Entire KSU Football team boycotts
- Thread starter BleedCrimsonandGray
- Start date
I think I read it and comprehended it correctly, I just stated it in simplified terms. You would accept his positions if they were all in line because when he chooses to go item by item you don't feel it is a stance. Just like Kap should have knelt once, but because he continued to do it he was losing the audience because he was grandstanding. Was Mohamed Ali grandstanding, I mean he could have gone on Wide World of Sports, interviewed with Cosell once and got back in the ring. But thanks for clearing up my mis-comprehension.
Actually, if I was positing from my phone which I probably shouldn't do cause I don't always have my readers on, it would be "to funny" because I would probably not see I missed an "O". But solid input Blitherson.
This kind of mentality is flat-out scary. I guarantee a lot of people would be up in arms, rightly, if a bunch of right-wingers were going around beating the hell out of people for just wearing a Biden (or AOC, or whatever) hat. It's important to uphold the rule of law, especially, if not societal standards for reasonable behavior, no matter whether the purveyors are on "your side" or not. Otherwise, you're on the wrong side of the "we didn't do anything about it when they came for X, and now they are coming for us" situation.
Well, I thought we were talking about cancel culture not beating the hell out of people. I stand opposed to beating the hell out of people - most people anyway.
Spongebob brought up the example of the old guy being beaten, but looking back, it wasn't in response to you, although I thought you might have seen it.
Glad we're on the same page on not beating (most) people. I'm good with people voting with their wallets and debating things vigorously, but not intimidating people in a manner intended to prevent those people from saying things they don't agree with or flat-out assaulting them.
This kind of thing is going way too far.
At some level, I can understand the removal of Confederate symbols from public places. It probably shouldn't be part of Mississippi's flag. Statues of Lee and Pike probably shouldn't be in DC - although in my mind that's more because they were traitors to the country whose capitol it is. In Confederate cemeteries, well...that's actually probably an appropriate place for those monuments. In places where both Union and Confederate soldiers are buried, it may even be reasonable to have the two flags flying together - just like we do at other war memorials and cemeteries around the world (although, I believe the WWII German cemeteries fly the German flag, not the Nazi flag...so the argument could go either way).
Where I have a problem is when you start going to individuals and telling them they can't fly a flag, paint the roof of their car, have a tattoo, etc. That crosses a line and is where the threats to the 1st amendment actually arise.
There's a story out of Walla Walla right now that I find troubling for the same reason. A police officer there apparently has a tattoo that resembles the Nazi SS logo - the lightning bolt double S. It's become known that he has this tattoo, and a number of people - including city leaders and the public - have pressured him and the police department to change or remove the tattoo. He has declined, and the police chief has (rightly, I believe) said he can't make him do so. In response, the president of WHitman College today severed ties with Walla Walla PD - saying they won't use them as part time security, police officers can't use college buildings for training, and officers can't use campus fitness facilities, at least until the officer removes or changes the tattoo.
This seems a very dangerous precedent to me, when civic leaders now believe that they can force someone to physically change their body because others don't like it.
The officer says that the tattoo is actually in memory of someone killed in Afghanistan, and he covers it when he's on duty. In my mind, neither of those details is relevant. Even if he is truly a neo-Nazi, if it's not impacting the way he does his job and he's not threatening people...there's nothing the department can do. Even if it's perceived as a form of hate speech, there's nothing civic leaders can do. Hate speech is protected speech, and the courts have affirmed this multiple times. The only exception is if it is intended to provoke an imminent violent response. Neither a tattoo or flag likely meets that standard, and therefore should be protected.
95....there are spots where it has gone too far. But nothing ever comes back to the middle right away. Or at least I haven't seen it happen.
To the person who has the tattoo business owners for a long time wouldn't hire people with tats. There was a time when tats were associated with gangs until they became more main stream. They were being held back because of their arm art.
The officer has not been fired. The college may believe it brings unnecessary attention to the campus police. His first amendment is not being violated. He still has a job. Sounds like the college wants a different representation of their security force. While civic leaders can't do anything, they just did and accomplished what they wanted to accomplish.
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I'm going to respectfully disagree that it's ok to overlook the fact that someone is a professed neo-nazi. I know that you aren't saying that guy is one.....but if he is, he absolutely should not be allowed to work as a public servant. Supporting and promoting an ideology that seeks to eliminate other races from the planet isn't bullsh!t that you tolerate. Before you respond, ask yourself this: would the people saying that we need to allow the guy to keep his tattoo and his ideology feel the same way if he had an Al Qaeda tattoo on his shoulder and he said that he prayed for the death of all Christians every night? If you aren't ready to stick up for Al Qaeda......you shouldn't be sticking up for some dude with a Nazi tattoo.
