Shachar Haad
Jul 10, 2017 · 7 min read

Actually, you have argued repeatedly that I should not have such a right:

Put it simply, understand it or not, the right to free speech ends when you try to take it away from someone else.”

Do you have a consistent argument or do you just change your position to the one that negates mine? Didn’t you previously comment that your right to own property does not allow you to steal?

Medium is not, technically, an open platform.

Do you want to debate semantics, now? In what context is it either closed or open? The constitution? Product development? Copyright? Use case? Do you care or are you using the source that seemingly negates my point? You didn’t even bother addressing what I actually wrote and instead fell to the usual trope of using the dictionary.

You have to register and agree to the terms of service. They can kick you off. It is a space for speech reserved for members. It is closed.

Well, you also need to have an internet connection and that your local law to support the use of such a platform. You’re trying to weasel your way out of addressing the point and instead try to ‘debunk’ a definition.

I do not demand that Medium delete any post. Instead, I challenge the things I disagree with, especially when the ideas therein can cripple or destroy my rights.

You are destroying your own rights. You don’t need assistance. As you already defined it, the person with the most rights is the person who can shout the loudest.

I want to point out that, earlier, John said the opposite:

If you want to discuss this topic with John the TIB, then perhaps you should continue this discussion with him. We are not a hive that requires every member to think and act the same. I wonder if he is now perplexed as to the reason you ask him to defend my positions.

It’s interesting that you both are so antagonized by the idea of protest, and the solutions you both promote are inherently authoritarian. “Make him talk to a liberal speaker on the stage!”, “No one be mad that this guy is talking!”. Those are both ideas that are studiously ignorant of reality: no, the group hosting the speaker didn’t want a debate. The people who wanted to see someone shout at Milo were happy to yell at him from the audience or the quad.

Stop throwing the word authoritarian around. It lost all meaning, along with racist, sexist, and the rest of those meaningless catch-all words.

You also continuously bring Milo into this debate as it agrees with your preexisting notions about conservative speakers. I’m not really sure Milo is actually a conservative. He seems more like a liberal who enjoys attacking the perverted left.

Why not talk about a speaker like Ben Shapiro, that I’ve already mentioned? A person that most of his talk is actually debating topics with the audience. Where the rule-of-thumb is that “if you disagree, you get to go first?” Of course, chanting nonsense and asserting that he is dangerous gives an emotional reward that debate won’t do.

Of course, they are not required to give a debate or care what the overgrown children actually want. As long as they are not interrupting, they can stand outside and shout until they lose their voice. You seem to think they are entitled to the platform of the speaker for a reason you refuse to give.

Why not? That’s what our rights are for.

You have a right to take the platform from someone else? That’s news to me. I guess this is why Sanders was such a popular figure: he was supporting stealing from the rich (A.K.A evil) and giving it away to those he deemed worthy. A real modern day Robin Hood.

The point of having free speech is that people earning money for their words can be compelled to say shit that isn’t true and that they do not believe. Protecting the rights of individuals to challenge moneyed interests and the speakers they pay is kind of a major thing.

Well, it is your right to challenge them on those lies. To find and expose them, and in some instances, make them accountable for promulgating them. However, you don’t have the right to barge into the studio and interfere with their normal broadcasting.

I do have to wonder to which news organization you are referring to…

You keep saying “free speech” but the way you use it doesn’t really make much sense. As far as you’ve written here, you seem to think “free speech” refers only to people who can command an audience. In other words, celebrities.

You keep repeating that point and although I clarified it on multiple occasions, you refuse to actually address it. Let’s turn it around, shall we: are the agitators the only ones with free speech? What about the conservative group that is being marginalized and silenced with their word being labeled bigoted and them being guilty of hate speech, who therefore needs to be silenced. Once in a while, they find a speaker that will not treat them like human garbage and that can educate them a bit about politics, and you support those who try and silence them, while continually talk about free speech as a way to take down dissenting opinions.

Of course you don’t. You prefer those conservative speakers.

Of course you do. You prefer those progressive speakers.

But the inherent problem you fail to see is that these are wildly different communities and you seem to expect the most liberal communities to tolerate extreme conservatism while you are nonchalant about conservative communities actually exerting far more control over students lives.

How? Do you mean all the conservatives in the faculty? The administration being wholly progressive? Or maybe insane groups on campus who shout down any conservative viewpoint?

I did not share a single random case of discrimination: I shared a pattern of authoritarian control over the lives of gay students. They are told who they can date, what schools they can go to and a host of other

That’s discrimination, not authoritarianism. It’s just the current buzzword, so everyone likes to use it. An authoritarian will take control of the media and education, much in the same way the left did. The authoritarian will also make certain words and expression immoral and illegal like is being done currently by the left, and overall try to silence voices of descent, which didn’t happen yet. So, it seems you are the one supporting authoritarianism.

They didn’t take control over the lives of gay students but discriminated against them. They didn’t force them to date nice straight girls but requested they don’t show the affection around the school.

rules that are discriminatory and not applied to straight students.

I agree. Discriminatory and hypocritical but not authoritarian. There is a difference.

You seem to think that is insignificant compared to the problem that 10 guys at Berkeley couldn’t see Milo speak live on campus

Do you need me to find a video where the crowd can clearly be seen? There are far more than “10 guys.” There are women, people who are not white, ethnically or by the color of their skin, and even Muslim fans of those speakers. You just seem to follow the “only white nationalists like X.”

even though they had broad access to all his published content in the form of videos and articles.

What a magnificent advocacy for free speech you have here. “You can talk, certainly. Apart from here, there, over there also, everywhere there are millennials who can get their feelings hurt, and overall anywhere someone who leans to the left is present. You see, plenty of places you can speak at!”

This is all very good evidence that you haven’t thought much about your ideas. I think people have rights: schools do not.

No. I’ve thought about them. I know what I believe. You just seem to like man made out of straw. Your prerogative.

I didn’t assert that a school has rights. You are the one who initially suggested it with the topic of Trump threatening to take the funding from universities for restricting free speech.

I notice that you did not comment on this at all:

Not applicable to free speech so I didn’t much care to branch the discussion even further. Like I mentioned, if you expect DeVos to fight schools who discriminate against the gay then you should also support Trump threatening universities.

You seem utterly unaware that Berkeley protested their own chancellor at a forum for public education.

That’s a misdirection that has nothing to do with the topic. On a side note, no matter what they will give them, the students will want more and more, like an oversized pig stuffing himself with food.

If the presenter wanted to speak, why didn’t they use the forums that were available?

Already answered that point but just to clarify: You don’t decide where a person can or cannot speak, you don’t decide on what that person can or cannot say, and you certainly don’t have the right to liable a person just because it makes you feel good.

They were interviewed in the national media, yet they did not use those opportunities to share the presentations they planned to give at Berkeley.

Yes, the media gives them the platform to do Q&A and speak uninterrupted without adding some progressive pundit that they need to answer to. Those are different platforms, with different aims, and like I said over and over, are not there to limit a pundit freedom of speech.

Why do you think that is?

Why do you think that is?

All you do is push your own version of reality where only the voices you support have the right to express themselves, all the while turning it on me and trying to assert that I support things I don’t really support. Of course, the people who shout and bemoan don’t really have a worldview, other than continually convincing themselves that they are good and honest, while their opposition is evil and deplorable.

    Shachar Haad

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