House Democrats, Targeting Right-Wing Cable Outlets, Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms

You are quite wrong. I started the thread because Dems pose a threat to free speech, IMHO.

 

None of that affects the principle.

 

I only used the word, "your," in that particular instance, because the main idea of that paragraph was that the poster's thread seemed more a partisan-inspired attack, rather than a sincere, serious concern over some aggregiously stand-out development. But both Lincoln & Wilson were American, so our, Presidents. I have not been a Democrat, strictly speaking, so I do not typically keep score in that way. And I agree, Wilson was an horrifically bad President (though, "experts," consistently rate him as one of the best). My opinion of Lincoln, also, varies greatly from the general view; for me, this has nothing to do with Party.

Lastly, I was definitely NOT trying to say that Lincoln's actions were a justification for Democratic investigations, vis a vis baseless lies & propaganda, masquerading under the banner of, "News"-- they need no apologist for that, in my opinion. I am guessing the reason that you are now the second poster to make that mistake is because too many have been conditioned to look for, "whataboutism, " as ButterBalls called it, and so now automatically jump to that conclusion prematurely. If you read my whole post, it is only this first paragraph that talks about Lincoln, & it is in the context of my questioning the poster's MOTIVE, not addressing his argument, such as it is. The majority of my post is my rebuttal to his argument, beginning with the second paragraph that, literally begins, "BUT to your argument..." underlining the point that, up until that point, I have NOT been discussing the specifics of his argument (but, rather his underlying intention).

 

If you caught one of your children in an outright lie, I doubt you would let him slide on the "free speech" idea.
So why would you expect folks to except lies being spread by adults?

 

Our children are grown up, but I understand your point. Nonetheless, you remain wrong.
There was no First Amendment for our children in our home.
There is a First Amendment in our Constitution because no one gets to be the "adult" telling "children" what they can and cannot say. We are all free and equal people.

 

So are you saying that the First Amendment was written with intent to protect the spread of lies...
no matter how dangerous they might be?

 

Most of the time, yes.
". . . Under U.S. law, many falsehoods—even some deliberate lies—receive the full protection of the First Amendment. That is true even though “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact,” as Justice Lewis Powell Jr. wrote for the Supreme Court in 1974. Nonetheless, the Court has often refused to allow government to penalize speakers for mistakes, sloppy falsehoods, and lies. Political lies are strongly protected; but even private lies sometimes are as well. . . . "
Does the First Amendment Protect Deliberate Lies?
www.theatlantic.com › politics › archive › 2016/08 › d...

Aug 16, 2016 — Does the First Amendment Protect Deliberate Lies? Donald Trump says the press cannot lie. But the Supreme Court says otherwise: In fact, many ...

 

I got this from an historian (and author of a book on Lincoln!). So, unless you are also a renowned historian, as well as the Intelligence Agency insider you have previously claimed, I guess that shows your own ignorance. Perhaps, to reflect what you actually know-- as opposed to what you think you know-- you should change your name to: "Jack Sh**."

The historian, in case you are interested, said that Lincoln realized his attempt to resupply the fort, including with munitions, would instigate an attack by the South (as it had when President Buchanan had attempted it) at that time or preemptively, if they knew it was on the way (& Lincoln made sure to notify them that was his intention). The Confederacy's Secretary of State, William Seward had been adamant that they should not attack the fort, as that would give the North the pretext it wanted & needed, but to no avail. I can also give you this quote from wikipedia, which supports my statement that, though the Constitution does NOT bar a state from leaving the Union, Lincoln made the decision not to allow it, no matter what that took. Therefore he did not even try to negotiate a settlement, when Southern emissaries arrived in Washington, D.C.
<Begin snip>
The South sent delegations to Washington, D.C., and offered to pay for the Federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with the Confederate agents because he did not consider the Confederacy a legitimate nation and making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government. However, Secretary of State William H. Seward, who wished to give up Sumter for political reasons—as a gesture of good will—engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.[35]<End snip>

I would also, strenuously point out that I DID NOT SAY THAT I ACCEPTED THE HISTORIAN'S INTERPRETATION. Need I reproduce my post, saying that it was probably impossible for anyone to know, for sure, what Lincoln had been thinking? What is it about this thread, that it attracts so many poor readers?!!