If he’s praying to himself, and not trying to incite others to kill Christians, frankly, that’s his right. Let me turn it around on you now - if it’s a Christian praying for the death of Muslims...now what?
If the guy is openly neo-Nazi, you don’t hire him in the first place. Once you’ve hired him, and he’s been doing his job appropriately, you can’t dismiss him, and you certainly can’t tell him that he has to remove his tattoos.
In my view, a Christian who says that he is praying for the death of all muslims should be publicly shunned as well. At that point.......he is a pretty bad Christian. The truth is dirtier than that of course. Because we've vilified the Muslim religion, it's probably not a fire-able offense in many people's eyes.
And it shouldn’t be, until you move from praying to doing, or trying to get others to do it.
My primary concern is that someone like this has no business in a position that will give him discretion to wield state power over others. Same reason the Confederate monuments and state flags are important while the Gone With the Wind kerfuffle is symbolic idiocy. Putting a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest or Lee or whoever in front of say, your county courthouse or city hall announces that the state still considers black people to be less than fully human, and a problem to managed, rather than members of the community to be served and protected like everybody else.
The problem with accepting that people can pray privately for the death of others is that it's private.......until it isn't. A person, particularly a police officer, that is a neo-Nazi or anti-muslim or anti-christian is going to be more likely to abuse their authority when dealing with people that they consider inferior. We can pretend that isn't true....but we are talking about human beings here.
I'll say that I don't believe that we should have a society where we have a habit of delving into people's personal lives. If someone is a neo-Nazi and we never know......I'm not going to lose sleep over that. When that person is failing to keep their beliefs private....no matter the reason.....they lose that right to privacy. No offense to that cop, but putting a frickin' SS symbol on his body is a staggeringly dumb decision. He might as well get a dick tattooed on his forehead, because I don't respect someone dumb enough to get a Nazi tattoo on a part of his body that people would see.
Just a counterpoint, how's this different than the House Un-American Activities Committee? What about the Hollywood blacklist of suspected Communists and Communist sympathizers?
I haven’t read anywhere whether any team members tried to contact this kid. It might be difficult anyway, I suspect he is laying low.
Regarding free speech, the First Amendment says congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech. As written it applies only to congress and their lawmaking responsibilities. It doesn’t say that businesses, individuals and universities can’t abridge the freedom of speech. They can most likely place whatever reasonable limits they choose on the types of speech they will allow within the facilities and platforms under their control. So not all speech is free speech (constitutionally anyway).
See my post from earlier this morning. I don't believe that we should be establishing protocols that actively seek to discredit people based on their privately held beliefs. However, if it comes out that someone is a neo-nazi, jihadist, violently anti-muslim or some other extreme behavior, I think that they should be judged accordingly. Keep your private life private if you don't want others judging you on it.
Totally wrong. The 14th Amendment makes the First Amemdment applicable to the states. A state university is a state agency.
Sure, I guess that would apply to public universities but likely not private ones. There is probably some fuzziness there even based on whether and under what circumstances the private university takes government money. But the broader point is still valid. Not all speech is free speech. Twitter, Facebook, Bob Jones University and this message board are free to dictate what speech is acceptable in their environs.
Not so fast, my friend.
Taking Federal $$$$ opens up a whole different can of worms. Most private universities get grant money.
You're probably down to Hillsdale and maybe a handful of others.
Not all speech is free speech. But a state university administering discipline on a student for a tweet is an obvious First Amendment violation. Nothing fuzzy about it.
Thought we all agreed about 30 posts ago that the student couldn’t be expelled or otherwise punished by the school. The team has stated they understand that as well. There is nothing to stop the school from issuing a statement distancing themselves from the students tweet though. That appears to be what the team is asking for.
I'm not a big fan of Neo-nazis, but I thought this specific example was somebody who was a cop. And if that's the case, professed Nazis should not be public servants. Full stop. They possess the authority to act on behalf of the state, and are sympathetic to an exterminationist ideology. Everything they do becomes suspect, even if it turns out to be right, because the motivations can't be trusted. On top of that, you could bluff a Stalinist who had power over you in some weird hypothetical, or a religious fundamentalist. You can't pretend to not be black or brown
You kinda blew that by saying the First Amendment didn’t apply to universities.
