not capable of understanding why giving someone a vaccine makes you evil and how that person choosing to get the vaccine also becomes evil.

Why is mask-wearing and vaccination associated with leftists, liberals, social justice warriors, the far left, and so on?

This frankly seems to me as if half the country decided that having blonde or red hair makes you evil and started campaigning for measures to crack down on illegit coloring, with Democrats becoming the equality party and Republicans becoming the darkness-up-top-supremacy party.

What are your thoughts?

Remember the four basic rules of gun safety:
1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.
4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

And yes, these rules apply even if you're just using a gun as a prop.                                                                                                                                                                  

Roughly speaking, the U.S. can be divided into three groups. First, there's those most at risk of political violence in general and especially at risk if the U.S. ever had a fully tyrannical government. Second, there's the broad mass of the general populace. Third, there's those least at risk of political violence whom would have it the most cozy if a tyrannical government took power.

One might think that gun ownership among civilians would be most concentrated among those with the most to lose. That is: Jews, Muslims, transgender people, Native Americans, disabled people, and the like. The types most likely to suffer the worse under a future tyranny.

That's absolutely not the case, though. In fact, the vast majority of civilian firearms are owned with the people having the least to lose and to which a tyrannical government would be the most kind to. The happier you'd be in a fascist America, the more likely you are to have an arsenal for such an occasion and the larger said arsenal would be.

This is most telling when comparing militant factions such as neo-Nazi clubs, Klansman associations, the Proud Boys, and such. Not only are they armed to the teeth, but they actively encourage individuals to brandish their weapons in public. It's a way of showing off at best and outright intimidation at worse.

When one looks at, say, the elderly Jewish protesters brought out by the Anti-Defamation League or other, ideological rivals on the opposite side... it's like imagining a battle between rabbits and foxes. Sheep and wolves. Cats and mice. Pretty clear imbalances.

To try to solve this, I've got a proposal. In short:

>'In a world full of wolves and lambs, bring in the sheepdogs.'

I propose a unified network of state by state and then county by county paramilitaries made up of well-trained gun owners who're straight white cisgender Christians who've made a sacred blood oath (I mean this quite literally, as in publicly swearing in the eyes of God and their peers as they use some kind of a cutting device to draw some blood from themselves ritualistically) that they will quite literally die, if necessary, to defend their neighbors who're non-cisgender, non-Christian, non-straight, non-white, and so on.
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Recent talk of expanding U.S. infrastructure in general has also meant talk specifically about Native Americans' access to clean drinking water getting improved.

Details: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1054418311/tribes-hope-infrastructure-law-means-theyll-finally-get-clean-drinking-water

In the broader sense, do you think that access to clean water is a fundamental human right the same as freedom of speech and freedom of religion? Or perhaps not? It's not in the U.S. Constitution, of course, but should it be? How much of a complicating factor is it that multiple areas, specifically native tribal locations, are subject to different practical pressures making clean water difficult to get?

In US criminal trials, the jury has only two options for each charge: acquittal or finding the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  Should juries have a third option, to chastise the prosecutor and award damages to the defendant when the evidence is strongly on the defendant's side?

Even the mere presence of this option may help avoid juries convicting innocent people.  In the current jury system, a jury may compromise by convicting the defendant on some lesser charges.  But if there is another option to chastise the prosecutor, then the compromise might be instead be fully acquitting the defendant but not chastising the prosecutor.

So I'm starting to think that all home-owners  are entitled to receive a free firearm. A gun, like a handgun or an assault rifle.

Now, I'm vegan, so therefore I believe deep down in my heart of hearts: "guns are for self-defence, not hunting."

And I carry that sentiment with this statement: that all home-owners in the United States of America be given a free firearm for self defence.

Is there a resurgence of union power specifically, and laborers' power in general, in the U.S. right now?

Details: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/02/1051112806/strikes-labor-great-resignation-covid

Could this mean a stronger movement for better civil rights in this country? Or may this just be a blip? I'm inclined to be skeptical in terms of the God-like abilities of corporations in the U.S., but maybe things can change, with the likes of a thirty-hour work week and paid family leave for parents no longer being mere dreams?

President Joe Biden, although still broadly popular in most of the nation, is having a particularly hard time selling his expansive welfare programs and other government expanding measures to the public.

Related Story: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/05/president-biden-howell-michigan-visit-build-back-better/5997459001/

In contrast to his slogan of "Build Back Better", opponents express concern about multi-trillion dollar price tags when the country is already drowning in debt. "Build Back Broke" gets said. It's interesting.

What are your thoughts?

The United Nations recently warned that AI research represents a fundamental threat to human liberties given that deploying such technology to control both government and non-state actions can curtain "rights to privacy, to a fair trial, to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention and the right to life" ( https://www.npr.org/2021/09/16/1037902314/the-u-n-warns-that-ai-can-pose-a-threat-to-human-rights ).

Can we as fragile, weak humans teach these new Gods and Goddesses our sense of person-based ethics? Is it even possible at all? Maybe?

Another, more recent news story has reported that the Allen Institute for AI (created the late Microsoft figure Paul Allen) have made some major breakthroughs in devising an AI service that can seemingly answer ethical challenges that have been put to it. A lot of snags understandably exist ( https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/10/27/22747333/artificial-intelligence-ethics-delphi-ai ).

What do you think? Can our machine Gods and Goddesses learn to feel and make ethical decisions? Is the future something like Data from Star Trek? Or will things turn much darker?

The costs of gasoline in the United States is going up. The simple, Econ 101 take on the situation is that supply normally would increase to take advantage of the situation. However, the oil industry isn't like your standard competitive market, and it looks as if the response from oil producing agencies as to whether or not more will be coming is a flat "no".

Details: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/14/1055068583/gasoline-prices-gas-energy-inflation-biden

In such circumstances, what should be done? Can anything really be done? Maybe not?