 

Of course Lincoln made no attempt to negotiate a settlement. There could never have been any question of negotiating with the illegitimate, treasonous Confederacy. To have received a Confederate delegation or to have negotiated over Sumter would have likewise been impossible. After the war the Supreme Court, in its Texas v White decision, declared the Confederacy illegitimate and concluded that no Confederate acts had any legal basis.
Btw, in your post you have William Seward serving as Secretary of State for both sides.
Second btw, I'm writing this sitting next to three shelves of books on Lincoln and the Civil War.

 

-- In the HYPOTHETICAL (according to what you just said, since that was your intended treatment, about which I would have been mistaken).

OK, so this thread does not care to deal with reality, outside of a document, & posters' ideals? Thanks for saving me the effort of my planned next post, which was going to explain to you why the scrutiny Democrats are giving this is entirely appropriate. I suppose I still could, but you just asserted that the thread is meant as something meaningless, with respect to the outside world (which is NOT an ideal one).

This only confirms for me, BTW, that your true motivation for this thread was merely as a way to attack Democrats. The hypocrisy of your defense of, "ideals," has a rank stench.

 

Nope. I have on other occasions called out Republicans for their threats to the First Amendment.
It is regrettable that you only see the issue in partisan terms.
IMHO, free speech and free press must be defended in toto or they cease to exist.

 

BTW #1:

NO, I don't. The first reference to Seward is my own--

-- and the 2nd is (to anyone who knows how to read) part of my wikipedia quote:

Your misreading of information is clearly not limited to material written by me. I guess your reading of things in an overly-narrow way, deactivates your ability to use common sense in your interpretation. The author obviously, from CONTEXT, means that Seward thought the South should give up its military "blockade," so to speak, and its claims on Fort Sumter; but your inability to see words in anything but a restrictively literal sense, must have made you reason (& I use the term loosely) that only the North could, "give up," Fort Sumter because, despite its precarious position, it belonged, at that moment, to the Union. That is what you surmised, also despite that the only side that had a had cause for, "a gesture of good will," was the South (in fact the prior sentence showed that Lincoln's administration had no interest in gestures of good will). Still, your analysis brings you to exactly the wrong conclusion as to the meaning of wikipedia's passage. But I'm sure you feel it is the author who is to blame, despite the fact that, if anyone else found this confusing, they could edit the wikipedia entry, yet haven't. Mind-blowing that you could have played a role in an, "Intelligence Service."

BTW #2:

That is an unconvincing argument that you know what you are talking about, since you needed to read those books and, well, see BTW #1.

 

It's not really a humble opinion, if you are unwilling to entertain other people's opinions, wishing to bring practicality into the discussion.


What I find regrettable is-- not that you fail to understand that my argument has nothing whatsoever to do with partisanship (I have voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate only once, or twice, at most), because your problems with reading have become growingly apparent, with each of our exchanges--
but that someone (you) would think to post what is a self-proclaimed article of faith, in a Debate forum, which he has no desire to actually DEBATE.

 

Who gets to decide what is a lie and what isn't. Are you so helpless that you can't figure it out without the help of a giant busy body that controls, in one manner or the other, nearly 90% of the market?

 

Note the projection by the grieving whiners in this thread.

 

FWIW, William H. Seward was the Union Secretary of State. Four different men were Secretary of State of the Confederacy; none was Seward.

 

The thread was started by a Biden voter. I'm not grieving.

 

Hmmm. It's your #61 that brought partisan politics into our exchange.

 

It is actually your post to which I would apply your opening line, as you somehow missed my point. I NEVER suggested, "prohibiting," any speech. From my very first post in this thread which, since you answered it, I assume you read:

So I was only in favor of having some bar to meet in order to qualify for the designation as a, "News program."

Certainly the devil is in the details, but should there be a reasonably unbiased (as far as humans can be) way for appraising the outright lies & extremely misleading mostly-lies of any news outlet, as apart from reasonable mistakes, what problem do you have with that? Again, the conspiracy hucksters could still have a platform-- they just couldn't call it, "News." I don't believe the Constitution has any provisions that would bar this. Is that why you have never answered this point, because it is easier to misrepresent me as calling for outright censorship of, "broad categories of speech?"

 

I stand corrected. Since I knew that my fact about his opposing any agression against Fort Sumter was accurate, I assumed that was the same person who wikipedia mentioned taking such an accommodating stance. My bad. I should have said Robert Toombs (talk about a bad omen for the name of your fledgling country's Secretary of State).

I would note, for the record, that the fact that even the Union Secretary of State was trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the standoff, only buttresses the historian's argument I related, about it being Lincoln's INTENTION to resolve this through hostilities, through force & not negotiation, which was the primary determinant factor in the secession of the Southern states leading to Civil War. I say, as I did before, that it was not the Constitution, but LINCOLN, who could not accept the choice of the states which wanted to leave the Union.

Finally, I'll add that the Confederate Secretary of War, also, had the same aversion to allowing this dispute to spiral out of control. From wikipedia, one more time:

"Davis appointed Leroy Pope Walker as the first Confederate Secretary of War in February 1861. Walker’s first major role involved the situation at Fort Sumter. Communicating often with P. G. T. Beauregard, he advocated for no direct clash with the Union."

It seems like ALMOST all of the principal players of both governments were trying to avoid a conflict. I would hardly call it a, "conspiracy theory," to observe that the Confederacy did not benefit from starting a war; they had, in fact, dispatched representatives to Washington, to negotiate an equitable & amicable parting. Only one man stood in the way of that process commencing.

 

Seward had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican Presidential nomination and remained on the lookout for opportunities to outshine him. Later, he became a Lincoln loyalist.
There was no constitutional right of secession. Lincoln merely fulfilled his oath. If you have not read the Texas v White SCOTUS decision, you should.

 

You are wrong, or misstating, or being overly obtuse in your answer, once more. HOW did my post #61 show me to be a partisan? By accusing you of partisanship? LOL-- what a great defense; no matter what you say, it can never be called partisan. Because, if someone does, you claim that as proof that they must be partisan! I would ask if we're pretending to be 8-yr. olds-- "I know you are, but what am I?"-- except the Republican Party, most noticeably in recent years, has employed the same tactic of accusing the Democrats of doing the very things they are guilty of. And that is not a partisan statement, it is an observation of fact.

I have been a supporter of developing a viable third party since I supported Ross Perot. And I have had a lot of grievance, in the past, with Democrats acting, at one time, not especially different from Republicans, all as corporate servants (over the long period I supported Ralph Nader). But times have changed. The overall Republican body in Congress has condemned itself, by its behavior, & the only other game in town has, thankfully, recently been picking up the slack. But I know you are deaf to this argument, so I will not waste our time.

BTW, I suggested that I believed that your true motivation was partisanship long before post #61,in fact, from my very 1st post (#8 ). So, once more, it is you, not me, who is saying things that are hard to comprehend the meaning of, or reconcile with the facts.

 

There need not be an enumerated right for something not to be illegal-- is that how you think, "freedom," works? It would more accurately mirror our legal system for someone to make the case that anything not specifically listed in the Constitution as off-limits was, therefore, fair game. But either argument would be ridiculous, because every possible contingency could not be included, in advance; that's not the way the Constitution works, either. It is merely a framework, a guide, which allows for the system to sketch in the details, as circumstances arise. If the founders, however, intended States to be locked in our Union, in perpetuity, that certainly would not have been something they would forget to mention. The Constitution did include a device for handling just such a situation as Secession, though, in Article 3, Section 2:
ARTICLE III
Judicial Branch


Section 2
The judicial Power shall extend to ALL CASES, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;...--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;...to
CONTROVERSIES BETWEEN TWO OR MORE STATES;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In ALL CASES affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those IN WHICH A STATE SHALL BE PARTY the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction*. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make...
<END SNIP>

It could not be more CLEAR-CUT, in the Constitution: this situation SHOULD HAVE been resolved in the *Supreme Court. Why it wasn't, would be an interesting thing to know. But if it had been, I imagine some accomodation would have been reached (not half the citizens declared guilty of treason, as you have laughably suggested). This is especially obvious, considering the fact that there were, no doubt, members on the Court who had originally come from the now secessionist states. Think of all the deaths that occurred because we did NOT go by the dictates of the Constitution, in that situation.

 

As an idealistic thought you make a decent point. But as you state, the devil is in the details. The current actual impetus, as evidenced by open congressional actions and a plethora of pundit, wag, media, and operative commentary, is to label as lies and misinformation and to eliminate from allowable speech, press, and media any and all political speech, such as support for and even positive commentary about Trump, complaints about fraudulent or illegal elections, denials of any instigation, support, or even knowledge of the Jan 6 riots, etc, etc. -- precisely the kind of speech protected by the first amendment.

 

Your post in no way refutes the fact that Lincoln's decision to supply the troops at Ft. Sumter provoked a military response by the confederacy.